Today in History - July 8 | US military confirms it has taken possession of 'flying disc'
On July 8, 1947, the Roswell Daily Record printed a report claiming the RAAF (Roswell Army Air Field, rather than Royal Australian Air Force) had taken parts of a "flying saucer" into custody after it crashed on a ranch in New Mexico.
The story was to generate decades' worth of conspiracy theories.
The US military did declare they were in possession of parts of a "flying disc", but retracted the claim within a day and said they had simply taken custody of parts of a conventional weather balloon.
This photo is from the US Air Force's Roswell report released in 1997, which discusses the alleged UFO incident.
The document said reports of body bags were used to cover crash dummies in the testing of an advanced balloon.
The actual balloon was part of the top-secret Project Mogul, which was experimenting with ways of detecting Soviet nuclear launches.
However, the military intelligence cover-up fuelled decades of theories that the debris recovered was of extra-terrestrial origin, and to this day Roswell is a hub of UFO tourism.
The disappearance of Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaar, and Eyal Yifrach, ultimately sparked a deadly conflict about a month later which saw thousands killed.
The Israeli teens, aged 16 to 19, were kidnapped as they hitchhiked in the West Bank settlement of Alon Shvut, on the evening of June 12, 2014.
Their bodies were found in a shallow grave on June 30, with Israeli authorities accusing two Hamas operatives of carrying out the killings and executions.
Reprisals between Israel and Hamas escalated until on July 8, 2014, Israel unleashed a major aerial offensive in what became the 2014 Gaza War.
The war ultimately drew in Israeli ground forces as well, with the goal of crippling Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
More than 2000 Gaza residents were killed, and more than 10,000 wounded, including thousands of children.
Six Israeli citizens and 67 Israeli soldiers also died in the conflict.
The conflict sparked protests around the world, including in Australia, where rallies calling for a free Palestine were held in major cities.
Both Hamas and Israel declared victory in the war, with Israel saying Hamas had been severely weakened, and Hamas claiming they had repulsed Israel's forces.
Arthur Beetson captained Queensland in the first State of Origin match on July 8, 1980, at then-Lang Park in Brisbane.
It was the first interstate rugby league game where players were selected for their side based on "origin" rules, that is, by the state where a player was born, or where they had played their first senior rugby league match.
The interstate series of 1980 had already been won by NSW after the first two games were played under "residency" rules, as most Queensland-born players played for NSW clubs due to the bigger money on offer south of the border.
But "State of Origin" proved itself as a concept within minutes, as clubmates brawled fiercely, justifying the slogan of "mate against mate".
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