As the story goes, former Soviet leader Josef Stalin was impressed by how the 1938 radio broadcast of H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" caused many Americans to actually believe an invasion was underway by Martians.

With a seized post-World War II German jet-powered aircraft under his control, Stalin allegedly enlisted Josef Mengele, a German SS officer and physician notorious for experimenting on concentration camp inmates, which earned him the nickname "Angel of Death."

In the bizarre tale recounted by Jacobsen, Mengele surgically altered a group of children to look like space aliens. These kids were placed on a remotely controlled disc-shaped craft, presumably to frighten Americans into "War of the World"-type hysterics.

But something went wrong, the plane crashed, and the Roswell legend was born, with "alien" wreckage and bodies sent on to Area 51