60 years ago, on May 11, something extraordinary happened just ten miles outside the otherwise ordinary town of McMinnville, Oregon. A couple of down-to-Earth farmers — Paul and Evelyn Trent — took two photos of something out-of-this-world. Those images turned out to be probably the most famous and hotly debated UFO photos ever taken, and certainly the ones that many experts have concluded have the highest likelihood of being authentic.
The nearness of the object and the fact that it was the first to be captured so clearly on film makes the case stand out even now. At the time, the pictures surpassed in quality and credibility anything taken in the first three years of the country's growing awareness of "flying saucers" (1947-1950).
This case resonates with me because 1950 was the year my family moved to Oregon. When the photos were taken by the Trents, the Zabels lived 51 miles away on the Oregon coast in a little town called Nelscott, now part of Lincoln City. Although I hadn't been born yet, I do remember later as a kid seeing the photos for the first time and thinking how incredible it was that they'd been taken so close to our part of the world.
To commemorate this 60th anniversary, we have created the magazine cover the case deserves but will never get.
What you're looking at to the right is not a real Time magazine, of course, because "real" journalists don't cover UFOs. They don't believe in them.
Try clicking on the image to blow it up to full-size. Then you can really appreciate what a radical act it would be for a major news magazine to put something like this on their cover.
And yet that should not be the case. Ask yourself: Why is it that a phenomenon that is this enduring — with thousands of excellent cases, radar confirmations, Air Force chases, pilot encounters, police reports, photographs, physical traces, etc. — can't be treated as something worthy of our attention and investigation? Read Richard Dolan's other post on this site about the Twelve Documents That Take UFOs Seriously. How many establishment journalists are even aware of them?
The fact that the mainstream media has completely shirked its responsibilities over the years on this issue is appalling. It is, quite simply, the Greatest Story Never Told.
Before this turns into a rant on media responsibility, something we will address in detail in our upcoming book, let's give this moment over to the famous Trent photos. Remember that by clicking on the photos that follow you can see them in a larger size than they first appear on this site.