Area 51 got its alien reputation from real events
When a Nevada ranch supervisor found a strange shiny object on the ground in 1947, news reports called it a flying saucer. Military officials insisted it was just a weather balloon, but almost 50 years later, a report revealed the truth: The “UFO” was a balloon, but for measuring Soviet Union atomic blasts from far away.
More than half of the supposed UFO sightings from the early 1950s and the 1960s were tests for military aircraft.
