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UFO conspiracy theories

UFO conspiracy theories are a subset of conspiracy theories which argue that various governments and politicians globally, in particular the United States government, are suppressing evidence that unidentified flying objects are controlled by a non-human intelligence or built using alien technology. Such conspiracy theories usually argue that Earth governments are in communication or cooperation with extraterrestrial visitors despite public disclaimers, and further that some of these theories claim that the governments are explicitly allowing alien abduction.

Individuals who have suggested that UFO evidence is being suppressed include Stanford University immunologist Garry Nolan, United States Senator Barry Goldwater, British Admiral Lord Hill-Norton (former NATO head and chief of the British Defence Staff), American Vice Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter (first CIA director), Israeli brigadier general Haim Eshed (former director of space programs for the Israel Ministry of Defense), astronauts Gordon Cooper  and Edgar Mitchell, and former Canadian Defence Minister Paul Hellyer. Beyond their testimonies and reports they have presented no evidence to substantiate their statements and claims. According to the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry little or no evidence exists to support them despite significant research on the subject by non-governmental scientific agencies.

Scholars of religion have identified some new religious movements among the proponents of UFO conspiracy theories, most notably Heaven's Gate, the Nation of Islam, and Scientology.

Background
Personnel in the mid-1940s reported unidentified objects under various names.

Roswell balloon and 'recovered disc' hoaxes

On July 8, 1947, Roswell Army Air Field issued a press release stating that they had recovered a "flying disc". The Army quickly retracted the statement and clarified that the crashed object was a conventional weather balloon. The Roswell incident did not surface again until the late 1970s, when it was incorporated into conspiracy literature.

The Roswell balloon was far from the only misidentified "disc". One potential disc, recovered from the yard of a priest in Grafton, Wisconsin, was identified as an ordinary circular saw-blade. More elaborate hoax saucers were found in Shreveport, Louisiana; in Black River Falls, Wisconsin; and in Clearwater, Florida. On July 9, press reported the recovery of a thirty-inch disc from a Hollywood back yard; the hoaxer was never identified.

On July 11, press reported the recovery of a 30-inch disc from the yard of a Twin Falls, Idaho home. On July 12, it was reported nationally that the Twin Falls disc was a hoax. Photos of the object were publicly released. The object was described as containing radio tubes, electric coils, and wires underneath a plexiglass dome. Press reported that four teenagers had confessed to creating the disc.

Winchell and the Soviets
On April 3, 1949, radio personality Walter Winchell broadcast the claim that it had been definitively established that the flying saucers were guided missiles fired from Russia. In response, the Air Force denied any such conclusion. The Air Force reportedly requested an FBI investigation into Winchell's claims, a request that was denied.

Keyhoe and the Air Force knowledge of UFOs
On December 26, 1949,  True magazine published an article by Donald Keyhoe titled "The Flying Saucers Are Real". Keyhoe, a former Major in the US Marines, claimed that elements within the Air Force knew that saucers existed and had concluded they were likely 'inter-planetary'.

The article examined the Mantell UFO incident and quoted an unnamed pilot who opined that the Air Force's explanation "looks like a cover up to me". The Gorman Dogfight and the Chiles-Whitted UFO encounter were also described. The article cited a supposed report from Air Material Command and claimed a "rocket authority at Wright field" had concluded saucers were interplanetary. Concern over a public panic, of the kind that supposedly occurred after the 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast, is cited in the article as a possible motive for the cover up. Citing historic sources, Keyhoe speculated that similar sightings have likely occurred for at least several centuries.

The True article caused a sensation. Though such figures are always difficult to verify, Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, the first head of Project Blue Book, reported that "It is rumored among magazine publishers that Don Keyhoe's article in True was one of the most widely read and widely discussed magazine articles in history." When Keyhoe expanded the article into a book, The Flying Saucers Are Real (1950), it sold over half a million copies in paperback. In March 1950, the Air Force denied "flying saucers" exist and further denied that they were US technology being covered-up. <!--

Donald Keyhoe later began investigating flying saucers for True magazine. Keyhoe was one of the first significant conspiracy theorists, asserting eventually that the saucers were from outer space and were on some sort of scouting mission. Keyhoe claimed to derive his theory from his contacts in Air Force and Navy intelligence. Keyhoe later founded NICAP, a civilian investigation group that asserted the U.S. government was lying about UFOs and covering up information that should be shared with the public. NICAP had many influential board members, including Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, the first director of the CIA. To date no substantiating evidence for NICAP's assertions has been presented beyond accounts that are anecdotal and documented hear-say or rumor.

Donald Keyhoe was a retired U.S. Marine who wrote a series of popular books and magazine articles that were very influential in shaping public opinion, arguing that UFOs were indeed real and that the U.S. government was suppressing UFO evidence. Keyhoe's first article on the subject came out in True magazine, January 1950, and was a national sensation. His first book, Flying Saucers Are Real also came out in 1950, about the same time as Frank Scully's book, and was a bestseller. In 1956, Keyhoe helped establish NICAP, a powerful civilian UFO investigating group with many inside sources. Keyhoe became its director and continued his attacks on the Air Force. Other contemporary critics also charged that the United States Air Force was perpetrating a cover-up with its Project Blue Book. On January 22, 1958, when Donald Keyhoe appeared on CBS television, his statements on UFOs were censored by the Air Force. During the show when Keyhoe tried to depart from the censored script to "reveal something that has never been disclosed before", CBS cut the sound, later stating Keyhoe was about to violate "predetermined security standards" and about to say something he wasn't "authorized to release". What Keyhoe was about to reveal were four publicly unknown military studies concluding UFOs were interplanetary including the 1948 Project Sign Estimate of the Situation and a 1952 Project Blue Book engineering analysis of UFO motion presented at the Robertson Panel.

Project Sign, based at Air Technical Intelligence Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and its successors Project Grudge and Project Blue Book were officially assigned to investigate the flying saucers. Edward Ruppelt's 1956 book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, reports that many people within these research groups did in fact support the hypothesis that the flying saucers were from outer space. According to U.S. Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, the Air Force's files often mentioned the panicked aftermath of the 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast as a possible reaction of the public to confirmed evidence of UFOs; however, the files have not been made available to corroborate his assertions. -->

Scully and alien bodies
In October and November 1949, journalist Frank Scully published two columns in Variety, claiming that dead extraterrestrial beings were recovered from a flying saucer crash, based on what he said was reported to him by a scientist involved. His 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers expanded on the theme, adding that there had been two such incidents in Arizona and one in New Mexico, a 1948 incident that involved a saucer that was nearly 100 ft in diameter. In January 1950, Time Magazine skeptically repeated stories of crashed saucers with humanoid occupants.

It was later revealed that Scully had been the victim of "two veteran confidence artists". In 1952 and 1956, True magazine published articles by San Francisco Chronicle reporter John Philip Cahn that exposed Newton and "Dr. Gee" (identified as Leo A. GeBauer) as oil con artists who had hoaxed Scully.

1950s
The 1950s saw an increase in both governmental and civilian investigative efforts and reports of public disinformation and suppression of evidence.

The UK Ministry of Defence's UFO Project has its roots in a study commissioned in 1950 by the MOD's then Chief Scientific Adviser, radar scientist Henry Tizard. As a result of his insistence that UFO sightings should not be dismissed without some form of proper scientific study, the department set up the Flying Saucer Working Party (or FSWP).

In August 1950, Montanan baseball manager Nicholas Mariana filmed several UFOs with his color 16mm camera. Project Blue Book was called in and, after inspecting the film, Mariana claimed it was returned to him with critical footage removed, clearly showing the objects as disc-shaped. The incident sparked nationwide media attention.

In April 1952, Life Magazine published "Have We Visitors From Space?", which was sympathetic to the extraterrestrial hypothesis; The article is thought to have contributed to the 1952 UFO flap.

Canadian radio engineer Wilbert B. Smith, who worked for the Canadian Department of Transport, was interested in flying saucer propulsion technology and wondered if the assertions in the just-published Scully and Keyhoe books were factual. In September 1950, he had the Canadian embassy in Washington D.C. arrange contact with U.S. officials to try to discover the truth of the matter. Smith was briefed by Robert Sarbacher, a physicist and consultant to the Defense Department's Research and Development Board. Other correspondence, having to do with Keyhoe needing to get clearance to publish another article on Smith's theories of UFO propulsion, indicated that Bush and his group were operating out of the Research and Development Board. Smith then briefed superiors in the Canadian government, leading to the establishment of Project Magnet, a small Canadian government UFO research effort. Canadian documents and Smith's private papers were uncovered in the late 1970s, and by 1984, other alleged documents emerged claiming the existence of a highly secret UFO oversight committee of scientists and military people called Majestic 12, again naming Vannevar Bush. Sarbacher was also interviewed in the 1980s and corroborated the information in Smith's memos and correspondence. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, Smith granted public interviews, and among other things stated that he had been lent crashed UFO material for analysis by a highly secret U.S. government group which he wouldn't name.

A few weeks after the Robertson Panel, the Air Force issued Regulation 200–2, ordering air base officers to publicly discuss UFO incidents only if they were judged to have been solved, and to classify all the unsolved cases to keep them out of the public eye. In addition, UFO investigative duties started to be taken on by the newly formed 4602nd Air Intelligence Squadron (AISS) of the Air Defense Command. The 4602nd AISS was tasked with investigating only the most important UFO cases having intelligence or national security implications. These were deliberately siphoned away from Blue Book, leaving Blue Book to deal with the more trivial reports.

Keyhoe and The Flying Saucer Conspiracy
In 1955, Donald Keyhoe authored a new book that pointedly accused elements of the United States government of engaging in a conspiracy to cover up knowledge of flying saucers. Keyhoe claims the existence of a "silence group" of orchestrating this conspiracy. Historian of Folklore Curtis Peebles argues:  "The Flying Saucer Conspiracy marked a shift in Keyhoe's belief system. No longer were flying saucers the central theme; that now belonged to the silence group and its coverup. For the next two decades Keyhoe's beliefs about this would dominate the flying saucer myth."

The book features claims of a possible discovery of an "orbiting space base" or a "moon base", knowledge of which might trigger a public panic. The Flying Saucer Conspiracy also incorporated legends of the Bermuda Triangle disappearances. Keyhoe sensationalized claims, ultimately stemming from optical illusions, of unusual structures on the moon.

Carl Allen and the Philadelphia Experiment
In 1955, Morris K. Jessup achieved some notoriety with his book The Case for the UFO, in which he argued that UFOs represented a mysterious subject worthy of further study. Jessup speculated that UFOs were "exploratory craft of 'solid' and 'nebulous' character." Jessup also "linked ancient monuments with prehistoric superscience".

In January 1956, Jessup began receiving a series of letters from  "Carlos Miguel Allende", later identified as Carl Meredith Allen. "Allende" warned Jessup not to investigate the levitation of UFOs and spun a tale of a dangerous experiment in which Navy Ship was successfully made invisible, only to inexplicably teleport from Philadelphia to Norfolk, Virginia, before reappearing back in Philadelphia. The ship's crew was supposed to have suffered various side effects, including insanity, intangibility, and being "frozen" in place. By 1975, the Philadelphia Experiment was being promoted by paranormal author Charles Berlitz and in 1984, the legend was adapted into a fictional film.

In 1957, Jessup was invited to the Office of Naval Research where he was shown an annotated copy of his book that was filled with handwritten notes in its margins, written with three different shades of blue ink, appearing to detail a debate among three individuals. They discussed ideas about the propulsion for flying saucers, alien races, and express concern that Jessup was too close to discovering their technology. Jessup noticed the handwriting of the annotations resembled the letters he received from Allen. (Twelve years later, Allen would say that he authored all of the annotations in order "to scare the hell out of Jessup.")

The Jessup book with Allen's scribbled commentaries gained a life of its own when the Varo Manufacturing Corporation of Garland, Texas, who did contract work for ONR, began producing mimeographed copies of the book with Allen's annotations and Allen's letters to Jessup. These copies came to be known as the "Varo edition." This became the heart of many "Philadelphia Experiment" books, documentaries, and movies to come. Over the years various writers and researchers who tried to get more information from Carl Allen found his responses elusive, or could not find him at all.

Edward Ruppelt and The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects
Ruppelt was a captain in the US Air Force who served as director of official investigations into UFOs: Project Grudge and Project Bluebook.

In 1956, Ruppelt authored The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, a book that has been called the "most significant" of its era. The book discussed the Twining memo which initiated UFO investigation and the rejected 1948 "Estimate of the Situation". Ruppelt criticized the Air Force's handling of UFOs investigations. Historian Curtis Peebles concludes that the book "should have ended the speculation about an Air Force cover-up. In fact, Ruppelt's statements were converted into support for the cover-up idea."

Al Chop and The True Story of Flying Saucers
In 1956, a film titled Unidentified Flying Objects: The True Story of Flying Saucers dramatized the events of the early 1950s from the point of view of Air Force press officer Albert M. Chop. Chop had served as the Press Chief for Air Materiel Command in Dayton, Ohio until 1951 when he transferred to the Pentagon to serve as the press spokesman for Project Bluebook. The film incorporates interviews with actual eyewitnesses and historic footage of unidentified objects, concluding with a dramatization of the 1952 UFO flap that featured repeated sightings over Washington D.C.

Gray Barker and the 'Men in Black'
1956 saw the publication of Gray Barker's They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers, the book which publicized the idea of Men in Black who appear to UFO witnesses and warn them to keep quiet. There has been continued speculation that the men in black are government agents who harass and threaten UFO witnesses.

According to the Skeptical Inquirer article "Gray Barker: My Friend, the Myth-Maker", there may have been "a grain of truth" to Barker's writings on the Men in Black, in that government agencies did attempt to discourage public interest in UFOs during the 1950s. However, Barker is thought to have greatly embellished the facts of the situation. In the same Skeptical Inquirer article, Sherwood revealed that, in the late 1960s, he and Barker collaborated on a brief fictional notice alluding to the Men in Black, which was published as fact first in Raymond A. Palmer's Flying Saucers magazine and some of Barker's own publications. In the story, Sherwood (writing as "Dr. Richard H. Pratt") claimed he was ordered to silence by the "blackmen" after learning that UFOs were time-travelling vehicles. Barker later wrote to Sherwood, "Evidently the fans swallowed this one with a gulp."

1960s
Throughout much of the 1960s, atmospheric physicist James E. McDonald suggested—via lectures, articles and letters—that the U.S. Government was mishandling evidence that would support the extraterrestrial hypothesis.

Jacques Vallee and the "Pentacle Memorandum"
In June 1967, researcher Jacques Vallee was tasked with organizing files collected by Project Bluebook investigator J. Allen Hynek Among those files, Vallee found a memo dated 9 January 1953 addressed to an assistant of Edward J. Ruppelt, an Air Force officer assigned to Bluebook. The memo was signed "H.C. Cross", but Vallee elected to refer to the author under the pseudonym "Pentacle".

The memo referred to a previously unknown analysis of several thousand UFO reports, along with calls for agreements about "what can and what cannot be discussed" with the 1953 Roberson Panel. Writing in his 1967 journal, Vallee expressed the opinion that the memo, if it were published, "would cause an even bigger uproar among foreign scientists than among Americans: it would prove the devious nature of the statements made by the Pentagon all these years about the non-existence of UFOs".

Emenegger documentary and the landing at Holloman Air Force Base
Clark cites a 1973 encounter as perhaps the earliest suggestion that the U.S. government was involved with ETs. That year, Robert Emenegger and Allan Sandler of Los Angeles, California were in contact with officials at Norton Air Force Base in order to make a documentary film. Emenegger and Sandler report that Air Force Officials (including Paul Shartle) suggested incorporating UFO information in the documentary, including as its centerpiece genuine footage of a 1971 UFO landing at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. Furthermore, says Emenegger, he was given a tour of Holloman AFB and was shown where officials conferred with aliens. This was supposedly not the first time the U.S. had met these aliens, as Emenegger reported that his U.S. military sources had "been monitoring signals from an alien group with which they were unfamiliar, and did their ET guests know anything about them? The ETs said no" The documentary was released in 1974 as UFOs: Past, Present, and Future (narrated by Rod Serling) containing only a few seconds of the Holloman UFO footage, the remainder of the landing depicted with illustrations and re-enactments.

In 1988, Shartle said that the film in question was genuine, and that he had seen it several times.

In 1976 a televised documentary report UFOs: It Has Begun written by Robert Emenegger was presented by Rod Serling, Burgess Meredith and José Ferrer. Some sequences were recreated based upon the statements of eyewitness observers, together with the findings and conclusions of governmental civil and military investigations. The documentary uses a hypothetical UFO landing at Holloman AFB as a backdrop.

Emenegger's 1973 depiction of a landing at Holloman is widely noted for its "striking" similarities to Steven Spielberg's 1977 depiction of a landing at Devil's Tower in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In the 2013 documentary Mirage Men, Ufologist Richard Dolan discussed the Emenegger documentary, saying "I have wondered [if] that film, I think as many people have wondered, was an abortive attempt at some kind of 'Disclosure'.

J. Allen Hynek and "Cosmic Watergate"
J. Allen Hynek was an American astronomer who served as scientific advisor to UFO studies undertaken by the U.S. Air Force under three projects: Project Sign (1947–1949), Project Grudge (1949–1951) and Project Blue Book (1952–1969) Hynek had drawn ridicule for his most famous debunking, in which he suggests a mass-sighting over Michigan may have been caused by "swamp gas".

By 1974, the former skeptic was publicly charging that Bluebook was "a Cosmic Watergate". Hynek claimed 20% of Bluebook cases were unexplained. Fellow Ufologist like Stanton Friedman echoed Hynek's "Cosmic Watergate" accusations.

Alternative 3 and a secret space program
Jerome Clark comments that many UFO conspiracy theory tales "can be traced to a mock documentary Alternative 3, broadcast on British television on June 20, 1977 (but intended for April Fools' Day), and subsequently turned into a paperback book."

According to the fictional research presented in the episode, it was claimed that missing scientists were involved in a secret American/Soviet plan in outer space, and further suggested that interplanetary space travel had been possible for much longer than was commonly accepted. The episode featured a fictional Apollo astronaut who claims to have stumbled on a mysterious lunar base during his moonwalk.

It was claimed that scientists had determined that the Earth's surface would be unable to support life for much longer, due to pollution leading to catastrophic climate change. Physicist "Dr Carl Gerstein" (played by Richard Marner) claimed to have proposed in 1957 that there were three alternatives to this problem. The first alternative was the drastic reduction of the human population on Earth. The second alternative was the construction of vast underground shelters to house government officials and a cross section of the population until the climate had stabilized. The third alternative, the so-called "Alternative 3", was to populate Mars via a way station on the Moon. The final moments of the film feature the discovery of animal life on the surface of Mars.

Paul Bennewitz
The late 1970s also saw the beginning of controversy centered on Paul Bennewitz of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Jesse Marcel and Roswell conspiracy theories
In February 1978, UFO researcher Stanton Friedman interviewed Jesse Marcel, the only person known to have accompanied the Roswell debris from where it was recovered to Fort Worth where reporters saw material that was claimed to be part of the recovered object. Marcel's statements contradicted those he made to the press in 1947.

In November 1979, Marcel's first filmed interview was featured in a documentary titled "UFO's Are Real", co-written by Friedman. The film had a limited release but was later syndicated for broadcasting. On February 28, 1980, sensationalist tabloid the National Enquirer brought large-scale attention to the Marcel story. On September 20, 1980, the TV series In Search of... aired an interview where Marcel described his participation in the 1947 press conference:
 * "They wanted some comments from me, but I wasn't at liberty to do that. So, all I could do is keep my mouth shut. And General Ramey is the one who discussed – told the newspapers, I mean the newsman, what it was, and to forget about it. It is nothing more than a weather observation balloon. Of course, we both knew differently."

Marcel gave a final interview to HBO's America Undercover which aired in August 1985. In all his statements, Marcel consistently denied the presence of bodies. Between 1978 and the early 1990s, UFO researchers such as Stanton T. Friedman, William Moore, Karl T. Pflock, and the team of Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt interviewed several dozen people who claimed to have had a connection with the events at Roswell in 1947.

In the 1990s, the US military published two reports disclosing the true nature of the crashed aircraft: a surveillance balloon from Project Mogul. Nevertheless, the Roswell incident continues to be of interest to the media, and conspiracy theories surrounding the event persist. Roswell has been described as "the world's most famous, most exhaustively investigated and most thoroughly debunked UFO claim".

Gordon Cooper
By 1981, astronaut Gordon Cooper reported suppression of a flying saucer movie filmed in high clarity by two Edwards AFB range photographers on May 3, 1957. Cooper said he viewed developed negatives of the object, clearly showing a dish-like object with a dome on top and something like holes or ports in the dome. When later interviewed by James McDonald, the photographers and another witness confirmed the story. Cooper said military authorities then picked up the film and neither he nor the photographers ever heard what happened to it. The incident was also reported in a few newspapers, such as the Los Angeles Times. The official explanation was that the photographers had filmed a weather balloon distorted by hot desert air.

Majestic 12
The so-called Majestic 12 documents surfaced in 1982, suggesting that there was secret, high-level U.S. government interest in UFOs dating to the 1940s. Upon examination, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) declared the documents to be "completely bogus", and many ufologists consider them to be an elaborate hoax.

The term "Extraterrestrial Biological Entities" (or EBEs) was used in the MJ-12 documents.

Linda Moulton Howe and cattle mutilations
Linda Moulton Howe is an advocate of conspiracy theories that cattle mutilations are of extraterrestrial origin and speculations that the U.S. government is involved with aliens.

George C. Andrews and Milton William Cooper
In 1986, conspiracy theorist George C. Andrews authored Extra-Terrestrials Among Us, accusing the CIA of the Kennedy assassination. Scholar of extremism Michael Barkun notes that "Andrew's political views are almost indistinguishable from those associated with militias, only his placement of extraterrestrials at the pinnacle of conspiracies identifies him as a ufologist." According to Barkun, "the publication of Extra-Terrestrials Among Us marked the beginning of a feverish period of UFO conspiracism, from 1986 to 1989.

Citing Andrews as a source, in 1991 the UFO conspiracy author Bill Cooper published the influential conspiracy work Behold a Pale Horse which claimed that Kennedy was killed after he "informed Majestic 12 that he intended to reveal the presence of aliens to the American people". Behold a Pale Horse became 'wildly popular' with conspiracy theorists and went on to be one of the most-read books in the US prison system. According to Michael Barkun, the theories of Andrews and Cooper helped create "a conspiracist form of UFO speculation, which Jerome Clark refers to as ufology's 'dark side'."

Bob Lazar and Area 51
In 1980, the term "Area 51" was used in the popular press after Delta Force trained there for Operation Eagle Claw, the failed attempt to rescue American hostages in Iran. Press again discussed the site in 1984 after the government seized adjacent land.

In November 1989, Bob Lazar appeared in a special interview with investigative reporter George Knapp on Las Vegas TV station KLAS to discuss his alleged employment at S-4. In his interview with Knapp, Lazar said he first thought the saucers were secret, terrestrial aircraft, whose test flights must have been responsible for many UFO reports. Gradually, on closer examination and from having been shown multiple briefing documents, Lazar came to the conclusion that the discs must have been of extraterrestrial origin. He claims that they use moscovium, an element that decays in a fraction of a second, to warp space, and that "Grey" aliens are from the Zeta Reticuli star system. According to the Los Angeles Times, he never obtained the degrees he claims to hold from MIT and Caltech. By 1991, Nevada press reported tourists traveling to the Groom Lake region in hopes of glimpsing UFOs.

UFO Cover-Up?: Live!
On October 14, 1988, actor Mike Farrell hosted U.S. UFO Cover-Up: Live!, a two-hour television special "focusing on the government's handling of information regarding UFOs" and "whether there has been any suppression of evidence supporting the existence of UFOs".

1990s
The Branton Files are a series of documents espousing various conspiracy theories circulated on the internet since at least the mid-1990s. They are most often attributed to Bruce Alan Walton who claims to have been a victim of alien abduction and had contact through "altered states of consciousness" with humans "living in the inner earth". The files have been characterized as "high fantasy" filled with "complex and convoluted conspiracism".

Phil Schneider and Dulce Base
In 1995, a man calling himself Philip Schneider made a few appearances at UFO conventions, espousing essentially a new version of the theories mentioned above. Schneider claimed to be the son of U-boat commander who was captured by the allies and switched sides. According to Schneider, his father has been part of the Philadelphia Experiment. Schneider claimed to have played a role in the construction of Deep Underground Military Bases (DUMBs) across the United States, and as a result he said that he had been exposed to classified information of various sorts as well as having personal experiences with EBEs. He claimed to have survived the Dulce Base catastrophe and decided to tell his tale.

According to folklore, Schneider died on January 17, 1996, in a death ruled a suicide, though some of his followers reportedly believed he may have been murdered.

2000s
2003 saw the publication of Alien Encounters (ISBN 1-57821-205-7), by Chuck Missler and Mark Eastman, which primarily re-stated the notions presented above (especially Cooper's) and presents them as fact.

MoD secret files
Eight files from 1978 to 1987 on UFO sightings were first released on May 14, 2008, to the National Archives' website by the British Ministry of Defence. Two hundred files were set to be made public by 2012. The files are correspondence from the public sent to government officials, such as the MoD and Margaret Thatcher. The information can be downloaded. Copies of Lt. Col. Halt's letter regarding the sighting at RAF Woodbridge (see above) to the U.K. Ministry of Defence were routinely released (without additional comment) by the USA's base public affairs staff throughout the 1980s until the base closed. The MoD released the files due to requests under the Freedom of Information Act. The files included reports of "lights in the sky" from Britons.

Disclosure
In the early 2000s, the concept of "disclosure" became increasingly popular in the UFO conspiracy community: that the government had classified and withheld information on alien contact and full disclosure was needed, and was pursued by activist lobbying groups.

In 1993, Steven M. Greer founded the Disclosure Project to promote the concept. In May 2001, Greer held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. that demanded Congress hold hearings on "secret U.S. involvement with UFOs and extraterrestrials". It was described by an attending BBC reporter as "the strangest ever news conference hosted by Washington's august National Press Club". The Disclosure Project's claims were met with by derision by skeptics and spokespeople for the U. S. Air Force.

In 2013, the production company CHD2, LLC held a "Citizen Hearing on Disclosure" at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. from 29 April to 3 May 2013. The group paid former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel and former Representatives Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, Roscoe Bartlett, Merrill Cook, Darlene Hooley, and Lynn Woolsey $20,000 each to participate, and to preside over panels of academics and former government and military officials discussing UFOs and extraterrestrials.

Other such groups include Citizens Against UFO Secrecy, founded in 1977.

The name of the German website Disclose.tv, which was initially a conspiracy forum focused on UFOs, ghosts and paranormal phenomena, references the concept.

Allegations of evidence suppression
Allegations of suppression of UFO related evidence have persisted for many decades. Some conspiracy theories also claim that some governments might have removed and/or destroyed/suppressed physical evidence; some examples follow.

On July 7, 1947, William Rhodes photographed an unusual object over Phoenix, Arizona. The photos appeared in a Phoenix newspaper and a few other papers. An Army Air Force intelligence officer and an FBI agent interviewed Rhodes on August 29 and convinced him to surrender the negatives, which he did the next day. He was informed he would not get them back, but later he tried, unsuccessfully, to retrieve them. The photos were analyzed and subsequently appeared in some classified Air Force UFO intelligence reports. (Randle, 34–45, full account)

A June 27, 1950, movie of a "flying disk" over Louisville, Kentucky, taken by a Louisville Courier-Journal photographer, had the USAF Directors of counterintelligence (AFOSI) and intelligence discussing in memos how to best obtain the movie and interview the photographer without revealing Air Force interest. One memo suggested the FBI be used, then precluded the FBI getting involved. Another memo said "it would be nice if OSI could arrange to secure a copy of the film in some covert manner," but if that was not feasible, one of the Air Force scientists might have to negotiate directly with the newspaper. In a recent interview, the photographer confirmed meeting with military intelligence and still having the film in his possession until then, but refused to say what happened to the film after that.

In another 1950 movie incident from Montana, Nicholas Mariana filmed some unusual aerial objects and eventually turned the film over to the U.S. Air Force, but insisted that the first part of the film, clearly showing the objects as spinning discs, had been removed when it was returned to him.

On January 22, 1958, when NICAP director Donald Keyhoe appeared on CBS television, his statements on UFOs were censored by the Air Force. During the show when Keyhoe tried to depart from the censored script to "reveal something that has never been disclosed before," CBS cut the sound, later stating Keyhoe was about to violate "predetermined security standards" and about to say something he was not "authorized to release." Conspiracy theorists claim that what Keyhoe was about to reveal were four publicly unknown military studies concluding UFOs were interplanetary (including the 1948 Project Sign Estimate of the Situation and Blue Book's 1952 engineering analysis of UFO motion). (Good, 286–287; Dolan 293–295)

A March 1, 1967 memo directed to all USAF divisions, from USAF Lt. General Hewitt Wheless, Assistant Vice Chief of Staff, stated that unverified information indicated that unknown individuals, impersonating USAF officers and other military personnel, had been harassing civilian UFO witnesses, warning them not to talk, and also confiscating film, referring specifically to the Heflin incident. AFOSI was to be notified if any personnel were to become aware of any other incidents. (Document in Fawcett & Greenwood, 236.)

According to one theory related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the CIA killed Kennedy in order to prevent him from leaking information to the Soviet Union about a covert program to reverse-engineer alien technology (i.e., Majestic 12).

Nick Cook, an aviation investigative journalist for Jane's Information Group and researcher of Billion Dollar Secret and author of The Hunt for Zero Point claims to have uncovered documentary evidence that top-secret US Defense Industry technology has been developed by government-backed Defense Industry programs, beginning in the 1940s using research conducted by Nazi scientists during WWII and recovered by Allied Military Intelligence, then taken to the U.S. and developed further with the collaboration of the same former German scientists at top-secret facilities established at White Sands, New Mexico, and later at Area 51, allegedly resulting in production of real-world prototype operational supersonic craft actually tested and used in clandestine military exercises, with other developments incorporated later into spy aircraft tasked with overflying hostile countries: the UFO story that evidence of alien technology is being suppressed and removed or destroyed was generated and then promoted by the CIA, beginning 1947, as false-lead disinformation to cover it all up for the sake of National Security, particularly during the Cold War, at a time when (his investigations found) the Soviet Union too was developing its own top-secret high-tech UFO craft. Cook's conclusions, alleging suppression of evidence of advanced human technology instead of alien, together with what he presents as declassified top-secret documents and blueprints, and his interviews of various experts (some of doubtful reliability), was developed and broadcast as a feature documentary on British television in 2005 as "UFOs: The Secret Evidence" and in the US in 2006 as a two-part episode on the History Channel's UFO Files, retitled "An Alien History of Planet Earth", with an added introduction by actor William Shatner. The History Channel program teaser promised "...a look at rumors of classified military aircraft incorporating alien technology into their designs."

In 2013, Sen. Mike Gravel claimed that the government was suppressing evidence of extraterrestrials.

Benjamin Radford has pointed out how unlikely such suppression of evidence is given that "[t]he UFO coverup conspiracy would have to span decades, cross international borders, and transcend political administrations" and that "all of the world's governments, in perpetuity, regardless of which political party is in power and even among enemies, [would] have colluded to continue the coverup."

In popular fiction
Works of popular fiction have included premises and scenes in which a government intentionally prevents disclosure to its populace of the discovery of non-human, extraterrestrial intelligence. Motion picture examples include 2001: A Space Odyssey (as well as the earlier novel by Arthur C. Clarke), Easy Rider, the Steven Spielberg films Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Hangar 18, Total Recall, Men in Black, and Independence Day. Television series and films including The X-Files, Dark Skies, and Stargate have also featured efforts by governments to conceal information about extraterrestrial beings. The plot of the Sidney Sheldon novel The Doomsday Conspiracy involves a UFO conspiracy.

In March 2001, former astronaut and United States Senator John Glenn appeared on an episode of the TV series Frasier playing a fictional version of himself who confesses to a UFO coverup.

Notes and references

 * Footnotes

 * Citations

 * Bibliography

title: UFO conspiracy theories


text:
A Flock of Seagulls

A Flock of Seagulls are an English new wave band formed in Liverpool in 1979. The group, whose best-known line-up comprised Mike Score, Ali Score, Frank Maudsley and Paul Reynolds, hit the peak of their chart success in the early 1980s.

The group had a string of international hit singles including "I Ran (So Far Away)" (1982), "Space Age Love Song" (1982), "Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You)" (1982), and "The More You Live, the More You Love" (1984). Their video for "I Ran (So Far Away)" received airplay on MTV during the Second British Invasion. The band won a Grammy Award in 1983 for their instrumental "D.N.A." (1982).

In 2018, the members of the original lineup assembled to record the album Ascension with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2021, the original lineup again reunited temporarily to record another album with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, String Theory.

1979–1982: Formation and debut album
The band A Flock of Seagulls was formed in Liverpool, England, in 1979 by Mike Score, Frank Maudsley and Ali Score. Mike was a hairdresser when he bought a second-hand Korg MS-10 synthesizer and invited his friends to form the band. Frank played bass and Ali drums, even without prior experience. After testing six guitarists, Willie Woo joined the band and brought in Mark Edmondson to replace Ali on drums. Later, the Score brothers had a falling out, and Mark Edmondson left. Ali returned to the band and shortly afterwards Woo left, being replaced by Paul Reynolds, a 17-year-old friend of Mark Edmondson. Initially, the band did not have a vocalist. Mike, who was the composer of the songs, sang just to show how he thought the song should sound. However, Frank suggested that he be the band's official lead singer. Mike was reluctant at first, but ended up accepting the suggestion.

The band began playing local clubs and eventually got a record deal with Jive Records. In 1981, they released their first single, "It's Not Me Talking", which was produced by Bill Nelson. The single was a moderate success in the United Kingdom. In 1982, the band released their second single, "Telecommunication", which was also produced by Bill Nelson. The single was an even bigger success than the first and became a club hit. The band's third release was the EP Modern Love is Automatic. Released in the US, it included the single "Telecommunication" as well as "I Ran (So Far Away)" — which became the band's biggest hit and was in heavy rotation on the new cable channel, MTV. The video for "I Ran" was low budget (even for the time), but it provided enormous exposure for the band, and it is well-remembered in part because MTV played it frequently.

The band's debut album, A Flock of Seagulls, was released in 1982. The album was a commercial and critical success, reaching number 1 in Australia and the Top 10 in the US, UK, Europe, Japan, and New Zealand. The album was praised for its new wave songs, which were influenced by styles such as synthpop, post-punk and new romantic. The band was also praised for their image, which was characterized by slicked-back hair and colorful clothing. The album was influential in pop music in the 1980s. The band was one of the pioneers of synth-pop and helped popularize the style.

1983: Listen and the peak of popularity
In late 1982, A Flock of Seagulls finally achieved commercial success in their home country with the single "Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You)", which reached the top 10. The song was inspired by a short romance that vocalist Mike Score had with a girl on tour in the United States. The girl had a Polaroid camera, and Score asked her to take a picture with it. She said if he had the photo, he would leave and the romance would be forgotten. They broke up soon after, and Score wrote the song about how he wished he had a photo of her to remember her by.

The follow-up album, Listen, was released in 1983 and also received positive reviews. AllMusic critic Tom Demalon praises the single "Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You)" as "multilayered and hypnotic" and also has written favorably about the songs "Nightmares" and "Transfer Affection".

The band continued to enjoy commercial and critical success in 1983. They performed at the US Festival (in San Bernardino, California) in May and at Holleder Memorial Stadium (in Rochester, New York) in July. They also began touring with the band The Police.

Three more singles were released for Listen in 1983, but they were only moderately successful. The band began to lose popularity in the late 1980s, but they continue to perform and record.

1984: The Story of a Young Heart and Reynolds' departure
Following the commercial success of their debut album, A Flock of Seagulls decided to change direction on their third album, The Story of a Young Heart. The band ventured into a new style, wanting to make a concept album based on themes such as suicide and heartbreak. The album was produced by Steve Lovell and featured more accentuated guitars and a more polished sound. The song's lyrics were written by Mike Score, who had lost a close friend to suicide. The song "Remember David" was written in honour of his deceased friend.

Despite the band's efforts, The Story of a Young Heart was not as commercially successful as their debut album. The singles "The More You Live, The More You Love" and "Never Again (The Dancer)" reached the top 40 on the US and UK charts, but "Remember David" was not as popular and had moderate success.

During the album's tour, the band's guitarist Paul Reynolds became involved with drug abuse. His drug problems worsened, resulting in his exit from the band mid-tour. The tour ended early. The band was without a guitarist. Reynolds' departure was a blow to A Flock of Seagulls. The band never again managed to achieve the same success as their early years.

1985–1986: New lineup, Dream Come True and hiatus
After Paul Reynolds' departure, A Flock of Seagulls underwent a revamp. Gary Steadman, former Classix Nouveaux guitarist, was hired to replace Reynolds. Chris Chryssaphis, keyboardist, also joined the band. With the new lineup, the band recorded their fourth album, Dream Come True. The album was released in 1985 in the UK and in 1986 in the US.

Dream Come True was a commercial failure. Reviews were negative, with some critics calling the songs "lifeless" and "ineffective". The band dissolved in 1986 after the album's failure.

1988–1998: Various formations and The Light at the End of the World
In 1988, Mike Score formed a new band with local Philadelphia musicians. This lineup released the single "Magic" in 1989.

In 1994, Score formed a new band with Ed Berner, A.J. Mazzetti and Dean Pichette. This lineup recorded the album The Light at the End of the World, released only in the US in 1995. The album was a commercial and critical failure. Critics called it "tedious" and "embarrassing", while fans claimed it was "misinterpreted". Score said the album was an unsuccessful attempt to bring the band into the grunge era, which dominated popular music at the time.

1998–2018: Touring and Ascension years
In 1998, Mike Score formed a new band with Joe Rodriguez, Darryl Sons and Rob Wright. The band re-recorded Madonna's song "This Used to Be My Playground" in 1999 for Madonna's 2000 tribute album, The World's Greatest 80s Tribute.

In November 2003, the band's original lineup reunited for a one-off performance on the VH1 series Bands Reunited. In September 2004, they reformed again and went on a brief tour of the United States.

In 2013, Mike Score launched a solo career. He released the singles "All I Wanna Do" and "Somebody Like You."

In 2016, Kevin Rankin replaced Michael Brahm on drums. In December 2017, Gordon Deppe (from the Canadian band Spoons replaced Joe Rodriguez.

In 2018, the band's four original members reunited to record a new album, Ascension. The album was released in July 2018 and received positive reviews. Since the album's release, Mike Score expressed a desire to reunite the original lineup for a tour.

2019—: Inflight and String Theory
In 2019, the original members of A Flock of Seagulls reunited to record a new album, Inflight (The Extended Essentials). The album was released on July 12, 2019 and featured extended versions of some of the band's biggest hits, such as "I Ran (So Far Away)", "Space Age Love Song" and "Wishing (If I Had a Photograph of You)".

In the same year, Mike Score revealed in an interview with Classic pop magazine that he was working on a new solo album, Space Boy. However, the album has yet to be released.

In 2021, the band announced that they would release a new orchestral album, String Theory. Scheduled for release on August 20, 2021, the album features orchestral versions of some of the band's hits, such as "Messages", "Remember David" and "Say You Love Me". The album's first single, "Say You Love Me", was released on July 23, 2021. The single was released in seven different versions and featured a music video released on YouTube.

Legacy
Owing to their memorable and unusual style and appearance, A Flock of Seagulls are sometimes referred to with ironic appreciation. The New Musical Express wrote: "Of course, everyone remembers this group now for singer Mike Score's ridiculous back-combed haircut and the fact that they are mentioned in Pulp Fiction. So now they're kind of cool, but in the early 1980s it was a different story."

The band was featured on Viacom's VH1 and Sony's BMG Legacy Recordings' 2006 revival CD series and multi-platform marketing campaign, "We Are the 80's". In a 2007 article for The Guardian, Alfred Hickling described the group as "dreadful", and unfavourably compared them to new wave peers OMD and other Liverpool acts of the time.

The band is also noted for creating their debut album, a successful concept album which alludes to an alien invasion of earth. Billboard writer Robert Christgau applauded their "mechanical lyrics, about a mechanical end of the world," while noting the "aural pleasure" of both the band's debut album and the follow-up.

Cryptic Rock writer Alfie Mella praised the band as the "poster band of new wave music" due to the flamboyant hairstyle of its members, particularly the so-described "waterfall bangs" of its frontman. He also noted the band's "flanger and reverb-heavy, angular guitar strums; melodic keyboard lines and synth washes; dancey drumbeats; groove-driven bass lines; and icy, low-register vocal styling" as defining the genre.

Personnel
Current members
 * Mike Score – vocals, guitars, keyboards (1979–1986, 1988–present)
 * Pando – bass (2004–present)
 * Kevin Rankin – drums (2016–present)
 * Gord Deppe – guitars (2017–present)

Former members
 * Frank Maudsley – bass (1979–1986, 2003, 2004, 2018, 2021)
 * Ali Score – drums (1979–1986, 2003, 2004, 2018, 2021)
 * Paul Reynolds – guitars (1980–1984, 2003, 2004, 2018, 2021)
 * Willie Woo – guitars (1980)
 * Mark Edmondson – drums (1980)
 * Chris Mars Chryssaphes – keyboards (1984–1985)
 * Gary Steadman – guitars (1984–1985)
 * Ed Berner – guitars (1988–1998)
 * Dave Maerz – guitars (1988–1989)
 * Kaya Pryor – drums, percussion (1988–1994)
 * Mike Radcliffe – bass (1988–1994)
 * Mike Railton – keyboards (1988–1994)
 * Jonte Wilkins – drums (1988–1989)
 * Mike Marquart – drums (1989)
 * Shavin Duffy – bass (1990)
 * A.J. Mazzetti – drums (1994–1998)
 * Dean Pichette – bass (1994–1998)
 * Joe Rodriguez – guitars (1998–2017)
 * Lucio Rubino – bass (1998–2002)
 * John Walker – drums (1995–1998)
 * Darryl Sons – drums (1998–2004)
 * Rob Wright – bass (1998–2004)
 * Robbie Hanson – bass (1999–2006)
 * Albert Cruz – drums (2001–2006)
 * Michael Brahm – drums (2004–2016)

Discography

 * A Flock of Seagulls (1982)
 * Listen (1983)
 * The Story of a Young Heart (1984)
 * Dream Come True (1986)
 * The Light at the End of the World (1995)
 * Ascension (2018)
 * String Theory (2021)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: A Flock of Seagulls


text:
Potter

A potter is someone who makes pottery.

Potter may also refer to:

Places
U.S
 * Potter, originally a section on the Alaska Railroad, currently a neighborhood of Anchorage, Alaska, US
 * Potter, Arkansas
 * Potter, Nebraska
 * Potters, New Jersey
 * Potter, New York
 * Potter, Wisconsin
 * Potter County, Pennsylvania
 * Potter County, South Dakota
 * Potter County, Texas
 * Potter Lake, Wisconsin
 * Potter Township (disambiguation)
 * Potter Valley, California
 * Potter Valley AVA, California wine region in Mendocino County
 * Potter Cemetery, Michigan

Elsewhere

 * 7320 Potter, an asteroid
 * Potter Island, Nunavut, Canada
 * Potter Peninsula, South Shetland Islands

People and fictional characters

 * Potter (name), a given name and a surname, including a list of people and fictional characters with the name

Arts, entertainment, and media

 * Potter (TV series), a TV sitcom starring Arthur Lowe
 * Harry and the Potters, an American rock band
 * Harry Potter, worldwide bestselling book and film series
 * Miss Potter
 * The Potters (artists group), a women's artistic and literary group in St. Louis, Missouri
 * The Potters (film), a lost 1927 silent film

Sports

 * Stoke City F.C or The Potters, an English football club
 * Stoke Potters, an English speedway team
 * The Potters, the sports teams of East Liverpool High School, Ohio

Vessels

 * T. J. Potter, a steamboat
 * USS Stephen Potter (DD-538), a naval destroyer

Other uses

 * "Potter", the codename of Motorola's Moto G5 Plus smartphone
 * Potter Box, a model for making ethical decisions
 * Potter's field, a place for the burial of unknown people
 * Potter Instrument, a defunct American computer company
 * Potter sequence, a birth defect

title: Potter


text:
Majestic 12

Majestic 12, also known as Majic-12, and MJ-12 for short, is a purported organization that appears in UFO conspiracy theories. The organization is claimed to be the code name of an alleged secret committee of scientists, military leaders, and government officials, formed in 1947 by an executive order by U.S. President Harry S. Truman to facilitate recovery and investigation of alien spacecraft. The concept originated in a series of supposedly leaked secret government documents first circulated by ufologists in 1984. Upon examination, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) declared the documents to be "completely bogus", and many ufologists consider them to be an elaborate hoax. Majestic 12 remains popular among some UFO conspiracy theorists and the concept has appeared in popular culture including television, film and literature.

History
On May 31, 1987, it was widely reported that British ufologist Timothy Good claimed to be in possession of 1950s-era UFO documents. The documents purported to reveal a secret committee of 12, supposedly formed in 1947 by an executive order by U.S. President Harry S. Truman, and explain how the crash of an alien spacecraft at Roswell in July 1947 had been concealed, how the recovered alien technology could be exploited, and how the U.S. should engage with extraterrestrial life in the future. According to researchers, ufologist Jaime Shandera had, in 1984, received an envelope containing film which, when developed, showed images of eight pages of documents that appeared to be briefing papers describing "Operation Majestic 12".

The concept of "Majestic 12" emerged during a period in the 1980s when ufologists believed there had been a cover-up of the Roswell UFO incident and speculated some secretive upper tier of the U.S. government was responsible. Shandera and his ufologist colleagues Stanton T. Friedman and Bill Moore say they later received a series of anonymous messages that led them to find what has been called the "Cutler/Twining memo" in 1985 while searching declassified files in the National Archives. Purporting to be written by President Eisenhower's assistant Robert Cutler to General Nathan F. Twining and containing a reference to Majestic 12, the memo is widely held to be a forgery, likely planted as part of a hoax. Historian Robert Goldberg wrote that the ufologists came to believe the story despite the documents being "obviously planted to bolster the legitimacy of the briefing papers".

Claiming to be connected to the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations, a man named Richard Doty told filmmaker Linda Moulton Howe that the MJ-12 story was true, and showed Howe unspecified documents purporting to prove the existence of small, gray humanoid aliens originating from the Zeta Reticuli star system. Doty reportedly promised to supply Howe with film footage of UFOs and an interview with an alien being, although no footage ever materialized.

Soon, distrust and suspicion led to disagreements within the ufology community over the authenticity of the MJ-12 documents, and Moore was accused of taking part in an elaborate hoax, while other ufologists and debunkers such as Philip J. Klass were accused of being "disinformation agents".

Analysis
Klass's investigation of the MJ-12 documents found that Robert Cutler was actually out of the country on the date he supposedly wrote the "Cutler/Twining memo", and that the Truman signature was "a pasted-on photocopy of a genuine signature—including accidental scratch marks—from a memo that Truman wrote to Vannevar Bush on October 1, 1947". Klass dismissed theories that the documents were part of a disinformation campaign as "ridiculous", saying they contained numerous flaws that could never fool Soviet or Chinese intelligence. Other discrepancies noted by Klass included the use of a distinctive date format that matched one used in Moore's personal letters, and a conversation reported by Brad Sparks in which Moore confided that he was contemplating creating and releasing some hoax Top Secret documents in hopes that such bogus documents would encourage former military and intelligence officials who knew about the government's (alleged) UFO coverup to break their oaths of secrecy.

The FBI began its own investigation of the supposed "secret" documents and quickly formed doubts as to their authenticity. The United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations stated that no such committee had ever been authorized or formed, and that the documents were "bogus". The FBI subsequently declared the MJ-12 documents to be "completely bogus".

Later in 1996, a document called the MJ-12 "Special Operations Manual" circulated among ufologists. It is also widely considered to be a fake and "a continuation of the MJ-12 myth".

Ufologists Linda Moulton Howe and Stanton T. Friedman believed the MJ-12 documents to be authentic. Friedman examined the documents and argued that the United States government has conspired to cover up knowledge of a crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft.

According to journalist Howard Blum the name "Majestic 12" had been prefigured in the UFO community when Bill Moore asked National Enquirer reporter Bob Pratt in 1982 to collaborate on a novel called MAJIK-12. Because of this, Blum writes, Pratt had always been inclined to think the Majestic 12 documents are a hoax.

Scientific skeptic author Brian Dunning investigated the history of the subject, and reported his findings in the 2016 Skeptoid podcast episode "The Secret History of Majestic 12". He cited ufologist Bill Moore's suspicion that, rather than a hoax perpetrated by the UFO community, the papers were actually part of a disinformation campaign of the US government meant to deflect attention from secret Air Force projects.

Alleged members
The following individuals were described in the Majestic 12 documents as "designated members" of Majestic 12.

 * Lloyd Berkner
 * Detlev Bronk
 * Vannevar Bush
 * James Forrestal
 * Gordon Gray
 * Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter
 * Jerome Clarke Hunsaker
 * Donald H. Menzel
 * Robert M. Montague
 * Sidney Souers
 * Nathan F. Twining
 * Hoyt Vandenberg

title: Majestic 12


text:
Lionel Richie

Lionel Brockman Richie Jr. (born June 20, 1949) is an American singer, songwriter, record producer, and television personality. He rose to fame in the 1970s as a songwriter and the co-lead singer of the Motown group Commodores; writing and recording the hit singles "Easy", "Sail On", "Three Times a Lady" and "Still" with the group before his departure. In 1980, he wrote and produced the US Billboard Hot 100 number one single "Lady" for Kenny Rogers.

In 1981, Richie wrote and produced the single "Endless Love", which he recorded as a duet with Diana Ross; it remains among the top 20 bestselling singles of all time, and the biggest career hit for both artists. In 1982, he officially launched his solo career with the album Lionel Richie, which sold over four million copies and spawned the singles "You Are", "My Love", and the number one single "Truly".

Richie's second album, Can't Slow Down (1983), reached number one on the US Billboard 200 chart and sold over 20 million copies worldwide, becoming one of the best-selling albums of all time; and spawned the number one singles "All Night Long (All Night)" and "Hello". He then co-wrote the 1985 charity single "We Are the World" with Michael Jackson, which sold over 20 million copies. His third album, Dancing on the Ceiling (1986), spawned the number one single "Say You, Say Me" (from the 1985 film White Nights) and the No. 2 hit title track. From 1986 to 1996, Richie took a break from recording; he has since then released seven studio albums. He has joined the singing competition American Idol to serve as a judge, starting from its sixteenth season (2018 to present).

During his solo career, Richie became one of the most successful balladeers of the 1980s, and has sold over 100 million records worldwide, making him one of the world's best-selling artists of all time. He has won four Grammy Awards, including Song of the Year for "We Are the World", and Album of the Year for Can't Slow Down. "Endless Love" was nominated for an Academy Award; while "Say You, Say Me" won both the Academy Award and the Golden Globe award for Best Original Song. In 2016, Richie received the Songwriters Hall of Fame's highest honor, the Johnny Mercer Award. In 2022, he received the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song by the Library of Congress; as well as the American Music Awards Icon Award. He was also inducted into Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022.

Early life
Richie was born on June 20, 1949, in Tuskegee, Alabama, the son of Lionel Brockman Richie (1915–1990), a U.S. Army systems analyst, and Alberta R. Foster (1917–2001), a teacher and school principal. His grandmother Adelaide Mary Brown was a pianist who played classical music. On March 4, 2011, he appeared on NBC's Who Do You Think You Are?, which found out that his maternal great-grandfather was most likely the biological son of federal judge and slaveowner Morgan Welles Brown. He was also the national leader of an early Black American fraternal organization. Notably, J. Louis Brown was: "[P]rincipal organizer and Supreme Grand Archon of the Knights of Wise Men, a fraternal organization for black men in the post-Civil War period. Formed in Nashville in 1879, it was a fraternal insurance and burial benefit society, as were so many others during the period."

Richie grew up on the campus of Tuskegee Institute. Their family home was given to his grandparents as a gift from Booker T. Washington. He graduated from Joliet Township High School, East Campus in Joliet, Illinois. A star tennis player in Joliet, he accepted a tennis scholarship to attend Tuskegee Institute, where he was a member of the marching band, the Marching Crimson Pipers, and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in economics with a minor in accounting.

Richie considered studying divinity to become a priest in the Episcopal Church, in which he had been baptised, but ultimately decided he was not "priest material" and decided to continue his musical career despite not knowing how to read or write music. He is a member of Kappa Kappa Psi, a national honor fraternity for band members, and an active life member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.

Commodores
As a student in Tuskegee, Richie formed a succession of R&B groups in the mid-1960s. In 1968, he became a singer and saxophonist with the Commodores. They signed a recording contract with Atlantic Records in 1968 for one record before moving on to Motown Records initially as a support act to The Jackson 5. The Commodores then became established as a popular soul group. Their first several albums had a danceable, funky sound, as in such tracks as "Machine Gun" and "Brick House". Over time, Richie wrote and sang more romantic, easy-listening ballads such as "Easy", "Three Times a Lady", "Still", and the breakup ballad "Sail On".

In 1974, Richie achieved his first commercial success as a songwriter with "Happy People", which he co-wrote with Jeffrey Bowen and Donald Baldwin. Originally intended as a Commodores track, it was recorded by The Temptations, who had their No. 1 R&B with the song. By the late 1970s, Richie had begun to accept songwriting commissions from other artists. He wrote "Lady" with Kenny Rogers, which hit No. 1 in 1980, and produced Rogers' album Share Your Love the following year. Richie and Rogers maintained a strong friendship in later years. Latin jazz composer and salsa romantica pioneer La Palabra enjoyed international success with his cover of "Lady", which was played at Latin dance clubs. Also in 1981, Richie sang the title theme song for the film Endless Love, a duet with Diana Ross. Issued as a single, the song topped the Canada, Brazil, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and US pop music charts, and became one of Motown's biggest hits.

Solo career
Richie's 1982 debut solo album, Lionel Richie, contained three hit singles: the U.S. number-one song "Truly", which continued the style of his ballads with the Commodores and launched his career as one of the most successful balladeers of the 1980s, and the top five hits "You Are" and "My Love". The album hit No. 3 on the music charts and sold over 4 million copies.

His 1983 follow-up album, Can't Slow Down, sold over twice as many copies and won two Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year, propelling him into the first rank of international superstars. The album contained the number-one hit "All Night Long", a Caribbean-flavored dance number that was promoted by a colorful music video produced by former Monkee Michael Nesmith. In 1984, he performed "All Night Long" at the ending ceremony of the XXIII Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

Several more Top 10 hits followed, the most successful of which was the ballad "Hello" (1984), a sentimental love song that showed how far he had moved from his R&B roots. Richie had three more top ten hits in 1984, "Stuck on You" (No. 3), "Running with the Night" (No. 7) and "Penny Lover" (No. 8), as well as writing and producing "Missing You" for former labelmate and duet partner Diana Ross (No. 10 Pop, No. 1 R&B). In 1985, he wrote and performed "Say You, Say Me" for the film White Nights. The song won an Academy Award and reached No. 1 on the U.S. charts, staying there for four weeks, making it the number-two song of 1986 according to Billboard's Year-End Hot 100 chart, behind the charity single "That's What Friends Are For" by Dionne and Friends. He also collaborated with Michael Jackson on the charity single "We Are the World" by USA for Africa, another number-one hit.

In 1986, Richie released Dancing on the Ceiling, his last widely popular album, which produced a run of five US and UK hits, "Say You, Say Me" (U.S. No. 1), "Dancing on the Ceiling" (U.S. No. 2), "Love Will Conquer All" (U.S. No. 9), "Ballerina Girl" (U.S. No. 7), and "Se La" (U.S. No. 20). He made his return to recording and performing following the release of his first greatest-hits collection, Back to Front, in 1992.

Since then, his ever-more-relaxed schedule has kept his recording and live work to a minimum. He broke the silence in 1996 with Louder Than Words, on which he resisted any change of style or the musical fashion-hopping of the past decade, sticking instead with his chosen path of well-crafted soul music, which in the intervening years has become known as contemporary R&B.

Richie's albums in the late 1990s such as Louder Than Words and Time failed to match the commercial success of his earlier work. Some of his recent albums, such as Renaissance and Just for You, have returned to his older style and achieved success in Europe but only modest notice in the United States.

Later career
Richie was the headliner at a 2006 Fourth of July tribute concert with Fantasia Barrino at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. On May 7, 2006, Richie performed on the main stage (Acura Stage) at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, replacing Antoine "Fats" Domino, who had fallen ill. Richie released his eighth studio album titled "Coming Home" on September 12, 2006. The first single of the album was "I Call It Love" and was premiered in July 2006, becoming his biggest hit in the U.S. in ten years. The album was a success for Richie in the United States, peaking at No. 6.

On May 2, 2008, Richie was the 21st recipient of the George and Ira Gershwin Lifetime Achievement Award at UCLA's annual Spring Sing. In accepting the award, Richie said: "Forget about surviving 30 some odd years in the music business, Lionel Richie survived 27 years of Nicole Richie."

In May 2009, Richie announced that he would like to get The Commodores back together soon. An album, Just Go, was released in 2009. On July 7, 2009, Richie performed "Jesus is Love" at Michael Jackson's memorial service.

Richie returned to Australia in 2011 where he and guest artist Guy Sebastian toured the country and New Zealand with concert dates throughout March and April. Richie and Guy Sebastian recorded Richie's 1983 number-one single "All Night Long" together to raise money for Australian floods and New Zealand earthquake relief.

On March 26, 2012, Richie released his tenth studio album, Tuskegee, which featured 13 of his hit songs performed as duets with country stars. The album returned him to the top of the Billboard 200 chart, his first number one album there since Dancing on the Ceiling, and achieved platinum status within six weeks of release.

On June 28, 2015, Richie played to an audience of between 100,000 and 120,000 people at the Glastonbury Festival, England. His show was described as "triumphant" by the BBC and was followed by his return to the top of the UK albums chart with a reissued compilation album of his work as both a solo artist and with the Commodores. In September 2017, ABC announced that Richie would be a judge for the revival of American Idol. Richie has been a judge on the reboot for seven seasons, including 2024.

In May 2017, Richie was honored at Berklee College of Music during its 2017 commencement concert when graduating students performed a medley of his discography. Richie was also awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music. On December 3, 2017, Richie received the Kennedy Center Honors. In October 2017, it was reported that Richie had secured the rights to produce a Curtis Mayfield biopic.

On March 25, 2019, Richie announced a 33-date tour across North America for the summer. His 'Hello Tour' started in May at Arlington's KAABOO Festival and ran through August.

In May 2023, Richie was invited to be a headline act at Windsor Castle for the Coronation Concert, in celebration of the Coronation of Charles III and Camilla. Richie is the First Global Ambassador and First Chairman of the Global Ambassador Group for the Prince's Trust.

Popularity in the Arab world
Richie is a popular musician in various Arab states, and has performed in Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Libya. John Berman for ABC News reported in 2006 that "Grown Iraqi men get misty-eyed by the mere mention of his name. 'I love Lionel Richie,' they say. They can sing an entire Lionel Richie song." Berman wrote that Richie said he was told that Iraqi civilians were playing "All Night Long" the night U.S. tanks invaded Baghdad. Richie was against the war and has said he would like to perform in Baghdad someday.

Personal life
On October 18, 1975, Richie married his college sweetheart, Brenda Harvey. In 1983, the couple informally adopted Nicole Camille Escovedo (now Nicole Richie), the two-year-old daughter of a member of Richie's band, who is also the niece of drummer Sheila E. The Richies raised Nicole as their daughter and adopted her legally when she was nine years old.

In June 1988, Harvey was arrested and charged with corporal injury to a spouse, resisting arrest, trespassing, vandalism, battery, and disturbing the peace after she found Richie at Diane Alexander's Beverly Hills apartment. Richie and Harvey divorced on August 9, 1993, after nearly 18 years of marriage. Richie married Diane Alexander on December 21, 1995. They have a son, Miles Brockman Richie (born May 27, 1994), and a daughter, Sofia Richie (born August 24, 1998). The marriage ended in 2004.

Richie suffered prolonged throat problems and had surgery four times in four years before being told by conventional doctors that he could lose his singing career. He then turned to a holistic doctor who said the problem was simply acid reflux caused by foods Richie was eating before going to bed.

Richie became a grandfather in 2008 when Nicole Richie gave birth to a baby girl with Joel Madden, lead singer of the rock band Good Charlotte. Richie's second grandchild was born to the couple in 2009.

Richie is a Freemason.

Richie helped to raise over $3.1 million for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Richie told the crowd that his grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer in her 80s, but that she survived and lived until she was 103 years old. He stated that she was his enduring symbol of hope and his reason for becoming a breast cancer activist.

Awards and honors
Richie has won four Grammy Awards including Song of the Year in 1985 for "We Are the World" which he co-wrote with Michael Jackson, Album of the Year in 1984 for Can't Slow Down, Producer of the Year (Non-Classical) in 1984, and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for Truly in 1982.

Richie was the first person to receive an RIAA diamond album award.

Richie has been nominated for two Golden Globe awards and won one. In 1982, he was nominated for Best Original Song for the film Endless Love. In 1986, he was nominated and won the award for Best Original Song for the song "Say You, Say Me", featured in the film White Nights. This song also won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

Headlining

 * Running With the Night Tour (1984)
 * The Outrageous Tour (1986–1987)
 * In Concert (1998–2001)
 * The One World Tour (2004)
 * Coming Home Tour (2007)
 * Just Go Tour (2009)
 * Tuskegee Tour (2012)
 * All the Hits, All Night Long (2013–2016)
 * All the Hits Tour (with Mariah Carey) (2017)
 * Hello! Hits Tour (2019)
 * Sing a Song All Night Long Tour (with Earth, Wind & Fire) (2023–2024)

Solo albums

 * Lionel Richie (1982)
 * Can't Slow Down (1983)
 * Dancing on the Ceiling (1986)
 * Louder Than Words (1996)
 * Time (1998)
 * Renaissance (2000)
 * Just for You (2004)
 * Coming Home (2006)
 * Just Go (2009)
 * Tuskegee (2012)

With Commodores

 * Machine Gun (1974)
 * Caught in the Act (1975)
 * Movin' On (1975)
 * Hot on the Tracks (1976)
 * Commodores (1977)
 * Natural High (1978)
 * Midnight Magic (1979)
 * Heroes (1980)
 * In the Pocket (1981)

title: Lionel Richie


text:
America's Cup

The America's Cup is a sailing competition and the oldest international competition still operating in any sport. America's Cup match races are held between two sailing yachts: one from the yacht club that currently holds the trophy (known as the defender) and the other from the yacht club that is challenging for the cup (the challenger). The winner is awarded the America's Cup trophy, informally known as the Auld Mug. Matches are held several years apart on dates agreed between the defender and the challenger. There is no fixed schedule, but the races have generally been held every three to four years. The most recent America's Cup match took place in March 2021.

Any yacht club that meets the requirements specified in the Deed of Gift of the America's Cup has the right to challenge the yacht club that currently holds the cup. If the challenging club wins the match, it gains stewardship of the cup. From the first defence of the cup in 1870 until the twentieth defence in 1967, there was always only one challenger. In 1970 multiple challengers applied, so a Challenger Selection Series was held to decide which applicant would become the official challenger and compete in the America's Cup match. This approach has been used for each subsequent competition.

The history and prestige associated with the America's Cup attracts the world's top sailors, yacht designers, wealthy entrepreneurs and sponsors. It is a test of sailing skill, boat and sail design, and fundraising and management skills. Competing for the cup is expensive, with modern teams spending more than $US100 million each; the 2013 winner was estimated to have spent $US300 million on the competition. The America's Cup is currently held by the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, who successfully defended the 36th America's Cup in March 2021 using an AC75 foiling monohull called Te Rehutai, owned and sailed by the Team New Zealand syndicate.

The next America's Cup will be held between the defending Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron and a challenging yacht club from 12 October 2024 in Barcelona, Spain. Both the 37th and 38th America's Cup matches will be sailed in AC75 class yachts.

History
The America's Cup is the oldest competition in international sport, and the fourth oldest continuous sporting trophy of any kind. The cup itself was manufactured in 1848 and first called the "RYS £100 Cup". It was first raced for on 22 August 1851 around the Isle of Wight off Southampton and Portsmouth in Hampshire, England, in a fleet race between the New York Yacht Club's America and 15 yachts of the Royal Yacht Squadron. The race was witnessed by Queen Victoria and the future Edward VII and won by America. This is considered to be the first America's Cup race.

On 8 July 1857, the surviving members of the America syndicate donated the cup to the New York Yacht Club via the Deed of Gift of the America's Cup filed with the New York Supreme Court. The deed is the primary instrument that governs the rules to make a valid challenge for the America's Cup and the rules of conduct of the races. It states that the cup "is donated upon the condition that it shall be preserved as a perpetual challenge Cup for friendly competition between foreign countries", outlines how a foreign yacht club can make a challenge to the holder of the cup and what happens if they do not agree on how the match should be conducted. The deed makes it "distinctly understood that the cup is to be the property of the club [that has most recently won a match for the cup], subject to the provisions of this deed, and not the property of the owner or owners of any vessel winning a match".

The trophy was held by the NYYC from 1857 until 1983. The NYYC successfully defended the trophy 24 times in a row before being defeated by the Royal Perth Yacht Club, represented by the yacht Australia II. Including the original 1851 victory, the NYYC's 132-year reign was the longest (in terms of time) winning streak in any sport.

Early matches for the cup were raced between yachts 65 – on the waterline owned by wealthy sportsmen. This culminated with the J-Class regattas of the 1930s. After World War II and almost twenty years without a challenge, the NYYC made changes to the deed of gift to allow smaller, less expensive 12-metre class yachts to compete; this class was used from 1958 until 1987. It was replaced in 1990 by the International America's Cup Class, which was used until 2007.

After a long legal battle, the 2010 America's Cup was raced in 90 ft waterline multihull yachts in Valencia, Spain. The victorious Golden Gate Yacht Club then elected to race the 2013 America's Cup in AC72 foiling, wing-sail catamarans and successfully defended the cup. The 2017 America's Cup match was sailed in 50 ft foiling catamarans, after legal battles and disputes over the rule changes.

The America's Cup trophy
The Cup, also known as the Auld Mug, is an ornate sterling silver bottomless ewer crafted in 1848 by Garrard & Co. Henry William Paget, 1st Marquess of Anglesey bought one and donated it for the Royal Yacht Squadron's 1851 Annual Regatta around the Isle of Wight.

The cup was originally known as the 'R.Y.S. £100 Cup', awarded in 1851 by the British Royal Yacht Squadron for a race around the Isle of Wight in the United Kingdom. The winning yacht was a schooner called America, owned by a syndicate of members from the New York Yacht Club (NYYC). In 1857, the syndicate permanently donated the trophy to the NYYC, under a Deed of Gift that renamed the trophy as the 'America's Cup' after the first winner and required it be made available for perpetual international competition.

It was originally known as the "R.Y.S. £100 Cup", standing for a cup of a hundred GB Pounds or "sovereigns" in value. The cup was subsequently mistakenly engraved as the "100 Guinea Cup" by the America syndicate, but was also referred to as the "Queen's Cup" (a guinea is an old monetary unit of one pound and one shilling, now £1.05). Today, the trophy is officially known as the "America's Cup" after the 1851 winning yacht, and is affectionately called the "Auld Mug" by the sailing community. It is inscribed with names of the yachts that competed for it, and has been modified twice by adding matching bases to accommodate more names.

Rules for issuing challenge
All challenges for the America's Cup are made under the Deed of Gift of the America's Cup, which outlines who can challenge for the cup, and what information a challenge must provide to the defender. The deed then allows for most of the arrangements for the match to be made by negotiation and mutual consent, but provides a backstop in the event agreement is not reached. The first valid challenge that is made must be accepted by the defender or it must forfeit the cup to that valid challenger or negotiate other terms.

To be eligible, a challenging club must be "an organized yacht Club" of a country other than the defender, which is "incorporated, patented, or licensed by the legislature, admiralty or other executive department". The club must hold an "annual regatta [on] an ocean water course on the sea, or on an arm of the sea, or one which combines both". The New York Supreme Court and the New York Court of Appeals have held that this means the challenging club must in fact "have held at least one qualifying annual regatta before it submits its Notice of Challenge to a Defender and demonstrate that it will continue to have qualifying annual regattas on an ongoing basis" and not merely intend to hold its first annual regatta before the envisaged America's Cup match. The New York Supreme Court has also found that the Great Lakes between the United States and Canada are arms of the sea, allowing clubs with regattas on those lakes to be challengers.

The challenge document must give dates for the proposed races, which must be no less than 10 months from the date the challenge is made, and within date ranges specified for both the northern and southern hemispheres. The challenge document must also provide information on the yacht, including length on load water line; beam at load water line, and extreme beam; and draught of water. If the yacht has one mast, it must be between 44 and 90 ft on the load water line. If it has more than one mast, it must be between 80 and 115 ft on the load water line. These dimensions may not be exceeded by either challenger or defender. The yachts must be propelled by sails only and be constructed in the country to which the challenging and defending clubs belong. Centreboard or sliding keel vessels are allowed with no restrictions nor limitations, and neither the centre-board nor sliding keel is considered a part of the vessel for any purposes of measurement. As long as these rules are met, the New York Court of Appeals has ruled that defender may use a boat of a different category to the challenger, such as meeting a challenge in a monohull with a catamaran.

Under the deed, the defender and challenger "may by mutual consent make any arrangement satisfactory to both as to the dates, courses, number of trials, rules and sailing regulations, and any and all other conditions of the match, in which case also the ten months' notice may be waived". Since 1958, the practice has usually been for the defender and challenger to agree that the challenger shall be a Challenger of Record, which then arranges a Challenger Series involving a number of other yacht clubs from countries other than that of the defender. The yacht that wins the Challenger Series wins the Herbert Pell Cup and also an associated sponsored cup such as the Prada Cup in 2021 or the Louis Vuitton Cup from 1983 to 2017, and again in 2024.

However, if the challenger and defender cannot agree, the deed provides a backstop, requiring a first-to-two match on ocean courses defined in the deed, at a venue selected by the defender, under its rules and sailing regulations so far as they do not conflict with the provisions of the deed, on the dates submitted by the challenger and in yachts meeting the terms of the deed and the challenge notice.

Records of winning clubs and skippers
Winning clubs

🇺🇸 New York Yacht Club: 25–1

🇳🇿 Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron: 4–3

🇺🇸 San Diego Yacht Club: 3–1

Société Nautique de Genève: 2–1

🇺🇸 Golden Gate Yacht Club: 2–1

🇦🇺 Royal Perth Yacht Club: 1–3

Multiple winning skippers

🇳🇿 Russell Coutts – Wins 1995, 2000, 2003 – Won 14 / Lost 0

🇺🇸 Dennis Conner – Wins 1980, 1987, 1988 – Won 13 / Lost 5

🇺🇸 Harold Stirling Vanderbilt – Wins 1930, 1934, 1937 – Won 12 / Lost 2

Charlie Barr – Wins 1899, 1901, 1903 – Won 9 / Lost 0

🇦🇺 Jimmy Spithill – Wins 2010, 2013 – Won 17 / Lost 23

Reference

In popular culture
In 1928, Goodyear chairman Paul W. Litchfield began a tradition of naming the company's blimps after America's Cup yachts, including America, Puritan, Mayflower, Volunteer, Vigilant, Defender, Reliance, Resolute, Enterprise, Rainbow, Ranger, Columbia and Stars & Stripes.

The 1988 parody film Return of the Killer Tomatoes included background TV coverage of "Full Contact America's Cup" yacht racing.

The 1992 film Wind is largely about the America's Cup racing towards the end of the 12-meter era. Although the names have been changed, it is largely about Dennis Conner's 1980s loss and comeback.

The documentary The Wind Gods: 33rd America's Cup (2011) centres around Oracle Team USA's efforts to challenge for the 33rd America's Cup. David Ellison collaborated with American journalist Julian Guthrie on the film; Guthrie later authored The Billionaire and the Mechanic, a non-fiction book detailing the history of Oracle Team USA.

In 2021, Australian psychedelic rock band Pond released a single titled America's Cup. The song centres around the gentrification of Western Australia and Fremantle, the host city of the 1987 America's Cup, after Australia's victory of the 1983 America's Cup with the yacht Australia II. The music video prominently features the America's Cup trophy being 'auctioned' off to the highest bidder.

In 2022, Netflix released Untold: The Race of the Century, a film about the Australian team's win in the 1983 race.

title: America's Cup


text:
List of boogie woogie musicians

Boogie woogie musicians are those artists who are primarily recognized as writing, performing, and recording boogie woogie music.

A

 * Rob Agerbeek (1937–2023), Indonesian-born Dutch boogie-woogie and early jazz pianist
 * Dave Alexander (1938–2012), aka 'Omar Sharriff", American blues pianist
 * Albert Ammons (1907–1949), American pianist, father of bebop tenorman Gene Ammons
 * The Andrews Sisters, American singers known for "Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar" and "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy"
 * Winifred Atwell (1914–1983), British pianist, from Trinidad

B

 * Bob Baldori (born 1943), aka "Boogie Bob", American rock, blues, and boogie-woogie musician
 * Marcia Ball (born 1949), American singer and pianist
 * Black Ivory King (1899–1947), American pianist and singer, best known for his original version of the then popular train blues song, "The Flying Crow"
 * Deanna Bogart (born 1960), American singer, pianist, and saxophonist
 * Boogie Woogie Red (1925–1992), American pianist, frequent collaborator with John Lee Hooker
 * James Booker (1939–1983), American pianist
 * Eden Brent (born 1965), American pianist and vocalist

C

 * James Crutchfield (1912–2001), "King of Barrelhouse Blues"

D

 * Caroline Dahl, pianist and composer of boogie-woogie and American roots music
 * Cow Cow Davenport (1894–1955), American pianist
 * Blind John Davis (1913–1985), American pianist and singer
 * Daryl Davis (born 1958), American pianist, singer and bandleader
 * Neville Dickie (born 1937), English pianist
 * Fats Domino (1928–2017), American R&B pianist and singer who recorded some boogie pieces in the 1950s
 * Floyd Domino, American pianist; played for seven years with Asleep at the Wheel
 * Dorothy Donegan (1922–1998), American pianist
 * Thomas A. Dorsey (1899–1993), American pianist and gospel songwriter
 * Champion Jack Dupree (1908–1992), New Orleans blues player
 * Big Joe Duskin (1921–2007), American pianist

E

 * William Ezell (1892–1963), Texas-born pianist who combined boogie-woogie with ragtime and blues

F

 * Ernie Freeman (1922–1981), American pianist, organist, and arranger

G

 * Blind Leroy Garnett (1897–1933)
 * Harry Gibson, "The Hipster" (1915–1991)
 * Henry Gray (1925–2020), American pianist credited with helping to create the Chicago blues piano sound

H

 * Bob Hall (born 1942), English pianist
 * Willie Hall, known as Drive'em Down, model and mentor to many New Orleans players
 * Jools Holland (born 1958), British musician and television presenter
 * Camille Howard (1914–1993), American pianist and singer
 * John Lee Hooker (August 22, 1912 or 1917 – June 21, 2001) American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist

J

 * Dr. John (1941–2019), New Orleans blues and boogie woogie pianist and composer of "Boxcar Boogie" among others
 * Pete Johnson (1904–1967), Big Joe Turner's piano partner; "Roll 'Em Pete" was named for him
 * Louis Jordan (1908–1975), American boogie and jump blues musician, songwriter and bandleader

K

 * Michael Kaeshammer (born 1977), Canadian pianist, vocalist, and arranger
 * Shizuko Kasagi (1914–1985), Japanese singer known in Japan as the "Queen of the Boogie-Woogie" (ブギの女王)}]}
 * Brendan Kavanagh (born 1967), contemporary British pianist teacher with over 1 million YouTube followers, known as "Dr K"

L

 * Ladyva (Vanessa Sabrina Gnaegi) (born 1988), Swiss pianist
 * Booker T. Laury (1914–1995), American pianist and singer
 * Meade Lux Lewis (1905–1964), American pianist whose "Honky Tonk Train Blues" was an early boogie woogie hit
 * Liberace (1919–1987), American pianist
 * Little Willie Littlefield (1931–2013), American pianist and singer
 * Cripple Clarence Lofton (1887–1957)
 * Professor Longhair (Henry "Roy" Byrd, 1918–1980), American singer; blues, rhythm and blues, and jazz pianist

M

 * Barrelhouse Buck McFarland (1903–1962)
 * Memphis Slim (1915–1988)
 * Big Maceo Merriweather (1905–1953), composer of "Chicago Breakdown"
 * Arthur Migliazza (born 1980), American blues and boogie woogie pianist.
 * Moon Mullican (1909–1967), known as the "King of the Hillbilly Piano Players" during a recording career that stretched from the 1930s through the 1960s, including hits such as "Seven Nights to Rock"; considered a major influence on Jerry Lee Lewis

N

 * Romeo Nelson (1902–1974)
 * Charlie Norman (1920–2005), Swedish piano player

P

 * Oscar Peterson (1925–2007), Canadian jazz pianist and composer
 * Piano Red (1911–1985), brother of Speckled Red
 * Piano "C" Red (1933–2013), Chicago blues and boogie-woogie pianist, singer and composer
 * Honey Piazza (born 1951), West Coast blues and boogie-woogie pianist
 * Pinetop Perkins (1913–2011), American musician and teacher of Ike Turner
 * Preacher Jack (born 1942), stage name of John Lincoln Coughlin, American pianist, recording artist on Rounder Records
 * Sammy Price (1908–1992), American pianist and bandleader

R

 * Maurice Rocco (1915–1976), American pianist, singer, and actor
 * Walter Roland (1903–1972), American pianist, guitarist, and singer

S

 * Ulf Sandström (born 1964), Swedish pianist and member of jump4joy
 * Bob Seeley (born 1928), American pianist
 * Luca Sestak (born 1995), German boogie-woogie, blues and jazz pianist
 * Robert Shaw (1908–1985), American barrelhouse pianist, recorded "The Ma Grinder"
 * Freddie Slack (1910–1965), American pianist and bandleader, originator of "Beat Me Daddy, Eight To The Bar" in the 1940s
 * Huey "Piano" Smith (1934–2023), "Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu", also accompanist on Frankie Ford's "Sea Cruise"
 * Pinetop Smith (1904–1929), "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie" in 1929 was the first boogie-woogie hit and popularized the name for the style
 * Charlie Spand (1893–after 1958)
 * Speckled Red (1892–1973), American pianist and singer, recorded "The Dirty Dozens"
 * Roosevelt Sykes (1906–1983), American pianist known as the Honeydripper, he recorded "Forty-Four", "Driving Wheel" and "Night Time Is the Right Time".

T

 * Montana Taylor (1903–1958), American pianist
 * George Washington Thomas (1883–1937), American pianist and songwriter
 * Hersal Thomas (c.1909–1926), American pianist and composer
 * Stephanie Trick, contemporary American pianist
 * Big Joe Turner (1911–1985), American boogie-woogie singer, partnered with Pete Johnson

W

 * Tuts Washington (1907–1984), mentor to many generations of New Orleans pianists
 * Kenny "Blues Boss" Wayne (born 1944), American-born boogie-woogie/blues/R&B pianist
 * Vince Weber (1953–2020), German boogie/blues musician
 * Robert Wells, Swedish pianist, singer, and composer
 * Jabo Williams, American pianist and songwriter
 * Mitch Woods (born 1951), American modern day boogie-woogie, jazz and jump blues pianist

Y

 * Jimmy Yancey (1898–1951), American pianist, composer, and lyricist

Z

 * Silvan Zingg (born 1973), Swiss pianist
 * Axel Zwingenberger (born 1955), German pianist and composer

title: List of boogie woogie musicians