Detailed Ufo case: Florence, Italy 1954

What happened in Italy in October 1954 has nothing to do with airplanes and meteors.
Newspapers at the time wrote that into the sky was as if a hypothetical staff of flying discs had decided to make its big maneuvers in Florence and Tuscany.
It was the year of great wave autumn that practically all interested peninsula and the recurrent theme cover of the Domenica del Corriere and Titles of the newspaper La Nazione.



According to chronicles are recorded repeated sightings of unidentified objects that seemed "to couples from different forms: as a wing white seagulls in flight, a drop of water, a hat Chinese; fast a few seconds of each other."
The witness is the most famous of journalist Batini author of a comprehensive article on The Nation, but the newspaper reported for a day following reports and related assumptions about the nature of the phenomenon.


LA NAZIONE + L'UNITA' 28/10/1954; UFO IN ITALIA II, 244


Il GIORNALE del MATTINO 24/11/1954; UFO IN ITALIA II, 330


MESSAGGERO + GAZZETTA PADANA + GAZZETTA del SUD + IL GAZZETTINO + altri 20/10/1954; UFO IN ITALIA II, 134

Two men, namely Gennaro Lucetti and Pietro Lastrucci stood on the balcony of a hotel located in St. Mark’s Square of Venice, on October 27, 1954. The men suddenly saw two “shining spindles” flying across the sky. The objects left a fiery white trail as they zipped along. Both objects flew at high speed, one of them at some distance away from the other. Then the objects took a U-turn and flew away in the direction of Florence.

At Municipal Stadium was playing soccer between Fiorentina and Pistoiese. Among the players Fiorentina note Costagliola, Magnini, Cervato, Chiappella, Rosetta, Segato, Mariani, Gren, Virgili, Gratton, Bizzarri, Sarti, Capucci, Del Scratch, Scaramucci, Biagi, Orzan, Luna, Tassinari, Ghersetich, Buzzin, Vidal . For the Pistoiese Vadi, Pierallini, Vettori, Caiumi, Tuci, Lomi, Balsimelli, Lenci Carpini, Vannucchi, Fossi.
Above the stage there was two mysterious flying objects. The match was interrupted; fans of the two teams, astonished, lifted his eyes to the sky to watch the evolution of the objects; Ferruccio Valcareggi also observed the scene along with players of the two teams.
Romulus Tuci, at the time of Pistoiese captain, said: "It was a beautiful day. At some point we noticed that the spectators looked in the air. Was spontaneous stop for us players. As I saw small rings away, what were not know really. short, we were among those who saw them and who does not, and there was also those who did not pay any attention, believing in who knows what. How long remained suspended the game, sincerely do not remember, passed fifty 'years, how do I say ten minutes, or more? But we watch all in the air. Fifty years ago, you think? ".
The whole town had halted with the nose up to observe the evolution of the objects.
It was certainly not of collective hallucination; ten thousand people at the stadium, phone calls from all over the city and suburbs, Sesto, Peretola. All to describe objects in the sky and a strange snow of spiders' webs.
Mr Jacopozzi and other people in his company looked objects with binoculars and gathered the mysterious cotton-like. The comments would be revealed that the objects were shaped drop of water, others shaped hat Mandarin Chinese; proceeded at speeds high and were produced in complicated evolution.

[continue...]

[edit on 20-11-2007 by ImShrike]

[edit on 20-11-2007 by ImShrike]

At 14.30 on 27 October 1954 in the writing of the newspaper came the call for an engineering student, Alfredo Jacopozzi that held view, along with others, several discs flying in the sky of Florence. At one stretch between the object and the dome of the cathedral there was another "white balloon," faster than an airplane, then another "disc" and another still. Six objects left their strange passage of the "flakes" white like “cotton-like”.
Then came the most glaring whose memory is still fresh in the minds of many witnesses who see the phenomenon.

The substance was quick to disintegrate if held in the hand. Alfrede Jacopozzi, a student, was the only one who managed to pick up a few threads of it and sealed them in a hermetic test tube. Jacopozzi then handed the tube to Professor Giovanni Canneri, a director of the Chemical Analysis Institute under the University of Florence. Professor Danilo Cozzi, a colleague of Prof. Canneri’s, carried out a series of tests of the mysteries find. “It’s a fibrous material, which is highly resistant to tension and torsion. Once subjected to heat action, the material grows dark and evaporates, leaving transparent sediment that melts away. The sediment was found to contain boron, silicon, and magnesium. Hypothetically speaking, the substance may be some kind of boron-silicon glass,” said Prof. Cozzi.



The response of the chemical, even if preceded by a "purely hypothetical line", was: glass borosilicico.

Thus was born the term "cotton-like siliceous" to the famous "rain", also documented by a "cinemagazine" Week Incom showing people intente to collect fragments, in the form of small or tangled skeins, appearance and consistency seems pretty rigid. (I'll show you soon this video)

At 13.30 phenomena similar to cotton-like siliceous rain, recorded in Sesto Fiorentino and Prato. At 14.30 was the turn of Lucca and after an hour of Chiusi, in Siena. And that same year, similar incidents occurred almost everywhere in Italy starting from 19 October until early December. In Senigallia, in the province of Ancona, the attention of a large number of people was drawn to several items "like small lentils" quickly fly to the sky great height. Some filaments, like "lint gray or whitish", went down for more than half an hour on the town. The phenomenon is repeated even in Jesi, always in the same place, after the passage of dozens of strange objects. Then he touched in Rome, in various places in Tuscany, in Gela (Sicily), in Mantua, the neighborhoods of Mortara, in the province of Ferrara. Not always, in the fall of coincidence filaments, was the presence of unidentified flying objects.

Nearly fifty years the case remains open. Some elements would suggest the hypothesis that it is cob webs: the period of the year and the weather conditions suggest the release of the material by certain species of spiders. But the result of chemical albeit vague ( "glass"), let think to something more unusual.

To complicate the matter that three years later, around noon, 27 October 1957, the phenomenon, although with less intensity, appeared again on the Tuscan capital. Among the numerous witnesses that of a group of people that was in Piazzale Michelangelo saw two bodies and bright form oblunga "quickly cross the sky. A few moments later, all found themselves on a sort of clothes lint whitish which was disintegrating very quickly.



This video is from an italian tv show where they speak about this event. There is a lot of interview with witnesses and they talk, specifically, about the "cotton-like siliceous" rain and the "stadium" sighting. Unfortunately is only in italian language.

Ok, now, what do you think about?

(sorry for my bad english i use some software to help me in translation of the historycal newspaper articles)




[edit on 20-11-2007 by ImShrike]

The case of Florence is one of the most convincing and well documented ever in Italy:
It's interesting the interview with the two football players: they reported thet the match stopped because all the attendances screamed watching at the sky: if im' correct, there should be somewhere on the net that interview. 10.000 attendances saw the UFOs!!!

And what about the cotton-like material fallen down?


Star and flag for you.
It would be interesting to gather as much documentation as possible.

edit to remove no longer working links

[edit on 20/11/2007 by internos]

The article underneath has been published in the daily newspaper Le Monde, Paris, France, page 16, October 29, 1954.

"FLYING DISCS" INTERRUPT A SOCCER GAME

From our special correspondant
JEAN D'HOSPITAL

Rome, October 28.

For one week one has seen a little everywhere these mysterious machines with scintillating colors by day and night, in the clouds or at ground level. They seem to take pleasure particularly in the center of the peninsula. They pullulate between Rimini and Pisa, on Sienna, Perugia, Bologna and Florence.

Testimonys of people in good faith who saw them - sailors who do not daydream, professors who doubt the plurality of the inhabited worlds, middle-class and proletarian with solid nerves - amount per hundreds and are impressive by their agreement and their precision. Well, rather, they amounted per hundreds up to now. Since yesterday they are much more.

A friendly soccer game proceeded Wednesday afternoon at the stadium of Florence in front of an assembly of approximately fifteen thousand witnesses. In the full middle of the game, at 4 p.m. exactly, three people suenly stood up in a platform and, pointing the finger towards the sky, exclaimed: "discs!"

Immediately, row by row, the noses rose. No mistake it was really discs. They passed very high and very quickly while projecting a yellow gleam. The entire stadium remained dumbfounded about it.

The two discs and others still, which were seen by many residents of Florence circulating in the streets of the city, left in their wake trails of threads of coton-like substance, extremely thin.

In Rome the Florentin episode caused some surprise. One interviewed scientists of all obedience there in their pointing out that as phenomenon of collective illusion - if that was all about - it is a record, at least with regard to the stunt-flyings of the supposed Martians. One of them stated to us:

"It is nothing. A million bipeds healthy of bodies and mind, gathered in a restricted space, are not safe from such an illusion.

- However, if you had been in Florence, you, and if, well, you had seen what they saw, would you speak with as much certainty?

Oh! As for myself, answered the man of science, is quite simple: I wisely decided, in cold blood, that if it sometimes happens to me to see that, I would not believe my eyes

Source:
ufologie.net...

[edit on 20-11-2007 by ImShrike]

An engineer by the name of Jean Senelier, spent much time evaluating those reports on the 'angel hair' phenomenon and he said that

"it's an unexpected manifestation in the atmosphere in response to the ejection of 'debris' from the craft.

Senelier, Jean, "Le neige d'Octobre", the magazine Phenomenes Spatiaux, no.16, June 1968, p.8

But I think that the timing and whereabouts of such ejections are VERY intentional on 'their' part... lol.


[edit on 20-11-2007 by Palasheea]

reply to post by ImShrike


This is the image you were trying to embed

This is a very interesting post, one of which I have never heard of. I had heard about the Cotton/glass strings but never about the 1954 incident with the game and players. Great Post ImShrike! I am no longer amazed by these stories popping up, now it has just become validation in my mind.

i hear about this one

it was the inspiration for the first sci-fi movies.

Here the links to the scans which i was trying to post before...
img89.imageshack.us...
img89.imageshack.us...

Now will come the debunkers, with their mantra of hallucinations. When it's only one person they want to know why more people didn't see the UFO, unless it was only a delusion by the witness. When it's two or three, it's a hoax to them. And when it's a crowd, then it is mass hysteria.

Too many debunkers are this century's equivalent of the "Flat Earthers".

Edit to add: A flag and a star for the OP. It is good to remind people that UFOs aren't always confined to some lonely road in the middle of the night.



[edit on 20-11-2007 by NGC2736]

"Angel hair" was also reported in the so called Miracle of the Sun, in Fatima, Portugal in 1917.

The Miracle of the Sun is an alleged miraculous event that was witnessed by as many as 100,000 people on 13 October 1917 in the Cova da Iria fields near Fátima, Portugal.[...]

The miracle was attributed by believers to Our Lady of Fatima, an apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary to three young shepherd children in 1917, as having been predicted by the three children on 13 July, 19 August, and 13 September 1917.

Many researchers, including the esteemed Jacques Vallee, have noticed the similarities in the Fatima visions to some UFO cases. One of these similarities is the 'angel hair' that fell on the crowd during the September event (the later attribution of 'rose petals' is a good example of how embellishment of religious accounts occurs). 'Angel Hair' is a phenomenon well-known in ufology, where silver craft - variously described as disks, spheres and cigars - are seen leaving a white contrail. Soon, a cobweb-like substance is found to fall from the sky, sometimes in flakes but also quite often in long strands which drape themselves over power-lines and fences. When witnesses attempt to pick up some of the substance, it seems to disintegrate into nothing at their touch. The curious substance which showered on the crowd at Fatima no doubt conforms to the usual appearance of angel hair - silvery orbs (moving often in zig-zag motion, and also turning 'blood red' at high noon no less), explosive sounds, the sublimation of the substance as people touch it.

source

edit: links.

[edit on 20-11-2007 by danx]

I remember hearing about this about 15 years ago at a UFO conference and was intrigued but research on it at the time was very difficult unless you went to Italy in person the internet back then was very hard to come by and information scarce unless you where looking for naked people, thank you for posting this i had almost forgotten about it,


The threads of material that fell and where collected does anyone know if it was stabalised in any way to study? or did it eventually disintergrate? sounds very similar to these chem trails that some people are obsessed about maybe this is where the idea to spray came from, i know a lot of recent sightings have been of objects which appear to be sitting next to com trails i wonder if they are examining them because they are worried?

i shall be following this post intently great thread

Originally posted by NGC2736
Now will come the debunkers, with their mantra of hallucinations. When it's only one person they want to know why more people didn't see the UFO, unless it was only a delusion by the witness. When it's two or three, it's a hoax to them. And when it's a crowd, then it is mass hysteria.

Too many debunkers are this century's equivalent of the "Flat Earthers".

I agree you can neither offer enough evidence or then you offer too much which automatically becomes fake and a set up, its like the fuzzy picture syndrome it seems better to offer a fuzzy blurred picture than a crystal what you see with your own eyes undeniable UFO picture because then that is a set up also because nobody can be calm enough,

It seems we can never win no matter what evidence we offer, i cant wait to see the reaction of some of these people when it all comes out.

reply to post by danx


Yes, there's an amazing book about it..

A meticulous synthesis of history, science, and Ufology, "Heavenly Lights" establishes that the famed Fátima Incident of 1917 did not involve "Marian apparitions" - as is conventionally believed - but a series of close encounters with alien beings. The first history of the Fátima incident to be written by Portuguese historians based on the original documents of the case held in secrecy by the Catholic Church since the time of the apparitions, "Heavenly Lights" subjects all of the pertinent facts of the Fátima case to a sweeping evidentiary analysis that is at once thorough and fascinating. When it was fi rst published in Portugal in 1995, the Jornal de Notícias heralded this work as "a literary success without precedent."

www.anomalistbooks.com...

www.amazon.com...

This is indeed an interesting event. Does anyone known if the sample collected was destroyed or if some of it was preserved for future analysis?

Oh, and can someone translate the "possible explanation" segment on this page? I understand some of it, but not all.
Image

reply to post by Farnswoth

A guy managed to save a sample putting it in a mason jar using a match to make some kind of hank (the substance vanished when touched directly with the fingers).
The Geiger counter gave a negative response, and the other analysis revealed the presence of silicon, boron, aluminum, magnesium, iron, and the consistence was the one of a common spider net.

About the possible explanations:
the national ufo center recorded 270 cases, of which 97 only in Italy.

The "possible explanations" are:
a) rare and unknown spider's nets
b) refuses coming from factories/industries

But the possible explanation provided is related to the average case, not specifically to the one of Florence because the very strange composition of the substance.


[edit on 20/11/2007 by internos]

I have that Heavenly Lights book. There's a whole chapter on 'angel hair' and I'm outlining what they say about it and will post that here.

Quite a bit of information here.... very interesting.

The information below is from...
Fernandes, Joaquim and D'Armada, Fina, Heavenly Lights:The Apparitions of Fatima and the UFO Phenomenon, NYC, USA, Anomolist Books, 2005, p. 100, p. 101. Forward by Jacques Vallee.

f)Organic Origins? (from chapt. 10)


On Nov.2, 1959 in Evora, Portugal, 2 discoid objects were seen 'dancing' around up in sky where 'angel hair' descended down from the sky too.

Students and professor's from the university there were able to gather up the material and examine it under a microscope.

-- they found it to be a "weaving of numerous fine filaments" held together by a "substance of gelatinous aspect" -- it was "simultaneously light and resistant".

-- the scientist who wrote up the above report said that

"the objects observed over Evora would transport with them a "biological" body of great dimensions, Medusa-like, under the bottom of the "technological" object carrying it. Such an impression was, at least, the conclusion drawn by the author of the report, who used a telescope on the day of the sighting to follow the transformations of the UFOs."

But here's something really fascinating about what they found in their analysis...

in one of the fibralvina preparations gathered by his students on the day in question, a strange creature, endowed with a rounded central body, from which, with perfect symmetry, 10 tentacles radiated, each one trifurcated at the end, forming 3, finger-like extensions. This discovery was broadly debated during the First Iberian Ufological Congress....

[edit on 20-11-2007 by Palasheea]

I have seen a movie made in 55-56, where an alien spaceship crashes in Italy. It was such stereo-typical depiction of Italians it was almost comical. There was the Italian fisherman and his son, who were fishing off the coast of sicily, when a disco volante flys overhead and crashes into the sea. The son is terrified and wants his father to leave and row to shore, but the father replies" Bambino, theres a gotta be a people, ona thata ship" . "But Papa, ima scared maybe theira martians" . " maybe theira martians, but theira people, and we gota sava the people" the whole exchange was hilarious. So he rows over and rescues the aliens from the sinking saucer.
The angle hair is very interesting a boro-silicate you say.
One of the past incarnations of a experimantal stealth cruise missle was equipped with an engine that ran on a boron-silicon slurry. It had an exhaust temp of 80 deg F.
I think that the early reported sighting are the best, especially from a country like italy, since the witnesses havent been tainted by modern popular culture. Another older case that is very good is the one from LA in 42 were the anti aircraft batteries fired on a saucer over downtown LA, and a couple of newspaper photogs got pictures of the saucer being lit up by the searchlights.

A very good post and flagged..

"it's an unexpected manifestation in the atmosphere in response to the ejection of 'debris' from the craft.

That is interesting, though to my knowledge "angel hair" remains a mystery. I've heard that it could be an atmospheric response to some ejection of particles/debris from the craft or it could be the "debris" (some by-product of a process going on inside the craft).