Forty-five years after his death, Winston Churchill continues to make news. If it's not his triumphant dentures, it's his possible cover-up of a UFO sighting. Britain's Ministry of Defense has just released its latest batch of UFO-related files to the National Archives, and among the more than 5,000 pages are letters, written in 1999, from the grandson of a Royal Air Force (RAF) member who'd served as one of the former Prime Minister's bodyguards. According to the letter writer, a scientist who'd heard the story from his mother, the bodyguard claimed that during World War II, Churchill, intending to avert "mass panic," ordered the 50-year classification of an encounter between an RAF aircraft and a mysterious flying object. Churchill had reportedly discussed the matter with U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Although the Ministry of Defense has no documentation of the episode, its UFO files before 1967 no longer exist. Churchill definitely did, however, request a report on flying saucers in 1952.
Top 10 Weird Government Secrets
It's not just military secrets that governments keep close. And some information, like the recently revealed allegation that Winston Churchill ordered a cover-up of a UFO sighting, seems more amusing than disturbing. TIME takes a look at odd hush-hush moments