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70 free UFO trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This UFO trivia quiz covers the whole strange history of unidentified flying objects, from Kenneth Arnold's nine shining objects over Mount Rainier in 1947 and the Roswell balloon crash that became a legend, through Project Sign, Grudge and Blue Book, the Robertson Panel and the Condon Report, to the modern era of the Pentagon's Tic Tac and Gimbal videos, AATIP and the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office. Along the way you will meet the famous cases and characters: Betty and Barney Hill and the Zeta Reticuli star map, Travis Walton and Fire in the Sky, the Phoenix Lights, Rendlesham Forest, the Belgian triangle wave, the Ariel School children in Zimbabwe, the Tehran F-4 encounter, Bob Lazar and Area 51, J. Allen Hynek and his close-encounter scale, foo fighters, ghost rockets and the Majestic 12 hoax. Some questions are easy for anyone who has watched a documentary; a few will test genuine UFO buffs. Every answer has been checked against primary sources, mainly the Wikipedia articles on each incident and investigation, and each explanation adds one further detail. Believers and skeptics are equally welcome. Play, see your score, and share it with the truth-seekers in your group chat.
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Q 01Which U.S. Air Force captain coined the acronym 'UFO'?
Edward J. Ruppelt
Ruppelt argued 'flying saucer' was misleading for objects of every conceivable shape and preferred the more general term.
Q 02What acronym for 'unidentified anomalous phenomena' has increasingly replaced 'UFO'?
UAP
The term first appeared in the late 1960s and gained ground because of the negative cultural baggage attached to 'UFO'.
Q 03Near which mountain did pilot Kenneth Arnold report a chain of nine shining objects on June 24, 1947?
Mount Rainier
He was detouring to look for a crashed Marine transport plane that carried a $5,000 reward.
Q 04What term did the press coin from Kenneth Arnold's description of objects moving like a skipped dish?
Flying saucer
Arnold himself described the objects' shape differently; the saucer image came from his account of their motion.
Q 05The debris found near Roswell in 1947 came from a balloon train belonging to which top-secret program?
Project Mogul
The program was designed to listen for Soviet nuclear tests, which is why the Army covered it with a weather-balloon story.
Q 06Which rancher found tinfoil, rubber, tape and beams scattered across a New Mexico ranch in 1947?
Mac Brazel
With no phone or radio at the ranch, he initially had no idea a flying-disc craze was sweeping the country.
Q 07Which retired Air Force officer claimed in 1978 the Roswell weather-balloon story was a cover?
Jesse Marcel
His claim was popularized by the 1980 book The Roswell Incident and launched decades of conspiracy theories.
Q 08Roughly how far from the town of Roswell was the actual 1947 debris site?
75 miles
The site was closer to Corona; the incident took Roswell's name because the local Army Air Field handled the recovery.
Q 09Which rocketry pioneer did much of his early work in Roswell in the 1930s?
Robert H. Goddard
The Roswell Museum and Art Center recreates his rocket-engine workshop, and a local high school bears his name.
Q 10Project Blue Book was headquartered at which Air Force base?
Wright-Patterson, Ohio
The base is also where Project Sign's Air Materiel Command review had been written in 1949.
Q 11How many UFO reports had Project Blue Book collected by the time it closed in 1969?
12,618
Of those, 701 stayed classified as unexplained even after analysis; many others turned out to be U-2 and A-12 spy-plane flights.
Q 12Which two projects preceded Project Blue Book, in order?
Sign, then Grudge
Sign was originally named Project SAUCER and ran for most of 1948 before being replaced.
Q 13Which Air Force chief reportedly ordered Project Sign's 1948 'Estimate of the Situation' destroyed?
Hoyt Vandenberg
The estimate allegedly concluded UFOs were extraterrestrial; no copy has ever surfaced, and Popular Mechanics called it 'probably more mythological than real'.
Q 21Betty and Barney Hill's 1961 abduction claim was set in which U.S. state?
New Hampshire
They were driving home to Portsmouth from Niagara Falls and Montreal; the state placed a historical marker at the site in 2011.
Q 22Ufologists linked the star map Betty Hill drew under hypnosis to which star system?
Zeta Reticuli
Ohio schoolteacher Marjorie Fish built the match; the same map opens the 2012 film Prometheus.
Q 23Which 1966 best-seller by John G. Fuller told the Hills' story?
The Interrupted Journey
NBC dramatized it as the 1975 TV film The UFO Incident.
Q 14What did the 1953 Robertson Panel recommend as a way to dampen popular interest in UFOs?
A public education campaign
The CIA-convened panel worried that a flood of sighting reports could swamp air-defense channels at a critical moment.
Q 15Which agency convened the Robertson Panel?
The CIA
The panel grew out of a CIA review of Blue Book after the 1952 Washington, D.C. sightings, and its report was originally classified Secret.
Q 16Which institution hosted the Air Force-funded project that produced the 1968 Condon Report?
University of Colorado
Physicist Edward Condon's team examined hundreds of Blue Book, NICAP and APRO files before concluding UFO study was unlikely to yield major discoveries.
Q 17Which astronomer advised Projects Sign, Grudge and Blue Book and later devised the 'Close Encounter' scale?
J. Allen Hynek
He began as a skeptic and ended up founding the Center for UFO Studies after criticizing Blue Book's 'cavalier disregard' for scientific method.
Q 18What was Hynek's explanation for 1966 Michigan sightings that became a famous punchline?
Swamp gas
He insisted at the press conference it explained only a portion of the Michigan reports, but the phrase stuck to him for life.
Q 19Hynek was a consultant on which 1977 Steven Spielberg film named after a level of his own scale?
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Spielberg gave the astronomer a cameo in the film's climactic sequence.
Q 20Which French filmmaker played scientist Claude Lacombe in Spielberg's 1977 UFO film?
François Truffaut
Richard Dreyfuss starred as Roy Neary, the Indiana lineman whose life is upended by a UFO encounter.
Q 24Barney Hill is the grandfather of a fighter in which sport?
Mixed martial arts
UFC strawweight Angela Hill is his granddaughter.
Q 25Forestry worker Travis Walton vanished for five days in 1975 in which state?
Arizona
His logging crew said a beam of light knocked him down near Heber; the National Enquirer paid them $5,000 for Best Case of the Year.
Q 26Travis Walton's account was adapted into which 1993 film?
Fire in the Sky
Skeptics Philip Klass and Michael Shermer suggested a motive: an 'Act of God' abduction could excuse the crew's late logging contract.
Q 27The Phoenix Lights of March 13, 1997 were traced to aircraft from which pilot training program?
Operation Snowbird
A formation of A-10 Thunderbolts and flares dropped over the Barry Goldwater Range accounted for the two separate sightings.
Q 28Which governor mocked the Phoenix Lights with a costumed aide, then later called them 'otherworldly'?
Fife Symington
A decade later he told an investigator he had stayed quiet 'because he didn't want to panic the populace'.
Q 29The Rendlesham Forest incident of December 1980 took place outside which air base?
RAF Woodbridge
Deputy base commander Lt. Col. Charles Halt's memo to the Ministry of Defence made it 'Britain's Roswell'.
Q 30Skeptics attribute the flashing light seen by Rendlesham airmen to which structure?
Orfordness Lighthouse
The lighthouse sits along the same line of sight from the forest, about five miles away on the coast.