The X Files - Weird world UK timeline

This summer, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson reprise their roles of Mulder and Scully in The X-Files: I Want To Believe. We take a look at a timeline of UK weirdness.


1863 - Borley Rectory in Essex, later known as Britain's most haunted house, is built.

1888 - Jack the Ripper stalks the East End of London and kills five women. The killings stop that same year and the killer was never caught.

1917 - Two girls in Cottingley, West Yorkshire, take photos of fairies. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle takes an interest and declares the pictures genuine.

1933 - First documented sighting of a strange sea monster in Loch Ness, Scotland.

1939 - Borley Rectory, in Essex, is destroyed in a mysterious fire.

1950 - Sir Henry Tizard, MoD Chief Scientific Adviser, orders inquiry into UFOs.

1951 - Flying Saucer Working Party issues its final report.

1953 - MoD sets up system for reporting and investigating UFO sightings.

1956 - UFOs are tracked on radar over East Anglia, jets are scrambled and a UFO is captured on a military aircraft's gun camera.

1979 - The House of Lords debates the subject of UFOs and set up a study group.

1980 - Police Constable Alan Godfrey reports seeing a UFO in Todmorden, Yorkshire and under hypnotic regression claims to have been taken onboard the craft.

1980 - Britain's best-known UFO sighting occurs when a UFO lands in Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk.

1985 - The MoD investigate a crop circle formation near Middle Wallop in Hampshire, after having been contacted by a farmer.

1987 - Operation Deepscan is launched, with over 20 boats searching for the Loch Ness Monster with sonar equipment. Some odd radar contacts were detected.

1991 - Doug Bower and Dave Chorley confess to being responsible for making most of the UK's crop circles, mainly in Wiltshire and Hampshire.

1995 - First screening of the so-called 'alien autopsy' film in London, supposedly taken in the aftermath of the alleged UFO crash at Roswell in 1947.

2000 - The MoD produce a highly classified report into UFOs, entitled "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the UK Air Defence Region".

2001 - Shortly after 9/11 the MoD attempt to recruit psychics to use ESP to track down what a classified report calls "the sensitive targets".

2005 - The Freedom of Information Act comes fully into force. The MoD receive more requests on UFOs than any other subject.

2008 - The National Archives begin the process of releasing the entire archive of MoD UFO files.


The X-Files: I Want To Believe will be released in UK cinemas on 1st August 2008.