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UFOs

Historical sky phenomena

Long before the airplane was invented, chroniclers described fiery crosses, balls, cylinders and entire “battles” of objects in the sky. The most famous are the 16th-century broadsheets from Nuremberg and Basel. Historians usually explain them as halo displays, auroras and meteors, depicted in the religious language of their era – but for many enthusiasts they are proof that UFOs have accompanied humanity for centuries.

cases
9
years
749–1883

Unexplained: 1 Disputed: 6 Explained: 2

  1. 8th century

    1. c. 749 Historical sky phenomena · Disputed The Airship over Clonmacnoise Clonmacnoise Monastery, County Offaly, Ireland Eighth-century Irish annals record ships with crews seen in the air; a later legend tells of an anchor that caught on a church.
    2. 793 Historical sky phenomena · Disputed Fiery Dragons over Northumbria Lindisfarne and the Kingdom of Northumbria, northeast England, United Kingdom The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded “fiery dragons” flying over Northumbria in 793, shortly before Vikings sacked the monastery at Lindisfarne.

  2. 9th century

    1. c. 815 Historical sky phenomena · Explained Visitors from Magonia before the Archbishop of Lyon Lyon, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, France Archbishop Agobard of Lyon described a crowd wanting to stone four people who had supposedly fallen from sky ships from a land called Magonia.

  3. 16th century

    1. 1561 Historical sky phenomena · Disputed 1561 Celestial Phenomenon over Nuremberg Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany At dawn on April 14, 1561, the people of Nuremberg reportedly saw globes, crosses, and cylinders battling in the sky, as recorded in a woodcut by Hans Glaser.
    2. 1566 Historical sky phenomena · Disputed Black Globes over Basel Basel, canton of Basel-Stadt, Switzerland At sunrise on August 7, 1566, numerous black globes appeared over Basel and, according to a broadsheet, raced toward the sun and “fought” each other.

  4. 17th century

    1. 1609 Historical sky phenomena · Unexplained Shining “Basins” over Gangwon Province Yangyang and other counties of Gangwon Province, South Korea Joseon dynasty chronicles describe round, shining objects “like a washbasin” seen in 1609 in several counties of Korea’s Gangwon Province.

  5. 19th century

    1. 1803 Historical sky phenomena · Disputed Utsuro-bune: The “Hollow Ship” of the Hitachi Coast Coast of the former Hitachi Province, now Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan 19th-century Japanese texts describe a strange round vessel with a young woman inside that washed ashore in Hitachi Province in 1803.
    2. 1882 Historical sky phenomena · Explained The 1882 “Auroral Beam” over Greenwich Royal Observatory, Greenwich, London, United Kingdom During a powerful magnetic storm in 1882, astronomers saw a greenish, spindle-shaped object cross the sky in two minutes.
    3. 1883 Historical sky phenomena · Disputed Zacatecas Sun Transit Objects Zacatecas Observatory, Zacatecas, Mexico Mexican astronomer José Bonilla saw and photographed hundreds of dark objects passing across the face of the Sun.