🔍 UFO Sightings History Trivia Questions & Answers
Below are 30 free ufo sightings history trivia questions with answers — part of Mysteries trivia on BUZZ. Want a real challenge that adapts to what you know? Play the Mysteries quiz — no signup needed to start.
30 UFO Sightings History trivia questions
Q1. A radar 'flap' over which US capital's skies made national headlines in July 1952?
Answer: Washington, D.C.
💡 One newspaper's blaring headline read 'Saucers Swarm Over Capital.'
Q2. In 1961, Betty and Barney Hill claimed to be abducted while driving through which US state?
Answer: New Hampshire
💡 Their case became the first widely publicized 'alien abduction' story in the United States.
Q3. Navy pilot David Fravor's 2004 UFO encounter earned its object a nickname based on what candy?
Answer: Tic Tac
💡 He described it as roughly the size of his own fighter jet, hovering just above the water.
Q4. In July 1947, a New Mexico rancher's strange debris find kicked off which famous incident?
Answer: The Roswell incident
💡 The debris turned out decades later to be from Project Mogul, a secret balloon program built to detect Soviet nuclear tests.
Q5. Kenneth Arnold's 1947 report of objects skipping over water near Mt. Rainier coined what term?
Answer: Flying saucer
💡 Newspapers took his water-skipping comparison and ran with it, even though he meant their motion, not their shape.
Q6. A 1997 sighting of a huge V-shaped light formation over Arizona became known by what nickname?
Answer: The Phoenix Lights
💡 Investigators later traced the lights to A-10 aircraft and training flares dropped over a nearby military range.
Q7. On June 24, 1947, pilot Kenneth Arnold clocked his famous 'saucers' moving at roughly what speed?
Answer: Over 1,200 mph
💡 That estimate outran any aircraft of 1947, since none had yet broken the sound barrier.
Q8. What technique did a psychiatrist use to help the Hills recall their alleged 1961 UFO encounter?
Answer: Hypnosis
💡 Sessions with Dr. Benjamin Simon helped piece together their story of two 'lost' hours.
Q9. The 1989-90 'Belgian wave' of UFO sightings mostly described craft of what shape?
Answer: A triangle
💡 Over 13,000 people, including police and military, reported seeing the silent triangular lights.
Q10. Which three-letter acronym has the US government now adopted in place of the older term 'UFO'?
Answer: UAP
💡 It stands for 'unidentified anomalous phenomena,' covering more than just flying objects.
Q11. In 1966, investigator J. Allen Hynek blamed a Michigan UFO scare on what marshy phenomenon?
Answer: Swamp gas
💡 The explanation was so widely mocked that a young congressman demanded a formal hearing.
Q12. J. Allen Hynek's scale calls a sighting where witnesses report seeing alien 'occupants' what kind?
Answer: The third kind
💡 His term later inspired the title of a hit 1977 Steven Spielberg film.
Q13. What secret US balloon program to detect Soviet nuke tests later explained the Roswell debris?
Answer: Project Mogul
💡 Its balloon trains could stretch over 650 feet from tip to tail, dragging listening equipment through the upper atmosphere.
Q14. What US Air Force program investigated UFO reports from 1947 until it closed in 1969?
Answer: Project Blue Book
💡 Of the more than 12,000 sightings it logged, only a few hundred were ever left officially 'unidentified.'
Q15. What modern Pentagon office investigates UAP reports and issues public annual findings?
Answer: AARO
💡 Its 2024 report stated it had found no evidence of extraterrestrial technology among the hundreds of new cases it reviewed.
Q16. In a jittery February 1942 scare, gunners fired 1,400+ shells into the sky over which US city?
Answer: Los Angeles
💡 After the war, Japan confirmed it had flown no aircraft over the city that night at all.
Q17. The Roswell Army Air Field's own July 1947 press release first announced the recovery of what?
Answer: A flying disc
💡 The military retracted that statement within hours, calling it a weather balloon instead.
Q18. What weather condition did the Air Force blame for the 1952 Washington DC radar 'invasion'?
Answer: A temperature inversion
💡 Not everyone was convinced — several radar operators and pilots stayed skeptical of that explanation.
Q19. WWII Allied pilots borrowed a nonsense word from a cartoon to name mysterious lights called what?
Answer: Foo fighters
💡 The nonsense word 'foo' came from a fire-themed gag in the 'Smokey Stover' comic strip.
Q20. A 1980 UFO case nicknamed 'Britain's Roswell' unfolded in a forest near which RAF base?
Answer: RAF Woodbridge
💡 It happened in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, just days after Christmas in 1980.
Q21. Which future US president, then a congressman, demanded a hearing over Michigan's 1966 UFO flap?
Answer: Gerald Ford
💡 He called the 'swamp gas' explanation flippant, given how many witnesses had seen the lights.
Q22. Two English pranksters confessed in 1991 to secretly creating hundreds of what field patterns?
Answer: Crop circles
💡 They said they'd been at it since 1978, inspired by an old flying-saucer 'nest' story.
Q23. What simple tools did confessed crop-circle hoaxers Bower and Chorley use to flatten their patterns?
Answer: A plank and rope
💡 A wire loop fixed to a cap helped them walk in straight lines while flattening the stalks.
Q24. The CIA built Area 51 in the Nevada desert mainly to test which secret 1950s spy plane?
Answer: The U-2
💡 The site's official name is Homey Airport, after the nearby salt flat, Groom Lake.
Q25. What was the name of the New Mexico rancher who first discovered the mysterious Roswell debris?
Answer: Mac Brazel
💡 He told reporters he'd found tinfoil, rubber, tape, and thin wooden beams scattered over his ranch.
Q26. Skeptics say one bright 'hovering light' reported at Rendlesham Forest in 1980 matched which star?
Answer: Sirius
💡 Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky, easily distorted by low-horizon atmospheric effects.
Q27. The US Air Force's first official UFO study, active in 1948, went by what code name?
Answer: Project Sign
💡 It was based at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio, the same year the big sightings wave began.
Q28. What cash reward was Kenneth Arnold hunting a missing plane for, just before his 1947 sighting?
Answer: $5,000
💡 He'd just given up that search when he spotted the mysterious objects near Mount Rainier.
Q29. About how long did the 1990 Belgian F-16 radar-lock engagement with the mystery object last?
Answer: About 75 minutes
💡 The object reportedly dropped altitude at a rate that should have caused a sonic boom, yet none was heard.
Q30. What 1972 book by J. Allen Hynek introduced his famous 'close encounter' classification system?
Answer: The UFO Experience
💡 Hynek had spent over two decades as a scientific consultant to official Air Force UFO studies.
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