A sheep rancher from New Mexico found strange debris scattered across the desert near Roswell in 1947. Newspapers declared a ‘flying saucer’ had been captured, and 47 years later, investigators linked it to a secret Cold War program

Roswell UFO incident : On a June morning in 1947, sheep rancher W.W. “Mac” Brazel was making his rounds at the J.B. Foster ranch, about 85 miles northwest of Roswell, New Mexico. Across the ground was a strange scattering of debris. He did not initially think much of it because he was in a hurry, and the pieces looked more like rubbish than something that could change the course of American folklore.

The material stretched across roughly 200 yards and included rubber strips, tinfoil, wooden sticks, tape and what Brazel described as a tough paper-like material, according to TIME’s 1997 reconstruction of the episode. He gathered some of it and took it home. At that point, there was no alien body, no flying saucer story and no worldwide mystery, only a rancher who had found something unusual on his land.