Google today is celebrating the 66th anniversary of the Roswell UFO incident with an interactive homepage doodle that allows users to help a lost alien return to his spacecraft.
The"Roswell incident" dates back to 1947, when residents in Roswell, New Mexico reported seeing a mysterious object crash on a nearby ranch. The official government explanation is that a military surveillance balloon crashed to Earth, but many believe it was actually a UFO, making Roswell synonymous with aliens.
The black-and-white doodle, therefore, features an alien crash-landing his small craft on the ranch. He emerges unscathed, but is in need of materials to fix his spaceship. That's where you come in. Guide the extraterrestrial around the ranch to collect various items that will help repair the spacecraft (see the video below), and send our visitor on his way.
Click your mouse to move the alien to a nearby cow, underground, the barn, and the main house. Use the items you collect along the way to further your journey. Hint: a radioactive gasoline tank found underground can help you climb to great heights.
Though the incident happened in 1947, it did not gain notoriety until the late 1970s, when UFO researcher Stanton Friedman started digging in to the story and interviewing witnesses. Several books about the Roswell crash were published throughout the 1980s and 1990s, bringing interest in the subject to a fever pitch. Naturally, a TV movie followed in 1994, while the TV series Roswell, which followed the lives of Roswell teenagers who were alien/human hybrids, made its debut in 1999.
For UFO buffs, a small museum in Roswell commemorates the incident.
For more of Google's doodles, see the slideshow above. Recently, the search giant has honored architect Antoni Gaudí, author Maurice Sendak, Julius Richard Petri, graphic designer Saul Bass, Ella Fitzgerald, Hitchhiker's Guide author Douglas Adams, African singer and activist Miriam Makeba, Nicolaus Copernicus, ferris wheel creator George Ferris, and baseball legend Jackie Robinson.
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