9.2 KiB
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January 5: Nixon chooses the shuttle to replace American civil launchers.
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Launch of the project Snowbird, whose mission is to perform experimental flights on recovered extraterrestrial aircraft.
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February 12: In Saint-Pierreville (Ardèche), in the evening Bernard Vialle was witness with others: We had just crossed the pass and were beginning to descend towards Saint-Pierreville when we suddenly saw a brilliant light burst from the ravine, along the road, about 300 m ahead of us. Surprised, and a bit scared, I braked. It took me about 200 m to stop. We opened the doors, ready to flee, because during those few seconds, a luminous sphere had appeared, rising slowly from the ravine. It seemed to have a diameter of about thirty meters. It seemed to us that it was heading towards us. We ran away, leaving the car. But we quickly realized that the thing was not pursuing us. At very low altitude, it had started to fly over the side of the valley, very slowly, sometimes stopping. It lit up the ground over a radius of 300 m. A firework light. A bit unreal. It was something wonderful and terrifying at the same time. We were so captivated by the show that we didn't see the time pass. We suddenly realized that we had been there for more than 1 hour. "We can't stay like this," said Jean-Claude. "Tomorrow, when we tell this, we'll be called 'illuminates'. We need a witness." We got back in the car, but taking the road that follows the opposite slope to the one that is flown over by the "thing". When we arrived at the hamlet of Feouzet, we discovered the valley again. The huge luminous sphere was still there. Fascinated, we looked at it again for long minutes. Then we rushed to wake up the deputy mayor, Eugène Payot. He recounts: When Bernard and Jean-Claude came to wake me up, they were so excited that I had a hard time understanding what they were saying. Yet I got up and went out to look. It was more beautiful than I could imagine, this kind of disk hovering, motionless, above the valley. I have no words to describe it. We couldn't take our eyes off it and we fought against sleep to observe it as long as possible.
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February 13th, 6am: Eugene Payot: The craft moved away to the East. Its brightness gradually weakened, then it disappeared. We parted without daring to speak. Thus, for 5 hours, the UFO explored the valley, sometimes stationary, sometimes moving very slowly and scanning the ground with its spotlights. And during these 5 hours, Saint-Pierreville experienced an inexplicable power outage. The police and the mayor confirmed it to me. A curious outage, since, if the light bulbs refused to turn on, the electric radiators and the clock of the bell tower continued to work. A technician will say: It was an electromagnetic phenomenon, that is why only the devices in a closed circuit continued to work [[Charles Garreau, Flying Saucers: 20 Years of Investigations, Mame 1971, pp. 218-220 > Godeleive Van Overmeire Catalogue]]{.source}.
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February 27: Launch of the American probe Pionner 10.
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March 8: Photo taken in Salt Lake City. See images/1972-03-08.jpg
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March 2: Launch of the Pioneer 10 probe towards Jupiter, then towards the stars. It carries an engraved plaque, an encoded message for any extraterrestrial civilizations.
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March 16: The pilot and co-pilot of a plane from the small American private company Newstar make a distress call: Here, Fox-trot, Bravo, Yankee 17 of Newstar... Mayday!... Requesting emergency assistance... Lost north of the Bahamas archipelago. Compass malfunction, all navigation rendered impossible... Request position by gonio... The pilot entered a dense, yellowish fog, preventing any sighting. He could see nothing, while even with the naked eye, no one had knowledge of a disturbance in this area. Then, it seems that the pilot saw something and radio connections were definitively cut off.
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March 27: Launch of Venera 8 towards Venus.
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April
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We are talking again about "Zoé", a small celestial body less than 800 km in diameter orbiting between the Sun and Mercury, discovered some time ago by American astronomer Henry Courteen and its existence confirmed by the NASA and the Smithsonian Observatory.
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April 16: Launch of the Apollo 16 mission.
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April 19: Some astronomers are the only ones not to have observed a luminous object in the shape of a flying cigar, moving from West to East and heading towards Mandres-les-Roses, in the Essone. Firefighters, C.R.S., police and gendarmes from the Essone and Val-de-Marne, as well as numerous eyewitnesses, saw the strange object.
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April 21: Astronauts from Apollo 16 land near the Descartes crater.
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April 27: Return of the Apollo 16 mission.
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A UFO landed in Rosemead (South Africa), leaving traces on the pavement (see picture). See images/1972_300.jpg.
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June
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The National Academy of Sciences of the United States declares in a report that distant radio waves carrying conversations of distant creatures may be propagating at this time, and that we could record them if we point a radio telescope in the right direction and the receiver is set to the appropriate frequency.
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June 26, 9am: Observation of Boer De Klerk at Fort Beaufort (South Africa).
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July
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July 18: Retrieval of 3 bodies following a crash in Morocco (Sahara Desert).
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Start of Skylab-3 mission.
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July 23: Launch of the first Landsat satellite for the observation of terrestrial resources.
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August 11 : Near Cluny (Saône-et-Loire) observation by Miss Reanta and Mr. Tantot.
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Creation of the SOBEPS.
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Re-election of Richard Nixon to the presidency of the United States. He appoints Henry Kissinger as National Security Advisor.
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Off the coast of the Azores, an experimental vessel from the Oil Institute allows for the creation of an underwater NATO polygon, officially for the purpose of studying currents. In reality, it would be an underwater research laboratory for acoustic research exclusively for military use (communication with nuclear submarines?).
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In a mountain of the Andes Cordillera (Peru), in Uruguay, in Patagonia, in Tierra del Fuego, bands of flat or hillside terrain glow, if not possess 3 times the normal gravity, and generally in regions where populations frequently observe UFOs, reports Gérard Cambri.
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September
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The power source of the Swan constellation called "X-3" which normally emitted T. S. F. waves begins to multiply its power by 200.
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End of the Skylab-3 mission.
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September 16: Photo taken. See images/1972-09-16.jpg.
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September 24:: Photo taken by Paul Villa in New Mexico. See images/1972-09-24.jpg.
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October: At Vienna, the International Astronautical Congress supports the idea of the existence of other intelligences in the universe.
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November
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A mysterious object is spotted in the waters of a Norwegian fjord. It stays for about two weeks in a branch of the Sognefjord, the Sogndal, north of Bergen. The Norwegian authorities declare that the mysterious submerged object detected by a frigate was not a submarine. Then, the unidentified object vanishes.
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In Boston, experts in science, sociology, theology and communications gather under the auspices of NASA and the University's Department of Astronomy. They are all in agreement that humans are almost certainly not the only ones in the galaxy, and certainly not in the universe. On this occasion, anthropologist Ashely Montagu states that other forms of life are likely more intelligent than ours, which may explain why they have not made contact with us. They may view us the same way we view rabbits or cholera. We should prepare to meet extraterrestrials and not wait until contact has been established to decide what to do.
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December
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December 7: Launch of the Apollo 17 mission.
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December 11: Apollo 17 lands near the crater Littrow. Astronaut-geologist Harrison Schmitt sees a flash on the surface of the Moon.
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December 19: Return of the Apollo 17 mission. End of the manned lunar program.
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December 25th, 1am: The Méchinaud family disappears while driving to Boutiers (Charente) after a New Year's Eve spent with friends in Cognac, 4 km away.
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26 December: Death of Harry Truman.
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In France, 2 astronomers open the UFO file in an article in Sciences & Avenir that makes a big splash.
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In the USA, a young couple near a flying saucer heard what seemed to be the playback of a cow's painful mooing, the cry of a bird being killed, and the howling of a dog Lecomte{.source}.