16. A Martian in Germany, April 1, 1950
Those who subscribe to UFO conspiracies will be dismayed to learn that one of the photos of an extraterrestrial which purports to support evidence of alien contact began as an April Fools’ Day joke in a German newspaper. It began with a photograph of an alien which appeared in a Wiesbaden newspaper accompanying an article which described the crash of a UFO discovered by American soldiers. The alien, alive, had been taken into the soldiers’ custody. Several days later the newspaper published an announcement describing the article and photograph as an April Fools’ Day joke. By that time a copy of the photograph was in the FBI’s voluminous files.
In 1980 the photograph was obtained by the authors of the book The Roswell Incident, Charles Berlitz and William Moore. They presented the photograph as proof of an alien encounter, which had been hushed up by the United States military. The German photographer who created the picture, as an April Fools’ Day hoax, later revealed that the “alien” was actually his then five year old son, costumed and posing with amenable American soldiers. The revelation has not stopped those who believe it to be a photograph of a genuine extraterrestrial from continuing to present it as proof that earth has been visited by aliens and governments continue to create cover ups to deny the fact to citizens.