Britons have reported more than 10,000 UFO sightings European UFO enthusiasts got a big break this spring as both France and the U.K. moved to unlock their "X-files," making public previously classified reports of extraterrestrial sightings. France's national space agency posted 30 years' worth of material -- more than 100,000 pages of witness testimony, photographs and film and audio footage -- on its website last March, only to have its Web server crash three hours later in the deluge of eager hits. And last week, the British Ministry of Defence announced that it will begin releasing the contents of 24 massive files thought to have been lost to asbestos contamination.

Nick Pope, a British TV personality who ran the MoD's UFO project from 1991 to 1994, says there have been over 10,000 reports of UFO sightings since 1950. He says the ministry would "dearly love" to open all its files; it already provides electronic access to original data on England's most famous UFO cases, Rendlesham and Condign. But any reports that are released have to be combed through for witnesses' names ("they don't want a UFO enthusiast turning up at their house saying, 'I've just read your sighting in the files,' " says Pope) as well as any sensitive military information, such as radar capabilities.

Pope says the contamination of the 24 files in question led to many conspiracy theories among UFO enthusiasts. "They thought the government was lying about this and it was going to be an excuse to destroy the files," he says. Instead, MoD spent several million pounds to detoxify the files, each of which contains between 200 and 300 reports, amounting to tens of thousands of documents. The process of publicizing them will be gradual, but ultimately it should give "ufologists" some measure of relief.

"Literally, some of them think we have spaceships at military bases and dead aliens in the basement," says Pope. "Under the Freedom of Information Act, the ministry gets more requests about UFOs than any other subject, including the war in Iraq."