George Adamski

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see Adamski for the British musician

George Adamski (April 17, 1891 – April 23, 1965) was a Polish-born American who claimed to have seen and photographed ships from other planets, met people from other planets and to have gone on flights with them. He wrote several books relating to his experiences, including the best-selling Flying Saucers Have Landed (1953), co-written with Desmond Leslie. He enjoyed some popularity as perhaps the most prominent contactee, but this gradually diminished as his claims became more questionable, and he was mostly considered a crackpot when he died.

George Adamski emigrated from Poland with his family. He and his parents claimed they were contacted by extra terrestrials when Adamski was very young, which led to his lecturing on "cosmic philosophy" of ETs. In 1949 Adamski wrote a science fiction book which had a space travel theme. Called Pioneers of Space: A Trip to the Moon, Mars and Venus and published by Leonard-Freefield Co of Los Angeles, it is has been claimed it was mainly for his students and to test public reaction to the idea of life on other planets. Adamski took some of the fictional material from that book and presented it as fact within "Flying Saucers Have Landed".

In the late 1940s, Adamski and some friends and students began showing photos of what they claimed were ships from other planets, which looked strikingly similar to the lids of the water coolers he sold to make his living.

His best publicised claim was that on November 20, 1952 he and friends were in the Mojave Desert near Desert Center, California when they saw a large submarine-shaped object hovering in the sky. Adamski said he believed that the ship was looking for him so he went away from the main road. He claimed that a scout ship made of a type of translucent metal, landed nearby. Adamski claimed he and a human-like figure from another planet communicated telepathically and through hand signals.

Adamski said the ET, named Orthon, was from Venus and expressed to Adamski his concern over the development of nuclear weapons and the inability of men on earth to have their spiritual growth keep pace with their technology. Adamski claimed he and George Hunt Williamson were able to take plaster casts of what he claimed were the Venusian's footprints which contained mysterious symbols. UFOlogists claim some of these casts are located today at Castle Leslie in Ireland but no evidence of this has been produced.

Adamski later claimed to meet other people from other planets (mostly from Venus but also from Mars and Saturn) and said he was taken on flights by them, including one around the moon where he observed valleys and bases.

He had considerable support from UFO proponents worldwide, but also attracted much scorn, TIME magazine going so far as to call him "a crackpot from California". The discovery that Venus and other planets in the solar system were unable to sustain any form of life, however, severely damaged his integrity. The photographs taken by the first Soviet lunar probe in 1959 he denounced as fakes, and after he announced he was going to Saturn for a conference, many of his supporters became disaffected and his reputation rapidly declined. He died, aged 74, of a heart attack, in Maryland.

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