Guess What Happened 61 Years Ago Today?

If you said a UFO crash-landed on a ranch near Roswell, you'd be ...

... stepping into the ever-deepening quicksand of conjecture, rumor and controversy surrounding the so-called "Roswell Incident," which is being celebrated in its namesake town this week.

It was on July 2, 1947, that a ranch hand named Mac Brazel supposedly found debris on the Foster Ranch near Corona (not that near Roswell, actually) that military officials first called the wreckage of a UFO ("flying saucer," as they said in those days) and the Roswell Daily Record duly headlined on July 8, 1947.

But the Air Force later backtracked, calling the debris the wreckage of a weather balloon.

But that's just the beginning of the mystery, since Brazel later said he might have seen the debris as early as mid-June.

And those tireless researchers of the so-called Roswell incident, Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt, in their 1994 book "The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell," backtracked on the July 2 date, saying the object actually crashed on the evening of July 4, 1947, saying there had been an ongoing investigation into alien activity days before the so-called "incident."

If you've got the time, you can get a head start on researching the never-ending story by clicking on to the "Roswell UFO Incident" article on Wikipedia.

Or better yet, join the crowds expected to attend the annual Roswell UFO Festival, that begins at 9 a.m. Thursday and continues through July 7 in --where else? -- Roswell.

For a look at the festival's scheduled events, check out the Roswell Daily Record or the Roswell UFO Festival Web site.

And here's what the Albuquerque Journal has had to say about Roswell and UFOs over the years.

ABQNews - 5:50am -- Guess What Happened 61 Years Ago Today?