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Short Stuff: 1561 Celestial Event · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck, and we're sitting in for Jerry, who would
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: be sitting in for Dave. And if that's confusing, it
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: doesn't matter because that has nothing to do with this episode.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: On the fifteen sixty one celestial Phenomenon of Nuremberg.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: That's right, Nuremberg, Germany.
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: Of course, on April fourteenth of that year, there were
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: people This is early morning, and there were a lot
• 0:27
  Speaker 3: of people around and this happened for over an hour
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: where they looked up in the sky and saw what
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: looked like an aerial battle between airships of unknown origin.
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: I guess it's the best way you could say it.
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: There were different colors, there were different shapes, there were
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: squares and globes and crescents, and eventually the ships crashed
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: outside of town and dissolved into smoke. And a lot
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: of people saw this, and a lot of people who
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: weren't just like silly Rubes, right.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: It wasn't like Rusty and Eugene were out drinking that
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: night who saw it and came back and told everybody meet.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: Other people doing their thing in the morning, exactly.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: And we don't know how many we just know, quote
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: a lot of men and women. And then after all that,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: something like a black spear appeared in the sky too,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: So this is a big deal. You can imagine. We
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: know about it because there was a broadsheet that was
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: published recording it or documenting it. There's a publisher named
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Hans Glazer, and he published an einblot Druk. Did I
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: say that right?
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Okay, which is a type of broadsheet that has a
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: headline in illustration, usually a woodcut, and then you know
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: an account of what happened. And so there's this famous
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: ein blot Duke of the fifteen sixty one celestial phenomenon
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: in Nuremberg that Hans Hans Glazer made. And if you've
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: even remotely heard of this, I'll bet you've seen his
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: famous woodcut from it. It's quite lovely.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I love a woodcut. We both love woodcuts.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a good woodcut is something that agreed.
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: So now we look back and say, like, hey, these
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: people saw this is like one of the first UFO encounters.
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: They didn't talk of such things back then, so of
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: course they didn't talk about it that way. But it
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: was not as it turns out an isolated incident. Even
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: at the time, there were apparently a lot of sort
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: of sightings like this at the time where it looked
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: like airship battles were going on. So if you lived
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: around that area of the Alpine sort of Scandinavian area
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: at the time, between like a nine year period or so,
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: there were four hundred of these broadsheets, So it was
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: like a hot thing, a hot topic.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, people were nuts for it, right. So this was
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: during the time where Austria, Switzerland, Germany some other countries,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: and Nuremberg is in Germany. Of course they were part
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: of the Holy Roman Empire, and the Holy Roman Empire
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: was ruled by an emperor and the pope, so therefore
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: it was a pretty Catholic empire. And at the time
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: of this event in Nuremberg the Reformations going on. So
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: this is a really tumultuous time that was kicked off
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: by Martin Luther, and during the Reformation era there was
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: a lot of religious fervor. There was a lot of
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: emphasis on end times. So when people saw things like
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: these aerial battles in the sky, they're like, this is
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: clearly a sign from God. We don't know what it means,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: but what it's ultimately telling us is that we're doomed
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: unless we repent our in mend our ways.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: So just to sort of reiterate, they did not call
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: these UFOs. That's an US thing. And maybe we'll take
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: that break and we will come back right after this
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: and again once more.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: As why.
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: S K tough?
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: You should know? Okay, hey, Chuck, So if, like you said,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: this fifteen sixty one celestial event over Nuremberg was one
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: of hundreds in this era, this era of the trend
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: of seeing aerial battles in the sky, why is that
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: the one we're talking about? And there's actually a really
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: good explanation why. The reason why is because this was
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: a forgotten event, because again it just got mixed in
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: with all the others. It was a forgotten event in
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: history largely that was plucked out of obscurity to be
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: used as an example in a book about flying saucers,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: or actually the mythology we create around things like flying
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: saucers by none other than psychoanalyst Carl Jung. And because
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: this one event was plucked from all the other ones
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: that he could have used, it came to seem to
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: us people living today as a singular event, like nothing
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: like this had ever happened before, right, Yeah, so it
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: loses its context in that sense. And then eventually over
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: time since nineteen fifty eight and that book came out,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: it was stripped further of its context that Carl Jung
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: was using this as an example of people coming up
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: with their own mythologies about something they didn't understand, like
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: we do with UFOs. And so this one event that
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: happened in Nuremberg in fifteen sixty one that Carl Jung
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: put in his book about flying saucers is a he's
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: talking about a UFO siding. That's where we landed today
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: when we think about the fifteen sixty one celestial phenomenon
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: being a UFO.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: Siding, Yeah, aliens basically exactly.
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: But you know, I think I said in the first
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: part that you know, these weren't rubes, there were just
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: regular people. It was fifteen sixty one, but like science
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: was around a little bit there in some former fashion,
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: like less than a decade after this, they figured out,
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: like what comments were, that they were spacefaring natural objects,
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: So they weren't people sitting around looking at the sky.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: Saying it was like a dragon or something like that.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: No, yeah, they yes, And when you take that into
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: account that these weren't just dummies, you can't just be like, yeah,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: it was a commet obviously, or maybe even a couple
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: shooting stars, who knows. If you take that kind of
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: easy explanation out of your toolbox, as they put it
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: in HR, it becomes much harder to explain what exactly
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: they saw. You also have to take into account these
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: people had eons of collective awareness and memory of an
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: experience with natural phenomenon. So again, it's not going to
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: be a comment, it's not going to be a rainbow,
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: it's not gonna be something like that. Over time, basically
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: three main explanations have been proffered, and that's sun dogs, fireworks,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: and embellishment.
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, a sun dog is it's not something you see
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: every day, but it's not like super super uncommon. Apparently,
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: like they're as common or more common than rainbows. So
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: it's the kind of thing that happens with on frequency.
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: But that's when the sun's reflected by these low angled
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: ice crystals up in the air and it triples it.
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: Basically where you have two sons on either side, and
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: it fits that it's morning because it happens. The sun
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: dogs happen when the sun is low on the horizon,
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: so that would sort of make sense that it was daybreak. Yeah.
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: The one thing though, is that this happens a lot,
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: So if this is kind of thing that or not
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: a lot, but with enough frequency that people wouldn't be like,
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: oh my god, let's make a woodcut about.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: This, right. One other thing that actually is a mark
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: in SunDog's Favors and Explanations, they typically last between fifteen
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: and thirty minutes, but as recently as twenty twenty three,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: one in northern China was witnessed that lasted a couple hours.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: So if this thing lasted an hour, it's not like
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: a sun dog is ruled out because of the length
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: of time. That was one.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: Another one is that in fifteen forty full twenty plus
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: years before this event, a man named Veinocchio Bering Guccio
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: published Day la Pyrotechnia, which is the first book from
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Europe at least on how to prepare rockets, including using
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: rockets and festivals what we would call fireworks. So the
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: question is like, was there somebody in Nurrenberg who had
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: gotten hold of this book and was putting on a
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: fireworks displayed without telling anybody. And there's actually some of
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: the details are like, yeah, that would make sense that
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: these things fell out of the sky and fizzled out
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: into smoke when they were on the ground.
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: I mean it sounds silly at first, but that one
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: makes a little more sense to me than even sun
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: dogs as far as like maybe creating weird shapes and
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: the fizzling out part like you talked about, Like but
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: then you're just sort of making a theory about some rogue,
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: you know, German that got this book.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: But hey, that's not unbelievable.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: Right, Like on its face it seems unlikely, but when
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: you dig in, it's like it's a little meteor for sure.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, like this is something that they probably wouldn't
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: have seen before, you know, so at least especial that box.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: And then there's embellishment too.
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I mean that's kind of the obvious one
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: that maybe I don't know, something happened, Maybe it was
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: a sun dog gone wild in a great series of
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: videos in the eighties, a SunDog gone Wild in the account,
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: and then the woodcutting and that broadsheet. Maybe that's what happened,
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: because even it wasn't like the heyday of yellow journalism
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: in tabloids, but even very early on in publishing they
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: were kind of doing some more sort of selacious stuff
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: to get readers because there was competition going on exactly.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: So it makes a lot of sense that they might
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: have been embellishing no matter what it is. That doesn't
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: explain what it is, but that explains probably the account
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: of it, right, Yeah, I agreed, So, I mean, I
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: guess that's it. It was a one of multiple stories
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: of something that happened at the time, plucked out of
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: obscurity by Carl Jung, stripped of context, turned into a
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: UFO sighting that had nothing to do with that by us.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: I want to also thank our listener James Calamara, who's
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: written in multiple times to ask for us to do
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: this one as far back as twenty twenty one, which
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: is four hundred and sixty years after the Nuremberg event. Exactly.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: Pretty spooky Short stuff is out.
• 10:23
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• 10:26
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• 10:29
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