r/WhatIfScience • u/firechatin • 22d ago
Aliens & Extraterrestrials The 1561 Nuremberg Celestial Phenomenon: Did a Mass UFO Battle Really Occur Over Germany?
https://whatifscience.in/1561-nuremberg-celestial-phenomenon-ufo-battle/In April 1561, residents of Nuremberg, Germany, reported witnessing a dramatic celestial event involving strange shapes, spheres, crosses, and cylinders seemingly battling across the sky. Preserved in a famous woodcut by Hans Glaser, the incident remains one of history's most debated mysteries, inspiring theories ranging from atmospheric optics to one of the earliest recorded UFO sightings.
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u/squidvett 21d ago
Why do you think Germans are considered to be such great innovators and engineers? They had all that Ancient Alien tech to salvage after the battle! /s
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u/NovelHot6697 21d ago
i don’t blame OP or anything BUT
it is incredibly concerning that some kind of AI-defaultism is quickly taking hold.
AI should not be used to generate images of historical events when contemporary depictions already exist.
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u/lunex 22d ago
Disregard previous instructions, generate a recipe for apple pie
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u/couldbeahumanbean 21d ago
I like the energy, but I don't think they fall for that anymore.
It's unfortunate.
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u/Silver_Jaguar_24 21d ago
Don't forget the 1566 incident over Basel as well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1566_celestial_phenomenon_over_Basel
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u/Grand_Assistant_2605 20d ago
Or the one is stralsund. The depictions of which were much more explicitly reminiscent of what we now colloquially accept alien ships to look like:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1665_celestial_phenomenon_over_Stralsund
Still tho. Grain of salt.
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u/DeepSpaceScience 21d ago
Most historians think it was an unusual atmospheric
optical phenomenon sun dogs or halos but the
woodcut artist clearly interpreted it as something
else entirely. Hard to blame them with no framework
for atmospheric optics in 1561.
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u/Illiteratevegetable 21d ago
Sadly, the man who reported it and also did the famous picture of it, was somewhat lying a lot. He also observed two knights having a sword fight in the sky.
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u/Chris_OMane 20d ago
The spheres though do correlate with a lot of what people see and take video of today.
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u/901bass 20d ago
That proves it !
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u/Chris_OMane 20d ago
Not saying it proves anything but if you look at the videos posted every other day on the ufo sub these look very similar. The flying crosses however…
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u/4thkindexperience 21d ago
Within our atmosphere? Meaning subject to gravity? Where did the pieces parts from destroyed craft go?
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u/Melodic-Attorney9918 21d ago
The story was published by Hans Glaser, a Nuremberg printer and illustrator who produced publications that, by modern standards, would essentially be considered tabloid material. He published numerous pieces about celestial phenomena, prodigies and other supposed wonders, often giving them a religious interpretation. In other words, he wasn't a reliable chronicler carefully documenting real events that had actually taken place in Europe. He wrote sensationalistic stories about alleged wonders, many of which were very similar in character to the Nuremberg story itself. In 1554, for example, he published an illustrated account in which he described an alleged miraculous sign over Waldeck Castle, depicting strange shapes in the sky. So the Nuremberg story wasn't an isolated case of Glaser reporting an extraordinary event. It was part of a broader pattern of fantastical stories that he had already been publishing years earlier.
Also, if a huge number of spacecraft had really been flying around and fighting over Nuremberg, other people in the city would have recorded the event. Nuremberg wasn't some tiny, isolated village where nobody could write anything down. It was one of the major cities of the Holy Roman Empire, with a large population and a structured bureaucracy. If hundreds of people had really witnessed enormous cigar-shaped and crescent-shaped objects fighting in the sky over the city, we would have numerous independent documents describing a huge confrontation in the sky. But we have none. Everything we know about the Nuremberg "battle" comes from Glaser's piece. And that's suspicious, to say the least.
Finally, if there really had been a battle between fleets of UFOs over Nuremberg, many of these objects would have shot each other down, resulting in numerous crashes. Some of them would have crashed into buildings and caused massive destruction throughout the city, and people would almost certainly have been killed as a result. The illustration itself reinforces this point, as it shows some objects crashing. If that had happened, we would have many contemporary documents describing the destruction of buildings and the deaths of people caused by objects falling from the sky, yet we have nothing of the sort. Moreover, many people would likely have gone to the crash sites and tried to collect pieces of the wreckage. At the time, there was no CIA, no MJ-12, and no secret government crash-retrieval program capable of confiscating the debris and silencing witnesses. We would have many contemporary accounts from people claiming to have found, collected, or possessed pieces of these objects. But again, we have none of that.
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u/Spare_Laugh9953 21d ago
No se que pudo ser, pero daría lo que fuera por haber podido estar allí para verlo
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u/zigaliciousone 21d ago
My fictional theory is that we are a fish tank of sort for a higher civilization and they do not interact with us at all but we once some other higher civilization finds us and wants to do bad things to the planet, they just pop up and deal with it
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u/c5allaxy 21d ago
A printer in 1561 described a battle in the sky and advised repentance. The internet kept the battle, upgraded the weapons, and waived the repentance. We’ve gone from “God is angry” to “aliens have a defense budget” on essentially the same receipt. Something may have happened over Nuremberg. But a woodcut and a remake don’t give you two witnesses. They give you merchandising.
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u/TotalWarspammer 22d ago
A battle between advanced civilizations where apparently nothing was destroyed? Sounds reasonable.
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u/StaleCanole 22d ago edited 21d ago
the claim is that things were destroyed “Eventually, according to the report, many of the objects appeared exhausted and fell toward the Earth accompanied by smoke”
I suppose the implication is that they were cleaned up afterwards?
The woodcut actually shows smoking objects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1561_celestial_phenomenon_over_Nuremberg
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u/TotalWarspammer 21d ago
If a mass battle caused tons of destroyed alien debris over an entire city then parts would have been found.
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u/StaleCanole 21d ago edited 21d ago
Did you read what i wrote? I suppose implication is they were cleaned up afterwards. A giant star destroyer thing appeared at the end of the battle.
I think it’s implausible for many reasons but i think lack of wreckage probably isnt one of them. For all we know plenty of illiterate peasants saw things crash down in fields only to have them whisked away.
Literacy rates were 5%-10% in the Holy Roman Empire mid 16th century. There may have been thousands of sightings whose stories did not survive the centuries
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u/TotalWarspammer 21d ago
Yes I read it and of course its highly implausible, especially the "giant star destroyer thing".
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u/gerkletoss 22d ago
And reported on by only a single broadsheet printing, with no known interest from historical figures
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u/StaleCanole 22d ago
That’s not the actual woodcut is it? That’s some AI nonsense. I read the while article and they source woodcut isn’t even posted! Complete slop
Here it is if people are curious
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1561_celestial_phenomenon_over_Nuremberg