Two days later Betty Hill contacted the US. Air Force to report their encounter. The report was closed having chalked up this encounter to the Hills misinterpreting what they saw as the planet Jupiter. The Hills were dismayed by the dismissal of their story and didn't want to be labeled as crazy but knew what they saw was in fact a UFO and not Jupiter. Eventually, their story reached Walter Webb, a Boston astronomer and after a 6-hour interview, Webb backed up the Hills claim that they were being truthful.
On July 2011 a historical marker was been placed at the site of the alleged UFO encounter and say, "On the night of September 19–20, 1961, Portsmouth, NH couple Betty and Barney Hill experienced a close encounter with an unidentified flying object and two hours of 'lost' time while driving south on Rte 3 near Lincoln. They filed an official Air Force Project Blue Book report of a brightly-lit cigar-shaped craft the next day but were not public with their story until it was leaked in the Boston Traveler in 1965. This was the first widely reported UFO abduction report in the United States." The Barney and Betty Hill incident may be the first widely reported UFO encounter but it was clearly not the last. The data in the graph below shows just how many reports have been made in the US and Canada along with the common shapes reported.
Infographic by: www.truepeoplesearch.com
