Wonders in the Sky (30 page)

October 1461, Metz, France: Many lights, seen twice

“Between Saint Remy's day (October 1
^st
) and All Saints' Day (November 1
^st
) numerous and marvelous signs like great firebrands the length of four fathoms and a foot large were seen in the air. “It lasted for half of a half quarter of an hour and was seen twice. Some people also said they had seen by night the like of a battle, and heard a great uproar and noise.”

Two significant meteor showers happen in October: the Draconids (between the 8
^th
and 10
^th
day of the month) and the Orionids (around the 21
^st
). The sightings might have been caused by these events, but meteors would not account for the report of “great uproar and noise.”

 

Source: Jean-François Hughenin,
Les Chroniques de la ville de Metz recueillies, mises en ordre et publiées pour la première fois
(Metz 1838), 297.

148.

1 November 1461, Arras, France: Hovering object

Jacques Duclercq, legal adviser to Philippe III, writes: “On this day of Our Lord, All Saints Day, there appeared in the sky an object as bright as burning steel, as long and wide as half of the moon.
It was stationary for fifteen minutes. Suddenly, the strange object began to spiral upwards and then it spun around and rolled over like a loose watch spring, after which it disappeared in the sky.”

 

Source:
Mémoires de Jacques du Clercq, sur le Règne de Philippe le Bon, Duc de Bourgogne
,
publiés pour la première fois par le Baron de Reiffenberg
, Tome III (2
^nd
ed., Bruxelles, 1836), 189.

149.

19 February 1465, Italy: Great ship in the air

From the
Notabilia Temporum
of Angelo de Tummulillis: “There appeared many signs in the air in the same month, always in the morning, at daybreak. At the first hour of the 19th of this month a kind of great flaming ship appeared in the air towards the north and it appeared again on the 20
^th
and 21
^st
, not at the same time but later.”

 

Source: U. Dall'Olmo, op. cit.

150.

8 March 1468, Mount Kasuga, Japan: Dark object

In the middle of the night a dark object took off from Mount Kasuga flying west towards the bay of Osaka, with a sound like a spinning wheel. Its size was estimated as 9 by 6 feet.

 

Source:
Brothers Magazine
I, 1, no full quotation found.

151.

27 September 1477, Japan, location unknown
Object, unknown substance

A luminous object crossed the sky. A cotton-like substance fell for the next six hours.

 

Source: Case summary in
Brothers
I, 1, but no original source given.

152.

1478, Milan, Italy: Two flying objects during a war

Two unexplained flying objects are observed during a battle.

Fig. 8: Illustration from Lycosthenes

An engraving of the scene accompanies the text in Lycosthenes' edition but there is no guarantee it was made especially for the book because images such as these were recycled from publication to publication.

 

Source: Lycosthenes,
Prodigiorum ac ostentorum Chronicon
(Basel, 1557).

153.

1479, Arabia: Pointed object in the sky

A remarkable engraving highlights this observation. Lycosthenes notes that this object, which he calls a “comet,” was seen in Arabia, “in the manner of a sharply pointed beam.” The illustration shows that whatever was observed does not to conform to our knowledge of comets.

However we should note that the illustration looks similar to drawings of the first multi-stage rockets built around the same time by Conrad Haas. We therefore doubt it was drawn in Arabia. Usually such drawings would have been provided by the printers, often taken from very different contexts.