Britain's National Archives Release UFO Files

While not directly related to law librarianship, is does speak to the power of FOIA requests and what national archives can make easily available to citizens if enough pressure is applied.  Not Friday Fun, but perhaps Wednesday Whimsy. 

The official site includes PDFs of incident reports, a podcast explaining the significance of this release, a vodcast from an expert on the "unexplainable" discusses the files, and a research guide gives  nice background. 

Wired has an article on the release of the documents:

The men were air traffic controllers. Experienced, calm professionals. Nobody was drinking. But they were so worried about losing their jobs that they demanded their names be kept off the official report.

No one, they knew, would believe their claim an unidentified flying object landed at the airport they were overseeing in the east of England, touched down briefly, then took off again at tremendous speed. Yet that's what they reported happened at 4 p.m. on April 19, 1984.

The incident is one of hundreds of reported sightings contained in more than 1,000 pages of formerly secret UFO documents being released Wednesday by Britain's National Archives. It is one of the few that was never explained...

Serendipidously, the Vatican has announced that it's ok for catholics to believe in extraterrestial life. 

[JJ]