Not Only Sun Miracles: 10,000 Saw UFO(s) at a Soccer Match
No one was there to see a UFO, but they saw it all the same—and it left physical evidence.
The Sun Miracle of Fatima is having a moment.
It was 1917, and three Portuguese children saw visions of the Virgin Mary, who said that on October 13th of that year she would perform a miracle “so that all may believe.” When the day came, in front of tens of thousands, the sun is said to have “danced” and radiated with miraculous colors.
Scott Alexander notes about the event1:
Despite popular discussion of “mass hallucinations”, this is AFAICT the only example of tens thousands of people all saying they witnessed the same impossible thing, at the same time.
As far as I can tell, it’s one of two examples, because in 1954, ~10,000 fans at a Tuscany soccer match simultaneously saw at least one UFO.
Famed player Ardico Magnini was on the field that day:
I remember everything from A to Z. It was something that looked like an egg that was moving slowly, slowly, slowly. Everyone was looking up, and there was also some glitter coming down from the sky, silver glitter. We were astonished, we had never seen anything like it before.
The glitter coming down resembled angel hair, which, interestingly, is associated both with sightings of UFOs and the Virgin Mary.
Samples of the material were collected and tested at the University of Florence, with spectroscopic analysis indicating it was composed of boron, silicon, calcium, and magnesium.
Though it’s been suggested that the substance was silk from migrating spiders,2 this would consist of protein and be composed of the more familiar nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen.
Science writer and Nature editor Phillip Ball noted:
Magnesium and calcium are fairly common elements in living bodies, boron and silicon much less so - but if these were the main elements that the white fluff contained, it doesn’t sound to me as though they’d come from spiders.
They Weren’t there to See UFOs
More importantly than just being another example of a mass sighting, the soccer fans didn’t gather that day to see UFOs, have a spiritual experience, or even to see anything especially unusual. A significant fraction would have been rival fans who reflexively disagreed with whatever the opposing fans saw. They came to see a soccer game and ended up looking up and pointing at UFOs.
In comparison, the Sun Miracles seen in Fatima, and later in Bosnia and Bangkok, were all either pilgrims who had traveled specifically to see the sun miracle, or, in the case of Bangkok, were worshipers gathering for a ceremony and looked up to see a vision of their sect’s founder in the sun.
The mass hallucination theory fits much better here; the participants were self-selected for religiosity or sun miracle credulity3, and many desired and expected to see something.
Why are Sun Miracles discussed and investigated, while cases like the Tuscany UFO receive comparatively little attention? The Tuscany event was witnessed by over 10,000 people who were not gathered in anticipation of a UFO, and it left behind physical evidence that was later laboratory tested.
Sadly, it’s simply that UFOs are considered silly, while the Virgin Mary is not, and this gets confused for plausibility.
And also added, “bigfoot only gets sighted by lone hikers; ghosts are only ever in the corner of your eye; UFOs are just blurs in the sky,” so of course I had to respond.
David Bowie’s backing band, Spiders From Mars, gets its name from this incident and the spider theory.
Some skeptics present did see the effects, though they attributed it to natural explanations.