August 27, 2025 • 10 mins
An amazing case of an early modern mass sighting of UFOs came in Nuremberg, Germany in 1561. Except it wasn’t that at all.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's Chuck, and we're sitting in for Jerry, who would
be sitting in for Dave. And if that's confusing, it
doesn't matter because that has nothing to do with this episode.
On the fifteen sixty one celestial Phenomenon of Nuremberg.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
That's right, Nuremberg, Germany.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Of course, on April fourteenth of that year, there were
people This is early morning, and there were a lot
of people around and this happened for over an hour
where they looked up in the sky and saw what
looked like an aerial battle between airships of unknown origin.
I guess it's the best way you could say it.
There were different colors, there were different shapes, there were
(00:42):
squares and globes and crescents, and eventually the ships crashed
outside of town and dissolved into smoke. And a lot
of people saw this, and a lot of people who
weren't just like silly Rubes, right.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
It wasn't like Rusty and Eugene were out drinking that
night who saw it and came back and told everybody meet.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Other people doing their thing in the morning, exactly.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
And we don't know how many we just know, quote
a lot of men and women. And then after all that,
something like a black spear appeared in the sky too,
So this is a big deal. You can imagine. We
know about it because there was a broadsheet that was
published recording it or documenting it. There's a publisher named
Hans Glazer, and he published an einblot Druk. Did I
(01:30):
say that right?
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Okay, which is a type of broadsheet that has a
headline in illustration, usually a woodcut, and then you know
an account of what happened. And so there's this famous
ein blot Duke of the fifteen sixty one celestial phenomenon
in Nuremberg that Hans Hans Glazer made. And if you've
even remotely heard of this, I'll bet you've seen his
(01:53):
famous woodcut from it. It's quite lovely.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yeah. I love a woodcut. We both love woodcuts.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah, a good woodcut is something that agreed.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
So now we look back and say, like, hey, these
people saw this is like one of the first UFO encounters.
They didn't talk of such things back then, so of
course they didn't talk about it that way. But it
was not as it turns out an isolated incident. Even
at the time, there were apparently a lot of sort
of sightings like this at the time where it looked
(02:22):
like airship battles were going on. So if you lived
around that area of the Alpine sort of Scandinavian area
at the time, between like a nine year period or so,
there were four hundred of these broadsheets, So it was
like a hot thing, a hot topic.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Yeah, people were nuts for it, right. So this was
during the time where Austria, Switzerland, Germany some other countries,
and Nuremberg is in Germany. Of course they were part
of the Holy Roman Empire, and the Holy Roman Empire
was ruled by an emperor and the pope, so therefore
it was a pretty Catholic empire. And at the time
of this event in Nuremberg the Reformations going on. So
(03:01):
this is a really tumultuous time that was kicked off
by Martin Luther, and during the Reformation era there was
a lot of religious fervor. There was a lot of
emphasis on end times. So when people saw things like
these aerial battles in the sky, they're like, this is
clearly a sign from God. We don't know what it means,
but what it's ultimately telling us is that we're doomed
(03:23):
unless we repent our in mend our ways.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
So just to sort of reiterate, they did not call
these UFOs. That's an US thing. And maybe we'll take
that break and we will come back right after this
and again once more.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
As why.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
S K tough?
Speaker 1 (03:55):
You should know? Okay, hey, Chuck, So if, like you said,
this fifteen sixty one celestial event over Nuremberg was one
of hundreds in this era, this era of the trend
of seeing aerial battles in the sky, why is that
the one we're talking about? And there's actually a really
(04:15):
good explanation why. The reason why is because this was
a forgotten event, because again it just got mixed in
with all the others. It was a forgotten event in
history largely that was plucked out of obscurity to be
used as an example in a book about flying saucers,
or actually the mythology we create around things like flying
saucers by none other than psychoanalyst Carl Jung. And because
(04:40):
this one event was plucked from all the other ones
that he could have used, it came to seem to
us people living today as a singular event, like nothing
like this had ever happened before, right, Yeah, so it
loses its context in that sense. And then eventually over
time since nineteen fifty eight and that book came out,
(05:01):
it was stripped further of its context that Carl Jung
was using this as an example of people coming up
with their own mythologies about something they didn't understand, like
we do with UFOs. And so this one event that
happened in Nuremberg in fifteen sixty one that Carl Jung
put in his book about flying saucers is a he's
(05:24):
talking about a UFO siding. That's where we landed today
when we think about the fifteen sixty one celestial phenomenon
being a UFO.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Siding, Yeah, aliens basically exactly.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
But you know, I think I said in the first
part that you know, these weren't rubes, there were just
regular people. It was fifteen sixty one, but like science
was around a little bit there in some former fashion,
like less than a decade after this, they figured out,
like what comments were, that they were spacefaring natural objects,
So they weren't people sitting around looking at the sky.
(05:57):
Saying it was like a dragon or something like that.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
No, yeah, they yes, And when you take that into
account that these weren't just dummies, you can't just be like, yeah,
it was a commet obviously, or maybe even a couple
shooting stars, who knows. If you take that kind of
easy explanation out of your toolbox, as they put it
in HR, it becomes much harder to explain what exactly
(06:22):
they saw. You also have to take into account these
people had eons of collective awareness and memory of an
experience with natural phenomenon. So again, it's not going to
be a comment, it's not going to be a rainbow,
it's not gonna be something like that. Over time, basically
three main explanations have been proffered, and that's sun dogs, fireworks,
(06:44):
and embellishment.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Yeah, a sun dog is it's not something you see
every day, but it's not like super super uncommon. Apparently,
like they're as common or more common than rainbows. So
it's the kind of thing that happens with on frequency.
But that's when the sun's reflected by these low angled
ice crystals up in the air and it triples it.
(07:07):
Basically where you have two sons on either side, and
it fits that it's morning because it happens. The sun
dogs happen when the sun is low on the horizon,
so that would sort of make sense that it was daybreak. Yeah.
The one thing though, is that this happens a lot,
So if this is kind of thing that or not
a lot, but with enough frequency that people wouldn't be like,
oh my god, let's make a woodcut about.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
This, right. One other thing that actually is a mark
in SunDog's Favors and Explanations, they typically last between fifteen
and thirty minutes, but as recently as twenty twenty three,
one in northern China was witnessed that lasted a couple hours.
So if this thing lasted an hour, it's not like
a sun dog is ruled out because of the length
of time. That was one.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Another one is that in fifteen forty full twenty plus
years before this event, a man named Veinocchio Bering Guccio
published Day la Pyrotechnia, which is the first book from
Europe at least on how to prepare rockets, including using
rockets and festivals what we would call fireworks. So the
(08:10):
question is like, was there somebody in Nurrenberg who had
gotten hold of this book and was putting on a
fireworks displayed without telling anybody. And there's actually some of
the details are like, yeah, that would make sense that
these things fell out of the sky and fizzled out
into smoke when they were on the ground.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
I mean it sounds silly at first, but that one
makes a little more sense to me than even sun
dogs as far as like maybe creating weird shapes and
the fizzling out part like you talked about, Like but
then you're just sort of making a theory about some rogue,
you know, German that got this book.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
But hey, that's not unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Right, Like on its face it seems unlikely, but when
you dig in, it's like it's a little meteor for sure.
I mean, like this is something that they probably wouldn't
have seen before, you know, so at least especial that box.
And then there's embellishment too.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Right, Yeah, I mean that's kind of the obvious one
that maybe I don't know, something happened, Maybe it was
a sun dog gone wild in a great series of
videos in the eighties, a SunDog gone Wild in the account,
and then the woodcutting and that broadsheet. Maybe that's what happened,
(09:21):
because even it wasn't like the heyday of yellow journalism
in tabloids, but even very early on in publishing they
were kind of doing some more sort of selacious stuff
to get readers because there was competition going on exactly.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
So it makes a lot of sense that they might
have been embellishing no matter what it is. That doesn't
explain what it is, but that explains probably the account
of it, right, Yeah, I agreed, So, I mean, I
guess that's it. It was a one of multiple stories
of something that happened at the time, plucked out of
obscurity by Carl Jung, stripped of context, turned into a
(09:56):
UFO sighting that had nothing to do with that by us.
I want to also thank our listener James Calamara, who's
written in multiple times to ask for us to do
this one as far back as twenty twenty one, which
is four hundred and sixty years after the Nuremberg event. Exactly.
(10:17):
Pretty spooky Short stuff is out.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's Chuck, and we're sitting in for Jerry, who would
be sitting in for Dave. And if that's confusing, it
doesn't matter because that has nothing to do with this episode.
On the fifteen sixty one celestial Phenomenon of Nuremberg.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
That's right, Nuremberg, Germany.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Of course, on April fourteenth of that year, there were
people This is early morning, and there were a lot
of people around and this happened for over an hour
where they looked up in the sky and saw what
looked like an aerial battle between airships of unknown origin.
I guess it's the best way you could say it.
There were different colors, there were different shapes, there were
(00:42):
squares and globes and crescents, and eventually the ships crashed
outside of town and dissolved into smoke. And a lot
of people saw this, and a lot of people who
weren't just like silly Rubes, right.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
It wasn't like Rusty and Eugene were out drinking that
night who saw it and came back and told everybody meet.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Other people doing their thing in the morning, exactly.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
And we don't know how many we just know, quote
a lot of men and women. And then after all that,
something like a black spear appeared in the sky too,
So this is a big deal. You can imagine. We
know about it because there was a broadsheet that was
published recording it or documenting it. There's a publisher named
Hans Glazer, and he published an einblot Druk. Did I
(01:30):
say that right?
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Okay, which is a type of broadsheet that has a
headline in illustration, usually a woodcut, and then you know
an account of what happened. And so there's this famous
ein blot Duke of the fifteen sixty one celestial phenomenon
in Nuremberg that Hans Hans Glazer made. And if you've
even remotely heard of this, I'll bet you've seen his
(01:53):
famous woodcut from it. It's quite lovely.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yeah. I love a woodcut. We both love woodcuts.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Yeah, a good woodcut is something that agreed.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
So now we look back and say, like, hey, these
people saw this is like one of the first UFO encounters.
They didn't talk of such things back then, so of
course they didn't talk about it that way. But it
was not as it turns out an isolated incident. Even
at the time, there were apparently a lot of sort
of sightings like this at the time where it looked
(02:22):
like airship battles were going on. So if you lived
around that area of the Alpine sort of Scandinavian area
at the time, between like a nine year period or so,
there were four hundred of these broadsheets, So it was
like a hot thing, a hot topic.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Yeah, people were nuts for it, right. So this was
during the time where Austria, Switzerland, Germany some other countries,
and Nuremberg is in Germany. Of course they were part
of the Holy Roman Empire, and the Holy Roman Empire
was ruled by an emperor and the pope, so therefore
it was a pretty Catholic empire. And at the time
of this event in Nuremberg the Reformations going on. So
(03:01):
this is a really tumultuous time that was kicked off
by Martin Luther, and during the Reformation era there was
a lot of religious fervor. There was a lot of
emphasis on end times. So when people saw things like
these aerial battles in the sky, they're like, this is
clearly a sign from God. We don't know what it means,
but what it's ultimately telling us is that we're doomed
(03:23):
unless we repent our in mend our ways.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
So just to sort of reiterate, they did not call
these UFOs. That's an US thing. And maybe we'll take
that break and we will come back right after this
and again once more.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
As why.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
S K tough?
Speaker 1 (03:55):
You should know? Okay, hey, Chuck, So if, like you said,
this fifteen sixty one celestial event over Nuremberg was one
of hundreds in this era, this era of the trend
of seeing aerial battles in the sky, why is that
the one we're talking about? And there's actually a really
(04:15):
good explanation why. The reason why is because this was
a forgotten event, because again it just got mixed in
with all the others. It was a forgotten event in
history largely that was plucked out of obscurity to be
used as an example in a book about flying saucers,
or actually the mythology we create around things like flying
saucers by none other than psychoanalyst Carl Jung. And because
(04:40):
this one event was plucked from all the other ones
that he could have used, it came to seem to
us people living today as a singular event, like nothing
like this had ever happened before, right, Yeah, so it
loses its context in that sense. And then eventually over
time since nineteen fifty eight and that book came out,
(05:01):
it was stripped further of its context that Carl Jung
was using this as an example of people coming up
with their own mythologies about something they didn't understand, like
we do with UFOs. And so this one event that
happened in Nuremberg in fifteen sixty one that Carl Jung
put in his book about flying saucers is a he's
(05:24):
talking about a UFO siding. That's where we landed today
when we think about the fifteen sixty one celestial phenomenon
being a UFO.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Siding, Yeah, aliens basically exactly.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
But you know, I think I said in the first
part that you know, these weren't rubes, there were just
regular people. It was fifteen sixty one, but like science
was around a little bit there in some former fashion,
like less than a decade after this, they figured out,
like what comments were, that they were spacefaring natural objects,
So they weren't people sitting around looking at the sky.
(05:57):
Saying it was like a dragon or something like that.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
No, yeah, they yes, And when you take that into
account that these weren't just dummies, you can't just be like, yeah,
it was a commet obviously, or maybe even a couple
shooting stars, who knows. If you take that kind of
easy explanation out of your toolbox, as they put it
in HR, it becomes much harder to explain what exactly
(06:22):
they saw. You also have to take into account these
people had eons of collective awareness and memory of an
experience with natural phenomenon. So again, it's not going to
be a comment, it's not going to be a rainbow,
it's not gonna be something like that. Over time, basically
three main explanations have been proffered, and that's sun dogs, fireworks,
(06:44):
and embellishment.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Yeah, a sun dog is it's not something you see
every day, but it's not like super super uncommon. Apparently,
like they're as common or more common than rainbows. So
it's the kind of thing that happens with on frequency.
But that's when the sun's reflected by these low angled
ice crystals up in the air and it triples it.
(07:07):
Basically where you have two sons on either side, and
it fits that it's morning because it happens. The sun
dogs happen when the sun is low on the horizon,
so that would sort of make sense that it was daybreak. Yeah.
The one thing though, is that this happens a lot,
So if this is kind of thing that or not
a lot, but with enough frequency that people wouldn't be like,
oh my god, let's make a woodcut about.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
This, right. One other thing that actually is a mark
in SunDog's Favors and Explanations, they typically last between fifteen
and thirty minutes, but as recently as twenty twenty three,
one in northern China was witnessed that lasted a couple hours.
So if this thing lasted an hour, it's not like
a sun dog is ruled out because of the length
of time. That was one.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Another one is that in fifteen forty full twenty plus
years before this event, a man named Veinocchio Bering Guccio
published Day la Pyrotechnia, which is the first book from
Europe at least on how to prepare rockets, including using
rockets and festivals what we would call fireworks. So the
(08:10):
question is like, was there somebody in Nurrenberg who had
gotten hold of this book and was putting on a
fireworks displayed without telling anybody. And there's actually some of
the details are like, yeah, that would make sense that
these things fell out of the sky and fizzled out
into smoke when they were on the ground.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
I mean it sounds silly at first, but that one
makes a little more sense to me than even sun
dogs as far as like maybe creating weird shapes and
the fizzling out part like you talked about, Like but
then you're just sort of making a theory about some rogue,
you know, German that got this book.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
But hey, that's not unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Right, Like on its face it seems unlikely, but when
you dig in, it's like it's a little meteor for sure.
I mean, like this is something that they probably wouldn't
have seen before, you know, so at least especial that box.
And then there's embellishment too.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Right, Yeah, I mean that's kind of the obvious one
that maybe I don't know, something happened, Maybe it was
a sun dog gone wild in a great series of
videos in the eighties, a SunDog gone Wild in the account,
and then the woodcutting and that broadsheet. Maybe that's what happened,
(09:21):
because even it wasn't like the heyday of yellow journalism
in tabloids, but even very early on in publishing they
were kind of doing some more sort of selacious stuff
to get readers because there was competition going on exactly.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
So it makes a lot of sense that they might
have been embellishing no matter what it is. That doesn't
explain what it is, but that explains probably the account
of it, right, Yeah, I agreed, So, I mean, I
guess that's it. It was a one of multiple stories
of something that happened at the time, plucked out of
obscurity by Carl Jung, stripped of context, turned into a
(09:56):
UFO sighting that had nothing to do with that by us.
I want to also thank our listener James Calamara, who's
written in multiple times to ask for us to do
this one as far back as twenty twenty one, which
is four hundred and sixty years after the Nuremberg event. Exactly.
(10:17):
Pretty spooky Short stuff is out.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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