Background
Adamski was born on 17 April 1891, in Bromberg in the German Empire. He was the son of Jozef Adamski and Franciszka Adamski.
Adamski was born on 17 April 1891, in Bromberg in the German Empire. He was the son of Jozef Adamski and Franciszka Adamski.
Adamski was a soldier in the 13th U.S. Cavalry Regiment (K Troop) fighting at the Mexican border during the Pancho Villa Expedition. Amateur astronomer George Adamski recounted the interplanetary travel of friendly space aliens during the 1950s with unprecedented credibility. Though now believed false, Adamski’s reports defined the alien contact movement of his time.
Adamski first said he encountered spacecraft during the 1940s. In 1946, he identified a spacecraft in a meteor shower that he was watching. The next year, he reported seeing 184 spacecraft flying in formation. He claimed to have photographed spacecraft in 1949, submitting the pictures to Point Loma Navy Electronics Laboratory. Adamski also published his first book, Pioneers of Space, that year. Adamski then began lecturing about unidentified flying objects (UFOs), gaining notoriety in 1950 when a Fate magazine article suggested that his 1949, photographs were genuine.
Adamski first professed to have contact with the space aliens themselves in 1952. He said that he met an alien named Orthon from Venus while he and his friends were picnicking in the California desert. Orthon and Adamski apparently communicated telepathically.
Later that year, Adamski claimed to have encounters with other aliens from Mars and Saturn. He told of rides in their spacecraft and related meetings with a Martian called Firkon and Ramu, from Saturn, in his book Inside Space Ships. By the mid-1950s, Adamski was an international celebrity.
As time went on, Adamski’s claims became more unfocused. In 1958, Adamski alleged to have disembarked from a stopped train in Kansas to be taken by spaceship to a lecture in Davenport, Iowa. Arthur C. Campbell, a NICAP Kansas City Affiliate, proved the story untrue, but Adamski would not recant, claiming instead that the CIA framed him - a theory he held throughout his much of his career.
Adamski also purported to have meetings with - and the support of - Pope John XXIII, President John F. Kennedy, and several leaders from the United Nations during his international tour in 1959. Then, in 1962, Adamski reportedly attended a conference of space people on Saturn. He even mailed accounts of the meeting in June of that year.
From the beginning, Adamski’s experiences and reports were at odds with known science regarding the solar system. Throughout the 1950s, James W. Moseley denounced Adamski’s claims in his magazine Saucer News.
More specifically, in July 1953, the Air Force Office of Special Investigations reported in a letter that the object Adamski photographed in December 1952, was a sombrero with the sweatband removed. Later, analysis from the Air Force during the 1960s suggested that the objects were a tobacco humidor and three ping-pong balls.
Despite the evidence refuting them, Adamski’s activities brought him considerable attention during his lifetime and afterward. His writings - in particular, Flying Saucers Have Landed, published in 1970 - spawned several UFO cults, and his influence endured into contemporary UFO circles.
George Adamski founded the Royal Order of Tibet.
In 1917, Adamski married Mary Shimbersky. She died in 1954; they had no children.