Claim: UFOs appeared at the Stadio Artemio Franchi in Florence

[ParanoidSkeptic2]

on October 27th in 1954, Florence, Italy a football game was being played, it's approximated that a crowd of 10,000 spectators was present at the event. All of the sudden, alleged UFOs appeared, different accounts describe the UFOs quite differently: some say Cigar shaped, some say Egg shaped, some say it they looked like shiny balls. An image of the newspaper with an alleged picture of the UFO surfaced at the time.

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29342407
​

The most interesting part of the event was a substance that fell during that event. The substance has been described as "silver glitter" and the consistency was described as being sticky and it disintegrated on contact. A chemical analysis was done to determine the elements present in the substance:

Article:

The lab, led by respected scientist Prof Giovanni Canneri, subjected the material to spectrographic analysis and concluded that it contained the elements boron, silicon, calcium and magnesium, and that it was not radioactive. Unfortunately this did not provide any conclusive answers - and the material was destroyed in the process.

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29342407

Originally, skeptic James McGaha attributed the substance to spider webs.

Article:

"The spiders use these webs as sails and they link together and you get a big glob of this stuff in the sky and the spiders ride on this to move between locations. They just fly on the wind and these things have been recorded at 14,000 feet above the ground. So, when the sunlight glistens off this, you get all kinds of visual effects."

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29342407

However, an Italian ufologist disputed this because the chemical make up of a spiders silk is different to the elements found.

Article:

Spider silk is a protein - an organic compound containing nitrogen, calcium, hydrogen and oxygen - not the elements reportedly found in the samples Batini and others brought to the university.

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29342407

Philip Ball, a science writer, agreed that the spiderweb hypothesis was unlikely

Article:

"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," he says.

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29342407

This is I believe the photo of the sample, kind of looks like a silky string.

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29342407​

The reason why this has been such a mystery is because of substance and the elements found in it really as well as the anecdotal accounts. The anecdotal accounts are inconsistent and the only empirical evidence is the substance and the photo.

 

[Mendel]

I would want to see the lab report. The idea that the 4 mentioned elements would be the most prominent elements in the sample, rather than the most surprising, is an assumption that merits investigation: personally, I think if the lab assumed this was organic, they probably wouldn't test for carbon, oxygen, or hydrogen.

The look at the makeup of spider silk is misleading, as this silk is not pristine: it has travelled through the air and presumably collected some dust in the process, which could well explain the silicon and calcium; Boron is released to the atmosphere as part of fertilizer.

Article:

The notable high boron contents (190-390 µg.g-1) of the dust samples are interpreted as resulting from localized spreading of boron-rich fertilizers, thus indicating a significant local impact of regional agricultural activities. Boron isotopes in dissolved depositions show a clear seasonal trend.

Source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321146856_Boron_dissolved_and_dust_atmospheric_inputs_to_a_forest_ecosystem_Northeastern_France

 

[Mauro]

This is the lab report (http://www.crprato.it/sito/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=838&Itemid=221)

Translation:

Fibrous substance with a high mechanical resistance to traction and torsion. On heating it gets brown and leaves a transparent and meltable residue. The meltable residue spectrographically shows to contain mostly boron, silicon, calcium and magnesium. Substance with a macromolecular, probably wire-like composition. In a purely hypothetical manner the substance which has been examined, in the microchemical scale, could be: borosilicate glass.

Notice: I have no idea what 'in the microchemical scale' ('nella scala microchimica') could possibly mean.

So what they did was to heat the substance until only a residue remained, then they put the residue in a spectrograph and they saw the lines of boron, silicon etc. No quantitative analysis has been done and no numbers are given (not even for the mechanical parameters) and we don't get to know how much boron silicon etc. were actually present in the sample. The date of the report (27th October 1954) is the same as the date of the sightings, so we can be sure the analysis was just a 'quick' one.

It's all consistent with spider silk (high mechanical resistance, 'macromolecular wire-like composition'). The organic part was volatilized by the heating and it's not strange to find boron silicon etc. in the residue: they were probably environmental contaminants which the silk collected when airborne or, more probably, after it fell to the ground and when it was collected.

For the visual sights, it's been reported there was at the time a military aviation drill with the use of chaff.

 

[Mendel]

"high mechanical resistance to traction and torsion" rules out spider silk, I think? The spiderwebs I know don't have high mechanical resistance.

If it's glass, it may be glass wool, but I wouldn't be able to guess how it got into the autumn air; maybe from a construction site, or directly from the manufacturer's factory?

Chaff may be a good guess; chaff is fibrous, and some chaff is metall vapor-deposited on plastic fibres, so it'd burn and leave a metallic residue.

 

[Mauro]

Spider silk has very good mechanical properties:

Strength

A dragline silk's tensile strength is comparable to that of high-grade alloy steel (450−2000 MPa),[12][13] and about half as strong as aramid filaments, such as Twaron or Kevlar (3000 MPa).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_silk#Strength

I could not find any data on torsional strength. Anyway the 'laboratory report' does not say which instrumentation and which methods were used, and gives no numerical data at all (nor the spectrogram), so little can be gleaned from it. Prof. Giovanni Canneri, however, was a respected chemist and he even wrote a book on analytical chemistry, there's no reason to doubt what he wrote. My guess is he was not much interested in the matter, made some quick assays and that was it.

Spider silk is the most often quoted explanation for the 'angel hairs', chaff has been instead related to visual sightings. Modern chaff is indeed fibrous (aluminum-coated glass fibers), but I think in 1954 they were yet using aluminum stripes (not sure about this, in any case, nothing extra-terrestrial).

 

[Mendel]

@Mauro: The problem is that the cross-section of spider silk, if it is un-spun, is very small, so the tensile strength doesn't really translate to "resistance to traction". Also, tensile strength is measured by when stuff breaks, so bubble-gum like material that can be pulled without breaking has high tensile strength and low mechanical resistance to traction, if I understand the engineering correctly?
It's not really my area of expertise.
If you make a silk rope, that's going to be quite strong.

 

[Mauro]

@Mauro: The problem is that the cross-section of spider silk, if it is un-spun, is very small, so the tensile strength doesn't really translate to "resistance to traction". Also, tensile strength is measured by when stuff breaks, so bubble-gum like material that can be pulled without breaking has high tensile strength and low mechanical resistance to traction, if I understand the engineering correctly?
It's not really my area of expertise.
If you make a silk rope, that's going to be quite strong.

Hard to say what Prof. Canneri had in mind when he wrote 'high mechanical resistance to traction' but I doubt he was talking about the overall force needed to break the strand because it would have been very low even if the strand was made of kevlar and the concept of 'tensile strength' should have been familiar to him, as to anyone making mechanical resistance tests in a laboratory. He would also have noticed a strand with a 'resistance to traction' higher than any known material at the time. But who knows.. the report lacks any detail and it's impossible to know what he actually measured (or gauged).

There are other strange things in the report: 'torsion strength' is not a commonly used concept, expecially for wires (it applies mostly to shafts): hard to say why he measured/gauged it. How did he determine the substance was 'macromolecular'? What does 'microchemical scale' mean? All in all, the report has very little value.

 

[Mauro]

I think 'nella scala microchimica' (which I translated 'in the microchemical scale') probably means 'in a very small quantity'.

In Italian we would actually say 'su scala microchimica': I guess 'nella' is an obsolete (or maybe local) form. 'Fusibile' (which I translated 'meltable') is an obsolete word too, nowadays it only means 'electrical fuse'. 'Meltable residue' and 'spider silk', admittedly, do not go well together and the glass fiber core of chaff would be a much better fit from this point of view. But I tend do dismiss chaff anyway because 1) I don't think that kind of chaff was avaliable in 1954, it was probably in the form of aluminum strips, or maybe aluminized plastic strips or even aluminized paper strips of WW2 vintage (however I'm not sure about any of this). 2) All chaff I know of has an aluminum coating, and no Al was found according to the lab report.

The only metal found was magnesium, not a very good idea for a radar reflective coating but this could point to flares, infrared decoys which can very well use magnesium. They can also contain boron:

Boron – used in some ignition mixtures

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrotechnic_composition


And it seems they can contain calcium and silicon:

In pyrotechnics, it is used as fuel to make special mixtures, e.g. for production of smokes, in flash compositions, and in percussion caps. Specification for pyrotechnic calcium silicide is MIL-C-324C. In some mixtures it may be substituted with ferrosilicon. Silicon-based fuels are used in some time delay mixtures, e.g. for controlling of explosive bolts, hand grenades, and infrared decoys.[citation needed]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_disilicide


So flares from a military drill could be a good match both for the substance which rained on the ground and for the visual sightings (I'll try later to google around to see if I can find some infos on the flares used by Italian Air Force in 1954). The only problem with the flare hypothesis is I have no idea if (and how) a burning flare could produce a fibrous residue. Not having yet given up with spider silk (giggle), could it be that ballooning spiders passed through a cloud of flares residues, which coated the silk and created the mysterious 'angel hairs'? Hard to prove.. but in the realm of possibilities I think.

 

[Mauro]

The idea of the IR decoy flare is unfortunately false. It's quite difficult to find reliable informations on the matter but it's clear IR decoys (and IR missiles) were in their infancy in 1954 and I cannot see them used in Italy at the time. Military aviations however have used other flares for targeting and signaling purposes (for illumination too, but the event occurred in daytime): I found no informations about their use in 1954, but they were widely used during WW2 and 1954 is not that far. So it might be possible that targeting/signaling flares were used during the military drill (no reliable infos on which kind of drill it was, I cannot even confirm it actually happened as a matter of fact).

I also found 'angel hairs' are a rather common appearance: they have even been reported by Darwin during the Beagle Voyage and in that case they were clearly produced by spiders which landed on the ship, 60 miles from the coast (I do not include the references I found because they are in are in Italian). They have been reported recently in 2014 in Osimo (central Italy) and they look very much as spider silk to me. Sorry but I did not succeed in embedding the videoclip.. the link is https://www.youreporter.it/video_cadono_su_osimo_i_capelli_d_angelo_dal_cielo/ Many times they are not associated to any UFO sightings (as in Osimo), other times they are (Florence 1954) and, according to wikipedia, they have been associated to the apparition of the Virgin Mary too.

To sum it up: 'angel hair' (or 'siliceous cotton') is a real phenomenon, predominantly due to ballooning spider silk. The reports of silicon, boron etc. are probably due to environmental contaminations (including possibly by plumes of burned airborne pyrotechnic devices). I guess there may be other causes too, for instance an industrial accident or glass fiber-based military chaff.

 

[Mick West]

Spider silk seems by far the most likely explanation to me. The chemical analysis is light on details, from one sample, and subject to contamination.

Large clumps of spider silk have been mistaken for UFOs before. I've seen some impressive examples myself, when I lived in a more rural area.

This photo comes from Roberto Pinotti, a UFO enthusiast whom asserts it's not spider silk.

However, that's exactly what it looks like.

Here's one that I personally saw fly in and land on my lawn.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ipx1ZHQt-rs

A few minutes later, indoors.

 

[Mick West]

More discussion about spider silk here:
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/de...-fibers-fall-from-sky-ballooning-spiders.287/

 

[ParanoidSkeptic2]

Spider silk seems by far the most likely explanation to me. The chemical analysis is light on details, from one sample, and subject to contamination.

Large clumps of spider silk have been mistaken for UFOs before. I've seen some impressive examples myself, when I lived in a more rural area.

This photo comes from Roberto Pinotti, a UFO enthusiast whom asserts it's not spider silk.

So is the most likely explanation spider web that got contaminated? That would make sense

Hard to say what Prof. Canneri had in mind when he wrote 'high mechanical resistance to traction' but I doubt he was talking about the overall force needed to break the strand because it would have been very low even if the strand was made of kevlar and the concept of 'tensile strength' should have been familiar to him, as to anyone making mechanical resistance tests in a laboratory. He would also have noticed a strand with a 'resistance to traction' higher than any known material at the time. But who knows.. the report lacks any detail and it's impossible to know what he actually measured (or gauged).

Hmm, the way in which it was so quickly done, do you think that means that the scientists didn't really think much of the phenomenon? Like just a case of misidentification? Like you said, the report is really light on how many materials were found, which could mean that they kept it vague on purpose to keep the myth alive?

 

[Mauro]

So is the most likely explanation spider web that got contaminated? That would make sense

Hmm, the way in which it was so quickly done, do you think that means that the scientists didn't really think much of the phenomenon? Like just a case of misidentification? Like you said, the report is really light on how many materials were found, which could mean that they kept it vague on purpose to keep the myth alive?

I cannot know for sure of course but yes, I guess Prof. Canneri was at best mildly interested. As for the vagueness of the report, I don't think it was on purpose, just they didn't have other data to report.

I have also found an Italian 'UFOlogy' website from Prato (a town near Florence). They did a good job in searching for newspaper articles on the matter (I looked for newspaper archives online but they're not available so one needs to go to Florence and search the paper archives). There are two interesting things:

1) The sighting happened at the peak of an UFO frenzy which was gripping a good chunk of Italy since May-June 1954.
2) A journalist followed the analysis of the sample and published some more details about it.

1) These are two example newspaper articles which appeared shortly before the Comunale Stadium (now Artemio Franchi Stadium) sighting:

http://www.crprato.it/sito/index.ph...d=1:anno-1954&catid=34:avvistamenti&Itemid=68

The article was published by 'La Nazione' on 15 October 1954 and it's titled 'Flying saucers in Tuscania skies'. It reports about sightings in different Tuscanian cities and in other Italian cities (Bologna, Verona, Rome).

The day after, La Nazione published this:

The title reads: 'Flying saucers psychosis in all cities in Tuscany', with more sightings reported. More articles followed, including one titled 'A woman from Grosseto saw a Martian'. It seems people were well primed to look out for anything unusual happening.


2) The analysis

27 Ottobre 1954 Istituto di Chimica Analitica dell'Università di Firenze. La famosa analisi chimica sulla bambagia silicea presumibilmente caduta dagli oggetti in volo sul cielo della città. Fonti: La Nazione 28/10/1954

"..Ci siamo rivolti al professor Giovanni Canneri direttore dell'istituto di chimica analitica dell'Università di Firenze il quale, con l'assistenza del suo aiuto, professor Danilo Cozzi ha rapidamente effettuato un analisi. E' stato fatto prima un esame microscopico e quindi un esame spettrografico. La sostanza filiforme raccolta a Sesto e lungo L'Africo è stata posta sull'elettrodo dello spettrografo ed è stata riscaldata sul " becco di Bunsen" e portata alla fusione. Una parte, risultata organica, si è combusta è volatilizzata; una parte inorganica è rimasta come residuo. L'elettrodo con in cima il residuo è stato posto dentro lo spettrografo e tra questo elettrodo e l'altro è stato fatto scoccare l'arco elettrico e fotografato lo spettro emesso dalla sostanza incandescente: quindi è stata fatta anche la prova cosiddetta " a scintilla" e fotografato il conseguente spettro. Sviluppata la pellicola e posta sull'apparecchio di lettura, dal confronto con gli spettri prima fotografati e lo spettro campione sono stati rilevati gli elementi della sostanza che si voleva analizzare.

Translation:

October 27th, 1954, Analytical Chemistry Institute of Florence University. The famous analysis on the siliceous cotton presumed to be fallen from the objects flying over the city. Source: La Nazione 28/10/1954.

".. we asked professor Giovanni Canneri, director of the analytical chemistry institute of Florence university who, with the help of his assistant professor Danilo Cozzi, quickly made an analysis. First a microscopic and then a spectrographic analysis were made. The wire-like substance collected in Sesto (NdT: Sesto Fiorentino, a town near Florence) and along the Africo (NdT: an affluent of Arno river, actually Affrico) has been placed on the electrode of the spectrograph, heated with a Bunsen beak and brought to the melting point. A part of it, organic in nature, has burned and volatilized; an inorganic part remained as a residue. The electrode with the residue has been placed in a spectrograph and bewteen this and the electrode an electrical discharge has been made, taking a picture of the spectrum emitted from the incandescent substance: that is to say, the so-called 'spark test' has been made and a picture was taken of the spectrum. Once the film had been developed, the elements in the substance under analyisis have been determined by comparison with reference spectra".

This is interesting from many points of view.

a) There is no report of mechanical tests been made
b) There is instead a report of a microscopic examination which was not explicitly detailed in the final laboratory report
c) It's confirmed that the substance was at least partially organic, and that the organic part was burnt away before the spectrographic analysis

Another thing I wonder about: I'm no analytical chemist, but I'm sure the very first thing I'd do would be to weigh the substance. This is pretty basic and this omission convinces me the professor wanted to make the journalists happy without wasting too much time.

Lastly, there are more interesting newspaper articles on the Prato website. They are too long to translate as a whole (sorry), but what is clear is that the Stadium sighting was just one of very many and it was not considered any more special at the time.

 

[Mendel]

what is clear is that the Stadium sighting was just one of very many and it was not considered any more special at the time.

What's special about it is that it left tangible evidence.

 

[Mauro]

What's special about it is that it left tangible evidence.

Indeed, of ballooning spiders above Tuscany

To add more context, here follows the newspaper article published the day after the Stadium sightings. As it seems, a guy phoned the La Nazione newspaper to report he (too) had just sighted UFOs. While he was at the phone with the journalist more sightings occurred and the journalists ran to the rooftop and saw them too. Less than an hour later there were the sightings at the stadium, when the connection between the sightings and the cotton falling from the sky had apparently already been made.

L'avvistamento su Firenze. Fonti: " La Nazione del 28/10/54"
" Firenze ore 14.20.
La storia dei " dischi " è cominciata per noi alle 14.30. A quell'ora infatti il laureando di ingegneria Alfredo Jacopozzi abitante in via Tito Speri, ci ha telefonato, dicendo una cosa non certo nuova in questi ultimi tempi : dicendo cioè che aveva visto nel cielo di Firenze diversi dischi volanti: " Sono a coppie, ha precisato, la prima coppia è passata alle 14,20 e avevano forma di ala, sembravano due gabbiani nitidissimi in volo…Quelli della seconda coppia sono passati alcuni secondi dopo ed erano a forma di goccia d'acqua. L'ultima coppia è passata alle 14,29: erano velocissimi, ma io ho seguito tutto con il binocolo e sono in grado quindi di descrivere abbastanza bene gli oggetti... " Era solo? " No. Qui con me sono altre persone che possono testimoniare…" Ci dica, per favore i nomi.."Piero Giuggioli. Silvano del Rosso. Enzo Giannoni. Gino Pianuri. Piero Pratesi." Basta, basta, cosa hanno visto ? "Quello che ho visto io… i dischi sono sfrecciati veloci. Io ho preso il tempo contando mentalmente. Per percorrere un angolo di circa 90 gradi la prima coppia ha impiegato 29 secondi e la seconda coppia molto meno circa 15 secondi…hanno perso della strana bambagia che ora si vede oscillare nel cielo - Ma attenzione…!- Cosa c'è?- Qui mi dicono che dalla finestra li vedono passare ancora- Ne è sicuro?- Sicurissimo.- Allora ci scusi tanto andiamo anche noi a vedere- E' stato così che, dopo aver fatto varie rampe di scale di corsa, ci siamo affacciati sopra i tetti di via Ricasoli. Erano con noi altre persone. Cosa abbiamo visto ?
In un primo tempo, niente. Ovvero il bel cielo sereno di una buona giornata d'autunno. Poi in mezzo al cielo è apparsa la " cosa". Una cosa bianca, tonda, lucida, immobile con tutta l'aria dei palloncini che sfuggono ai venditori nella calca delle fiere paesane e che sono destinati alla breve gloria di un volo che finisce in genere con uno scoppio. Cercavamo di attribuire alla cosa un valore eccezionale, ma non ci riuscivamo. Era un palloncino e basta.
Sennonché ad un tratto, tra l'oggetto fermo e la cupola del duomo, è sfrecciato rapidamente proveniente, diciamo dalle Cascine diretto a Rovezzano, un altro palloncino bianco. Velocissimo. Molto più veloce di un aereo: molto meno di una stella filante. Poi è passato un altro disco poi un altro ancora. Ne abbiamo contati sei. Abbiamo cioè, per la precisione, contato sei palloncini che andavano a velocità eccezionale. Inoltre possiamo testimoniare di avere visto cascare dall'alto degli strani " fiocchi" bianchi che sembravano semi di piante anemofile.
Intanto le telefonate continuavano. Tra l'altro una voce femminile, molto concitata ha detto che a Sesto Fiorentino sono successe cose molto strane: Qualcuno aveva visto un disco aprirsi e dividersi in tre pezzi che avevano proseguito la corsa l'uno indipendentemente dall'altro. Ma subito dopo il passaggio dei tre oggetti, sul cielo, erano state notate come delle ragnatele lucenti che cadevano lentamente al suolo: tali regnatele si erano posate sugli alberi, sui fili della luce, un po' dappertutto.
-Venga qui a vedere, se non ci crede, ha detto la signora, la ragnatela c'è ancora…Un cronista è partito per Sesto con l'incarico di portare al giornale la ragnatela. L'incarico è stato assolto. Abbiamo allora telefonato al Signor Jacopozzi e lo abbiamo informato di quanto era stato notato a Sesto, in modo da poter fare degli utili raffronti. Dalla nostra frettolosa indagine è risultato questo: che anche il signor Jacopozzi aveva seguito le evoluzioni dei misteriosi fiocchi e ne aveva visto uno che si era posato sopra un filo della luce .- Guardi se riesce a prenderlo abbiamo detto. Mi ci provo..Altre telefonate ancora. Un cittadino ci ha raccontato una scena semiumoristica che si è svolta allo stadio Comunale dove si stava giocando una partita di allenamento, tra la squadra della Pistoiese e la Fiorentina.- Anche lì dischi?- Non so cosa siano.- So che ci sono degli oggetti bianchi che volteggiano nell'aria sembrano piume. Speriamo bene…Speriamo che non siano Marziani tifosi..Altri cittadini ci hanno avvertito che in molte strade si erano formati dei veri e propri assembramenti di persone che stavano incuriositi, e magari intimoriti, a naso in su. Un impiegato della Selt Valdarno ha detto di avere ricevuto a sua volta una telefonata da certi operai che stanno facendo lavori nei pressi di Monghidoro. Anche lì dischi. Anzi un disco solo, ma in compenso grosso come una casa e velocissimo. Altezza circa diecimila metri.
Psicosi? Allucinazione collettiva? Difficile dare un giudizio così sui due piedi. Tanto più che tutta la città sembra aver perso la testa. E sulla bilancia c'erano quei diecimila spettatori dello stadio comunale che pesavano non poco. Spettatori che di sfere, senza dubbio, se ne intendono.Fonti: La Nazione del 28/10/54

http://www.crprato.it/sito/index.ph...d=1:anno-1954&catid=34:avvistamenti&Itemid=68


(NdT: I told you it was damn long ...)


The sighting above Florence. Source: La Nazione 28/10/1954

Florence, 2:20 pm. The 'saucers' story began for us at 2:30 pm. Indeed at that hour Alfredo Jacopozzi, a laureand in egineering who lives in Tito Speri street phones us telling a story which surely is not new at this times: he had seen several flying saucers in the sky above Florence: "They come in pairs, he pointed out, the first pair was at 2:20pm and they were in the shape of a wing, they looked like two sharp seagulls in flight.. The second pair came some seconds later and they looked like water drops. The last pair came at 2:29pm: they were very fast but I followed everything with a binocular so I can describe the objects rather well." Were you alone? "No, there are other persons here with me who can witness". Please, tell us their names (follows a list of names)". Okay, okay, what did they see? "The same thing I saw. The saucers darted away very fast. I took the time by counting in my mind. To cross a 90 degree corner (NdT: whatever this may mean) the first pair took 29 seconds. The second pair took much less, about 15 seconds. They lost a strange cotton wool which is now drifting in the sky. But, look... what's happening now? Here they tell me they can be seen just now out of the window crossing the sky" Are you sure? "Definetely sure". Then excuse us but we're going to see that in person. Then, after running up the staircases, we looked over the rooftops of Ricasoli street (in Florence center). There were other persons with us. What did we see?

At first, nothing, but the clear sky of an autumn day. Then in the middle of the sky the 'thing' appeared. A white, round, shiny thing, not moving, seemingly one of those baloons which escape during town fairs and are destined to the brief glory of a flight which usually ends in a bang. We tried to invest the thing of an exceptional value, but we couldn't. It was a baloon, nothing more.

If not that, suddendly, between the steady object and the Dome (NdT: of Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral) another white baloon darted quickly coming, let's say, from the Cascine (NdT: a park ~ 1.5km north-west of Florence center) towards Rovezzano (NdT: ~2km east of Florence center). It was very fast. Much faster than a plane, much less than a shooting star. Then another saucer, then one more. In total we saw six objects with exceptional speed. We can also witness we saw strange white 'flakes' falling from above, similar to the seeds of anemophilus plants.

In the meantime phone calls were going on. Among others a female voice, very agitated, told that in Sesto Fiorentino (NdT: a town ~5-6km north west of Florence) very strange things had happened. Someone had told to have seen a disk to split open and divide in three pieces which then moved independently one from the other. But immediately after the three objects passed, people noticed things similar to shiny cobwebs slowly falling to the ground: such cobwebs had landed on the trees, on electric wires, a bit everywhere. "Come here and see if you don't believe it, the cobwebs are yet here", said the woman. A journalist left for Sesto, with the assignment to bring back the cobwebs. Then we phoned Mr. Jacopozzi (NdT: the engineering student of the first phone call) and we told him what had happened in Sesto, in order to make useful comparisons. From our hasty investigation we found Mr Jacopozzi too had witnessed the floating 'flakes' and had seen one landing on an electric wire. Try to get it, we told him. "I'll try". And then more phone calls. A citizens told us of a semi-humorous scene which happened at the Comunale stadium where a training match between Fiorentina and Pistoiese was going on. "Saucers there too?" "I don't know what they are. I know there are white objects floating in the air, similar to feathers" "Let's hope for the best... Let's hope they're not soccer fans from Mars". Other citizens told us in many streets gathering of people had formed, all looking up with curiosity and, maybe, a little fear. An employee of Sert Valdarno reported he too had received a phone call from workers operating near Monghidoro (NdT: a town ~60km north of Florence). There too, saucers. Or better, just one saucer but as big as a house and very fast. Ten thousand meters height.

Psychosis? Mass delusion? It's difficult to give a judgement this soon. Also because the whole city seems to have been driven mad. And those ten thousand viewers at the stadium have a substantial weight. Viewers who know a lot about spheres, no doubt.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

... a disk to split open and divide in three pieces which then moved independently one from the other. But immediately after the three objects passed, people noticed things similar to shiny cobwebs slowly falling to the ground: such cobwebs had landed on the trees, on electric wires, a bit everywhere.

The proper term, in English, is mass delusion, (while mass hysteria is reserved for imagined illness or poisoning). The semi-official term for an episode of UFO mass delusion is "UFO flap."

The simplest explanation is that everything these people were seeing was spiderweb, and they were misjudging distances and size. They were perceiving small/close objects as large/distant objects. The speeds would thus also be over estimated.

During a UFO flap there's the possibility that multiple objects were involved. But, there's no need to appeal to aircraft, flares, etc. Spiderweb is a sufficient explanation.

This accounts for the numerous objects with different shapes, the balloon like movements, the splitting apart and the deposit of "cobwebs." There were large clumps and small threads - and everything in between. Spiderweb is reflective and also refractive and can be very shiny. The refractive quality can make it "flash" as more or less sunlight is directed to the witness, which makes it attract attention.

Some examples