1946

Sweden. The Scandanavian countries reported over 2,000 unidentified flying objects over their airspace. These objects usually looked like rockets with fiery exhausts, and they sometimes performed unusual maneuvers as they passed overhead. At first they were thought to be captured German V-2 missiles that were being tested by the Russians, but British radar experts said they did not come from the U.S.S.R. Even today, fifty years later, official files on the ghost rockets are still classified documents.

The Nuremburg and Tokyo war crimes trials are held.

In March, Winston Churchill gives his famous “Iron Curtain” speech in Fulton, Missouri. The “Cold War” goes public.

Patients in VA hospitals are used as guinea pigs for medical experiments. In order to allay suspicions, the order is given to change the word “experiments” to “investigations” or “observations” whenever reporting a medical study performed in one of the nation’s veteran’s hospitals.

Rockefeller Foundation makes Further grants to support completion of the 200-inch telescope at Mount Palomar, which received its first RF funds in 1928. RF’s single largest appropriation of the year, $7.5 million, goes to the General Education Board to boost its declining resources. The board’s work is now focused almost exclusively on education.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology receives RF support to study the design and construction of Vannevar Bush’s mechanical differential analyzer, the forerunner of the computer; then, to study the potential of electronic computers.

Renowned physicist Dr. Paul Santorini, on UFOs over Greece in 1946 – “We soon established that they were not missiles. But, before we could do any more, the Army, after conferring with foreign officials, ordered the investigation stopped. Foreign scientists flew to Greece for secret talks with me… A world blanket of secrecy surrounded the UFO question because the authorities were unwilling to admit the existence of a force against which we had no possibility of defense.” Dr. Santorini was a Greek physicist and engineer credited with developing the proximity fuse for the Hiroshima atomic bomb, two patents for the guidance system used in the U.S. Nike missiles, and a centimetric radar system. He has also stated that he believes UFOs are under intelligent control. In 1947, he investigated a series of UFO reports over Greece that were initially thought to be Soviet missiles.

United States, Florida. Pilot and crew of a C-47 aircraft 30 miles north-east of Tampa, saw a cigar-shaped object with luminous portholes hurtle towards them in horizontal flight at the same altitude of 4,000ft. At 1,000 yards distant it swerved to avoid them. Estimated size of object was twice that of a B-29 bomber.