Short Stuff: 1561 Celestial Event

An amazing case of an early modern mass sighting of UFOs came in Nuremberg, Germany in 1561. Except it wasn’t that at all. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota Ford ability, and it starts with a great deal on an off-road ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.

• 0:35Speaker 02

  Snoring, gasping for air during sleep, daytime sleepiness? I'm Shaquille O'Neal, and this shouldn't be anybody's experience. Ask your doctor about Zepbound Trisepotide, the first and only FDA-approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea in adults with obesity.

• 0:51Speaker 03

  Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15-milligram injection. Zepbound contains trisepotide and should not be used with other trisepotide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepbound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens, or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction.

• 1:36Speaker 03

  Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia, if you're nursing, pregnant, plant-to-be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with a sulphonal urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems.

• 1:58Speaker 02

  Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979, or visit zepbound.lily.com.

• 2:09Josh Clark?

  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 1561 celestial phenomenon of Nuremberg.

• 2:25Speaker 04

  That's right, Nuremberg, Germany, of course. On April 14th 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 is the best way you could say it. They were different colors, they were different shapes, there were 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.

• 3:02Josh Clark?

  Right. It wasn't like Rusty and Eugene, who were out drinking that night, who saw it and came back and told everybody.

• 3:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, regular people doing their thing in the morning.

• 3:11Josh Clark?

  Exactly. 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 was a big deal, you can imagine. And 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 Einblattdruck. Did I say that right?

• 3:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 3:38Josh Clark?

  Okay. Which is a type of broadsheet that has a headline, an illustration, usually a woodcut, and then, you know, an account of what happened. And so there's this famous Einblattdruck of the 1561 celestial phenomenon in Nuremberg that Hans Glazer made. And if you've even remotely heard of this, I'll bet you've seen his famous woodcut from it. It's quite lovely.

• 4:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, I love a woodcut. We both love woodcuts.

• 4:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, a good woodcut is something to behold.

• 4:05Speaker 04

  Agreed. 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 sightings like this at the time where it looked like airship battles were going on. So if you lived around that area, the Alpine Scandinavian area at the time, between like a nine-year period or so, there were 400 of these broadsheets. So it was like a hot thing, a hot topic.

• 4:44Josh Clark?

  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 Reformation's going on. So 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

• 5:28Josh Clark?

  unless we repent or amend our ways.

• 5:31Speaker 04

  That's right. 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 dig in once more.

• 5:56Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it all starts with a great deal on a truck from your local Toyota dealer.

• 6:06Speaker 04

  That's right. Make a smart buy on the off-road Ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's most capable and longest-lasting trucks, built with the strength for the tough jobs, the tech to power your next big adventure, and the rugged style for everything in between.

• 6:19Josh Clark?

  Or discover Toyota's off-road lineup, including the iconic 4Runner and Land Cruiser, designed to go beyond the everyday. And with Toyota's proven reputation for quality and reliability, plus hybrid power on many models, you can get more for every mile and drive for less along the way.

• 6:34Speaker 04

  That's right. And long after you leave the lot, your Toyota keeps delivering with great resale value. So you could trade in for more when you're ready for your next Toyota. From a great deal today to a great value tomorrow, a Toyota is right for you. Shop toyota.com for deals and details, or stop by your local Toyota dealer today. Toyota, let's go places.

• 6:59Speaker 04

  Hey, everybody. The holidays are coming up, so let us throw this out there. Are you prepared to host friends or family? Like, really prepared? Because there's a difference between having people stay at your house and properly hosting them.

• 7:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's what we thought. So maybe it's time for a little refresh. Well, we have a tip. For all things hosting, Wayfair delivers high-quality, customer-trusted products for your home so you can host and celebrate without the stress.

• 7:24Speaker 04

  That's right. Whether you're just swapping out a busted appliance or going all-in on a top-to-bottom home makeover for the holidays, Wayfair has you covered. Thousands of products, every style, every budget.

• 7:33Josh Clark?

  And it's all built for real life. Every item is hand-vetted by specialists with a 10-point quality inspection. And on top of that, with over 20 million verified 5-star reviews, you can have total confidence in all the picks you make.

• 7:45Speaker 04

  So remember, when refreshing your home this holiday season, Wayfair delivers exactly what you need. Just head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com.

• 8:10Josh Clark?

  Okay, Chuck, so if, like you said, this 1561 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 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.

• 8:50Josh Clark?

  And because 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?

• 9:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:05Josh Clark?

  So it loses its context in that sense. And then eventually over time, since 1958 and that book came out, 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 1561 that Carl Jung put in his book about flying saucers is a UFO, he's talking about a UFO sighting. That's where we landed today when we think about the 1561 celestial phenomenon being a UFO sighting.

• 9:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, aliens, basically.

• 9:45Josh Clark?

  Exactly.

• 9:46Speaker 04

  But you know, I think I said in the first part that, you know, these weren't rubes. They were just regular people. It was 1561, but like science was around a little bit there in some form or fashion. Like less than a decade after this, they figured out like what comets were, that they were spacefaring natural objects. So they weren't, they weren't people sitting around looking at the sky saying it was like a dragon or something like that.

• 10:11Josh Clark?

  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 comet, obviously, or maybe even a couple of 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 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 comet, it's not going to be a rainbow, it's not going to be something like that. Over time, basically three main explanations have been proffered, and it's sundogs, fireworks, and embellishment.

• 10:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, a sundog 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 some frequency. But that's when the sun's reflected by these low angled ice crystals up in the air. And it triples it, basically, where you have two suns on either side. And it fits that it's morning because it happens, sundogs happen when the sun is low on the horizon. So that would sort of make sense that it was daybreak.

• 11:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 11:29Speaker 04

  The one thing, though, is that this happens a lot. So if this is the 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 this.

• 11:37Josh Clark?

  Right. One other thing that actually is a mark in sundogs favors and explanations. They typically last between 15 and 30 minutes. But as recently as 2023, one in northern China was witnessed that lasted a couple hours. So if this thing lasted an hour, it's not like a sundog is ruled out because of the length of time. That was one.

• 11:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:58Josh Clark?

  Another one is that in 1540, full 20 plus years before this event, a man named Venocchio Berin Guccio published De La Pyrotecnia, which is the first book, from Europe at least, on how to prepare rockets, including using rockets in festivals, what we would call fireworks. So the question is, like, was there somebody in Nuremberg who had gotten a hold of this book and was putting on a fireworks display 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.

• 12:37Speaker 04

  I mean, it sounds silly at first, but that one makes a little more sense to me than even sundogs as far as like maybe creating weird shapes and the fizzling out part, like you talked about, like. But then, then you're just sort of making a theory about some rogue, you know, German that got this book. But hey, that's, that's not unbelievable.

• 12:57Josh Clark?

  Right. Like on its face, it seems unlikely, but when you dig in, it's like, it gets a little meatier for sure. I mean, like, this is something that they probably wouldn't have seen before, you know? So at least it checks that box. And then there's embellishment too, right?

• 13:12Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, that's that's kind of the obvious one that maybe, I don't know, something happened. Maybe it was a sun dog gone wild in, it's a great series of videos in the 80s. A sun dog gone wild in the account and then the the wood cutting and that broadsheet. Maybe that's what happened because even it wasn't like the heyday of yellow journalism and tabloids, but even very early on in publishing, they were kind of doing some more sort of salacious stuff to get readers because there was competition going on.

• 13:44Josh Clark?

  Exactly. 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?

• 13:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, agreed.

• 13:55Josh Clark?

  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 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 2021, which is 460 years after the Nuremberg event exactly. Pretty spooky. Short stuff is out.

• 14:34Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 14:49Josh Clark?

  Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota Fordibility, and it starts with a great deal on an off-road-ready Tacoma or half-ton Tundra, two of Toyota's longest-lasting trucks, combining power for work, tech for adventures, and style in between. And they're built on a reputation for quality and reliability, which is why Toyota trucks are known for holding their value, which could mean big savings when it's time for your next Toyota. So get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for more. Toyota, let's go places.

• 15:20Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.