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Aztec, New Mexico UFO crash
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==Hoax== {{external media |audio1=Lecture by Silas Newton on March 8, 1950 at the University of Denver: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASCUGdnsQxw Part 1] and [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNcpr3f8Eew Part 2] }} During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Silas Newton and Leo A. Gebauer traveled through Aztec, attempting to sell devices known in the oil business as [[dowsing|doodlebugs]].<ref name="Vault"/> They claimed that these devices could find oil, gas and gold, and that they could do so because they were based on "alien technology" recovered from the supposed crash of a flying saucer. When J. P. Cahn of the ''[[San Francisco Chronicle]]'' asked the con men for a piece of metal from the supposed alien devices, they provided him with a sample that turned out to be ordinary [[aluminium|aluminum]].<ref name="Vault"/> In 1949, author Frank Scully published a series of columns in ''Variety'' magazine retelling the crash story told to him by Newton and Gebauer. He later expanded these columns to create ''Behind the Flying Saucers'' in 1950, a best selling book that influenced public perceptions about UFOs. <!-- On March 31, 1950, Air Force investigators interviewed George Koehler. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVzZy9dKY1Q{{fact}}--> Two years later, in 1952, the hoax was exposed in ''[[True (magazine)|True]]'' magazine,<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Cahn |first=J. P. Cahn |date=September 1952 |title=The Flying Saucers and the Mysterious Little Men |url=http://www.physics.smu.edu/~pseudo/UFOs/Scully/Cahn1.pdf |magazine=True |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230622091542/http://www.physics.smu.edu/~pseudo/UFOs/Scully/Cahn1.pdf |archive-date=June 22, 2023 |access-date=June 22, 2023}}</ref> with a follow-up article in 1956 presenting other victims of Newton and Gebauer.<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Cahn |first=J. P. Cahn |date=August 1956 |title=Flying Saucer Swindlers |url=http://www.physics.smu.edu/pseudo/UFOs/Scully/Cahn2.pdf |magazine=True |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230622101940/http://www.physics.smu.edu/pseudo/UFOs/Scully/Cahn2.pdf |archive-date=June 22, 2023 |access-date=June 22, 2023}}</ref> One of the victims was the millionaire Herman Flader, who pressed charges. The two were convicted of fraud in 1953.<ref name="Skepdic" /><ref name="Radford2014"/> [[File:Silas Newton.png|alt=Three men demonstrate the Aztec hoax claims using an inverted bowl to represent Earth and a copy of Frank Scully's book to represent a magnetism-powered flying saucer.|thumb|Author Frank Scully (right) and confidence man Silas Newton (center)<ref>{{cite news |last=Severson |first=Thor |title=Little Men Due Soon: Flying Saucer Landing Forecast |date=October 14, 1952 |newspaper=The Denver Post |location=Denver, Colorado |others=Photograph by David Mathias}}</ref>]]
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