George Adamski was born in Poland and emigrated with his family to New York City at the age of 2. In 1913 he joined the 13th US Cavalry Regiment K-Troop fighting at the Mexican border during the Pancho Villa Expedition. In 1917, he married, then moved west, working as a maintenance worker in Yellowstone National Park, and as a worker in an Oregon flour mill. While in Laguna Beach, he founded the "Royal Order of Tibet," which held its meetings in the "Temple of Scientific Philosophy." His first book, Wisdom of the Masters of the Far East, was published in 1936. In 1940, he moved to a ranch near California's Palomar Mountain with some close friends and dedicated his time to studying and farming. In 1944, he and his group purchased 20 acres of land on Palomar Mountain, where they built a new home called Palomar Garden and a new restaurant called Palomar Gardens Cafe. Starting in 1946, he claimed to have seen and occasionally photographed space ships in California. In 1952 he claimed that a scout ship sought him out and that a Venusian pilot called Orthon had made telepathic contact with him. In 1962, his reputation went into decline when he announced that he would be attending a conference on the planet Saturn. He wrote six books in all, mostly on the topic of alien space ships. In 1965, he died of a heart attack in Maryland.