Believers and skeptics converge at two UFO Festivals in a small New Mexico town.

[Joanne98]

July 7, 2007 - This is what happens when a flying saucer crashes in your town: The little green men are, well, little and green, but also purple, blue, yellow and black. Some wear dark capes and rubbery masks. Some hold Super Soakers in lieu of death rays. Others wear diapers instead of pants. One is dressed like a ballerina. Another just turned his Halloween costume inside out.

These extra-terrestrials are children participating in an “alien costume contest” inside a McDonald’s in Roswell, New Mexico, as part of the city’s 2007 Amazing Roswell UFO Festival. “Everybody, says George Byrne, a long-time Roswell resident, as he watches his grandchildren prance around the McDonald’s playground in their alien costumes, “needs a gimmick.”

This city has a good one. This year’s edition of the city’s annual four-day festival, which began July 5, commemorates the 60th anniversary of the Roswell Incident, in which military officials from nearby Roswell Army Air Field announced that a “flying disc” had crashed into a local field, a bombshell that was quickly followed by an official dismissal of the initial report. The episode was largely forgotten until 1978 when “Ufologist” Stanton Friedman interviewed Maj. Jesse Marcel-a former Army intelligence officer stationed at RAAF-who alleged that the military had covered up the recovery of an alien spacecraft and crew.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19650293/site/newsweek/