UFO (TV series)
Following poor ratings for "Joe 90" (1968–69) and the cancellation of children's espionage television series "The Secret Service" (1969) after only one series, Lew Grade approached Gerry Anderson to look into creating his first live-action TV series. Anderson worked with his wife, Sylvia, and producer Reg Hill to create a sci-fi adventure series based around UFOs. Anderson said the core idea for the series was that UFO sightings were a common issue during the late 1960s and that idea of aliens harvesting human organs came from the work of Christian Barnard and his pioneering transplant operations. The creative team initially envisioned an organisation called UFoeDO (Unidentified Foe Defence Organisation), which was to become the secret SHADO (Supreme Headquarters Alien Defence Organisation).
Felix Ziegel
Felix Yurievich Ziegel (, March 20, 1920 - November 20, 1988) was a Soviet researcher, Doctor of Science and docent of Cosmology at the Moscow Aviation Institute, author of more than forty popular books on astronomy and space exploration, generally regarded as a founder of Russian ufology. Ziegel, the co-founder of the first officially approved Soviet UFO research group, became an overnight sensation when, on November 10, 1967, speaking on the Soviet central television, he made an extensive report on the UFO sightings registered in the USSR and encouraged viewers to send him and his colleagues first-hand accounts of their observations, which resulted in barrage of letters and reports. He died in November 1988, leaving 17 volumes of the unpublished research documents for his daughter to keep.