McMinnville
Two photographs of a disc-like object taken by Paul Trent. Subsequent shadow analysis indicated probable hoax.
On 11 May 1950 farmer Paul Trent photographed two views of an alleged disc-shaped object near his farm in McMinnville, Oregon. The photographs ran in the McMinnville Telephone-Register on 8 June 1950 and were carried by Life magazine on 26 June 1950.
The University of Colorado UFO Project (Condon Committee) declined to attribute the photographs to known phenomena. Subsequent analyses by Robert Sheaffer (1976) and others demonstrated that shadow angles in the Trent photographs are inconsistent with the time of day Trent claimed the photographs were taken, and that an object similar to a disc-shaped wing mirror hanging from telephone wires reproduces the photographs at high fidelity.