Speaker 1: On a tiny speck suspended amid the great black abyss
Speaker 1: of space, exists everything we have ever known and possibly
Speaker 1: will ever know, every person that has ever existed, every
Speaker 1: thought that has ever been thought, every love affair, every war,
Speaker 1: every lie, every kiss, every piece of music that has
Speaker 1: ever been written, and every glimmer of a future not
Speaker 1: yet realized. All of it. That tiny speck is, of
Speaker 1: course Earth, home to us and everything that makes us us.
Speaker 1: But it's estimated there are roughly ten thousand stars in
Speaker 1: the universe for every grain of sand found on our
Speaker 1: planet itself, only one of over a bit billion planets
Speaker 1: in our galaxy. That galaxy, the Milky Way, is one
Speaker 1: of two trillion galaxies in the observable universe, an incomprehensibly
Speaker 1: vast space ninety three billion light years from end to end.
Speaker 1: The rest of the universe that we can't yet see
Speaker 1: could be anything from one hundred and fifty to two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty billion trillion times bigger. In nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 1: Alan Guth of Stamford University proposed the theory of cosmic inflation,
Speaker 1: the idea that the nascent universe passed through a phase
Speaker 1: of exponential expansion and has been continually expanding ever since.
Speaker 1: Is the universe vast but finite with opposite ends, or
Speaker 1: is it something else, some as yet unquantifiable, non Euclidean
Speaker 1: space with wraparound properties, like a game of pac Man,
Speaker 1: where traveling so far in one direction eventually brings you
Speaker 1: back to where you started. Or is the entire universe
Speaker 1: as we know it just the inside of a black
Speaker 1: hole existing inside a whole other universe, or inside an
Speaker 1: infinite number of other possible universes for that matter, Is
Speaker 1: the universe itself infinite in space, never ending no matter
Speaker 1: what direction we travel through it, be that spatially or temporarily,
Speaker 1: we simply don't know. But from astronomers to philosophers to
Speaker 1: stargazing stoners, all of us grapple with this dizzy in conundrum.
Speaker 1: Either way, For most people, far more than wanting to
Speaker 1: know what shape our universe actually takes, what we really
Speaker 1: want to know is are we alone in it? You're
Speaker 1: listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard McLean Smith the twenty
Speaker 1: seventh of October nineteen fifty four. The early autumnal sun
Speaker 1: is sweet and crisp where it turns the Tuscan Street's gold.
Speaker 1: Shouts of laughter and good natured talk fill the streets
Speaker 1: of Florence, Italy, as crowds of people head towards the
Speaker 1: Stadio Comunale later to be known as the Stadio Artemio Francie.
Speaker 1: Tens of thousands of fans turn out in their drogues
Speaker 1: to watch a highly anticipated local derby, a match between
Speaker 1: home team Fiorentina and their rivals Pistoiese. There's much excitement
Speaker 1: from even the Pistoiese fans at the site of Ardco
Speaker 1: Magnini de Fender, local legend and World Cup star of
Speaker 1: the summer, as he runs out onto the pitch. He
Speaker 1: would become famous in nineteen fifty six for a photograph
Speaker 1: depicting him flying through the air and appearing to roundhouse
Speaker 1: kick a ball, his mouth open in a defiant shout,
Speaker 1: but for now he is taking it easy. It's a
Speaker 1: friendly match and the atmosphere is jovial. The first half
Speaker 1: is much like any football match, people drinking and cheering
Speaker 1: and swearing animatedly at the ref whenever the moment called
Speaker 1: for it. Half time arrives and the teams huddled together
Speaker 1: in intense conversation, patting each other on the back. Fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes later, the crowd roared as one as the players
Speaker 1: fanned out onto the pitch again. It was about twenty
Speaker 1: minutes past two, barely a few minutes into the second half,
Speaker 1: when a sudden, eerie silence fell across the whole stadium,
Speaker 1: like someone had suddenly turned down the volume on a radio.
Speaker 1: From the middle of the pitch, ardco Magnini looked up
Speaker 1: at the crowd, who, as though the radio had been
Speaker 1: suddenly cranked on again, let out a deafening roar and
Speaker 1: pointed to the sky. Magnini followed the many outstretched arms
Speaker 1: to where they were pointing, and his eyes grew wide
Speaker 1: in astonishment. Up above him, a large silver egg like
Speaker 1: shape was moving slowly, slowly, slowly, as Magnini would later
Speaker 1: describe it, right over the stadium. All the players stopped
Speaker 1: to marvel at the bizarre site. Moments later, there was
Speaker 1: a bright sparkling in the air underneath the object, as
Speaker 1: a strange silver glitter began to fall from the sky.
Speaker 1: In the aftermath of the peculiar event at the football match,
Speaker 1: the silver glitter would remain a common denominator in the
Speaker 1: many accounts of the event given by numerous spectators. Some
Speaker 1: described it as being like silvery filaments descending from the heavens,
Speaker 1: while others noted how the sky itself seemed to shimmer
Speaker 1: and glow with random flashes of light. Roberto Pinotti, the
Speaker 1: president of Italy's National UFO Center, recalled the light, sticky
Speaker 1: substance falling from above. In English, they called this angel hair.
Speaker 1: He said, the only problem was after a short period
Speaker 1: of time it disintegrated. But I remember in broad daylight
Speaker 1: seeing the roofs of the houses in Florence covered in
Speaker 1: this white substance for one hour, and like snow, it
Speaker 1: just evaporated. Gigi Bonni, a lifelong Fiorantina fan, remembered many
Speaker 1: objects in the sky that day, describing them as being
Speaker 1: silver and shaped like Cuban cigars and moving unusually fast,
Speaker 1: then stopped over the pitch before dropping the shimmering silver rain.
Speaker 1: In the official match record, it stated that the match
Speaker 1: was suspended due to something in the sky. Others, including
Speaker 1: another player, Romolo Tucci, reported seeing multiple smaller crafts in
Speaker 1: those years. He said, everybody was talking UFOs and we
Speaker 1: had the experience. We saw them directly for real. Tucci
Speaker 1: was not wrong. In those years the nineteen fifties, everyone
Speaker 1: really was talking about aliens. As the governments of the
Speaker 1: US and the Soviet Union invested increasingly heavily in space
Speaker 1: exploration in an effort to prove to the world who
Speaker 1: was the true superpower. Talk of space probes and satellites
Speaker 1: quickly entered the mainstream. In October nineteen fifty one, the
Speaker 1: Soviet engineer Mikhail to Konovoff published an article titled Flight
Speaker 1: to the Moon. In it, he described in evocative detail
Speaker 1: the hypothetical spaceships of the future, laid out the science
Speaker 1: needed to create them, and ended his article with what
Speaker 1: to many imaginative, impressionable minds must have read as a
Speaker 1: call to arms. We do not have long to wait.
Speaker 1: We can assume that the bold dream will be realized
Speaker 1: within the next ten to fifteen years, not to be outdone.
Speaker 1: Over the next three years. The United States Colliers magazine
Speaker 1: responded with a series of seven articles titled man will
Speaker 1: Conquer Space Soon. Then, in nineteen fifty five, Disney screened
Speaker 1: an animated episode of their television series Disneyland titled Man
Speaker 1: in Space. It reached an audience of forty million people
Speaker 1: and was even nominated for an Academy Award for Best
Speaker 1: Documentary Short The space race had not yet begun, but
Speaker 1: the competitors were well and truly at the start line,
Speaker 1: limbering up and poised for the starting pistol. It's no wonder, then,
Speaker 1: that UFO sightings during the early nineteen fifties skyrocketed, with
Speaker 1: reports soon numbering in their thousands across the world. For
Speaker 1: the people of Italy, it was factory worker Bruno Faccini
Speaker 1: who was perhaps more responsible than anyone for kicking off
Speaker 1: that country's own wave of bizarre aerial sightings that would
Speaker 1: eventually peak in nineteen fifty four. On that strange summer
Speaker 1: afternoon in Florence. It was the evening of April twenty fourth,
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty a little after ten p m. On the
Speaker 1: outskirts of the city of Tredate, just north of Milan.
Speaker 1: All day long, the city had been shrouded by thick,
Speaker 1: dark clouds and pummeled with rain. Having waited for the
Speaker 1: latest downpour to stop, Facchini stepped hurriedly from his back door,
Speaker 1: leaving his wife and young son inside as he made
Speaker 1: a dash for their outdoor toilet located at the back
Speaker 1: of the garden. After relieving himself, Faccini stepped outside and
Speaker 1: lit a cigarette, savoring the musty smell of wet grass
Speaker 1: and warm rain on concrete. As he made his way
Speaker 1: back down the garden path toward the house. It was
Speaker 1: then that he noticed the strange flashes of light in
Speaker 1: the dark sky above. Naturally, at first he thought it
Speaker 1: was simply lightning, but the storm clouds had since moved off,
Speaker 1: and in any case, when he looked again, he saw
Speaker 1: the light was in fact coming from a field opposite
Speaker 1: his house, so Facchini went to investigate. As he made
Speaker 1: his way over, the lights continued to flash. He began
Speaker 1: to wonder if maybe it was the electrical spark of
Speaker 1: a broken power line damaged by the storm, but as
Speaker 1: he drew nearer, the flashing light suddenly stopped. He stood
Speaker 1: for a moment in the silence and scanned the field ahead,
Speaker 1: but saw nothing unusual. Perhaps it was just light reflecting
Speaker 1: off some glass, he thought, Feeling a little stupid, He
Speaker 1: felt cold suddenly and pulled his light jacket a little
Speaker 1: tighter together. Turning back to his house, he was just
Speaker 1: about to set off for home when he sensed the
Speaker 1: light flashing again from out the corner of his eye,
Speaker 1: and sure enough, there it was, just where he'd seen
Speaker 1: it before. Once again, he set off toward it, convinced
Speaker 1: it probably was a faulty power line. He was just
Speaker 1: thinking about calling it in to the police when he froze.
Speaker 1: Suddenly there about two hundred yards ahead of him, as
Speaker 1: if it had just suddenly materialized then and there was
Speaker 1: what he later described as a huge, dark shape, like
Speaker 1: a ball, but with a flattened top. He judged the
Speaker 1: object to be about thirty feet high and twenty feet across,
Speaker 1: and as he drew closer he saw it was illuminated
Speaker 1: by an unearthly greenish glow. And then he saw ladders
Speaker 1: stretching down from the underside of it, and at the
Speaker 1: bottom of one of them a man, or at least
Speaker 1: he thought it was a man. The human like figure
Speaker 1: was wearing some kind of thick suit and a large,
Speaker 1: bulbous helmet with a black, sheeny visor down over the eyes.
Speaker 1: Though Facchini didn't quite know how to describe it at
Speaker 1: the time, he would later compare it to the suits
Speaker 1: worn by the Apollo astronauts of the nineteen sixties more
Speaker 1: than a decade later, as Flashes of light continued to
Speaker 1: come from the direction of the object. Bruno Facchini figured
Speaker 1: the man in the suit was welding something, perhaps carrying
Speaker 1: out repairs of some kind. Then a secondary glow emerged
Speaker 1: from the peculiar craft, this time coming from inside it,
Speaker 1: shining out of some kind of hatch. Once the light subsided,
Speaker 1: Facchini claimed he was briefly able to glimpse inside the craft,
Speaker 1: where he apparently saw another ladder leading to a higher level,
Speaker 1: as well as an odd array of items that he
Speaker 1: described as being like bottles connected together in rows, with
Speaker 1: gauges and tubes between them. Stepping in for a closer look,
Speaker 1: he then claimed he could see two other figures moving
Speaker 1: clumsily around inside. Years later, Fackini would again reference the
Speaker 1: Apollo Astronauts to describe the manner in which the figures moved,
Speaker 1: languid and heavy, as if floating in space. He continued
Speaker 1: staring on as the figures apparently passed pipelike objects between
Speaker 1: them and occasionally sent more metallic sparks shooting out all
Speaker 1: around them. Steadily, he noticed more and more strange things.
Speaker 1: What he was seeing was like a polar the Royd
Speaker 1: picture slowly emerging in front of him. He saw dials
Speaker 1: and cylinders along the interior walls, and heard a distinct
Speaker 1: and constant buzzing sound reminiscent of a swarm of bees,
Speaker 1: And all about him, the air grew strangely warmer. Bicckini
Speaker 1: wondered if the men were from the military, operating a
Speaker 1: brand new, state of the art aircraft and had been
Speaker 1: forced to make an emergency landing due to the storm.
Speaker 1: It was only then that he realized the men were speaking,
Speaker 1: but not in any language that he had ever heard before.
Speaker 1: The bizarre guttural utterances they were apparently making caused him
Speaker 1: to realize the men weren't men at all, at least
Speaker 1: not of the human kind. Just then, one of the
Speaker 1: figures on board the craft gestured in his direction. Fear
Speaker 1: sliced through him. He stumbled backwards, suddenly realizing just how
Speaker 1: exposed he was out there, and with that he turned
Speaker 1: and ran, sprinting for his house. Across the field, Vacchini
Speaker 1: saw in his peripheral vision one of the figures point
Speaker 1: something in his direction. A sudden, bright beam of light
Speaker 1: blinded him, and a burning pain split him in two.
Speaker 1: He felt as though he'd been cut in half. Across
Speaker 1: his torso. Looking down, he saw, much to his relief,
Speaker 1: that his body was still intact, but he could no
Speaker 1: longer move. Then he collapsed heavily to the ground in
Speaker 1: the grip of utter panic. Vacchini claimed to have then
Speaker 1: watched the figures, convinced they would chase after him, only
Speaker 1: for them to continue doing what they were doing, as
Speaker 1: though they had merely meant to keep him away. Facchini
Speaker 1: watched wide eyed, trying to keep his face out of
Speaker 1: the dirt, as the figures finished up and returned inside
Speaker 1: the craft. Then the greenish light that had been emanating
Speaker 1: from the vessel throughout began to dim as the hatch
Speaker 1: door was slowly closed. A moment later, with only the
Speaker 1: half light of night, Facchini watched on as that peculiar
Speaker 1: buzzing sound grew louder in intensity, until he heard a
Speaker 1: great whush and felt the rush of the aircraft as
Speaker 1: it shot into the sky and disappeared. Bruno Facchini claimed
Speaker 1: to have remained on the ground for some time until
Speaker 1: he felt it was safe enough to return home. After
Speaker 1: a sleepless night. The next morning, he returned to the sight.
Speaker 1: There he noticed four more distinct circular impressions and noted
Speaker 1: that the grass had considerable burn markings, pieces of scrap
Speaker 1: and melted metal littered the ground, all confirming to him
Speaker 1: that whatever he had seen had genuinely happened. At least
Speaker 1: that's what he reported to the police. Despite their skepticism,
Speaker 1: some officers were sent out to investigate the site and
Speaker 1: collected pieces of the strange metal for analysis. The results
Speaker 1: were mostly inconclusive, but did conclude the fragments were comprised
Speaker 1: of some kind of heat resistant and anti friction material.
Speaker 1: They also stated that the metal would quote be ideal
Speaker 1: in spaceflight to face the burn up as a craft
Speaker 1: entered the Earth's atmosphere. A secondary examination found that the
Speaker 1: metal was comprised of mostly bronze with traces of lead.
Speaker 1: Vacchini later said that a few days after his apparent encounter,
Speaker 1: he was struck down with excruciating back pain. When he
Speaker 1: turned to get a look at his back in the mirror,
Speaker 1: he found there a huge black mark, darker than any
Speaker 1: bruise he'd ever had, stretched across the entirety of it.
Speaker 1: By the October of nineteen fifty four, UFO sightings were
Speaker 1: being reported throughout Europe. In unprecedented numbers. In September nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty four in north just south of Lille in northern France,
Speaker 1: train station guard Marius de Veilde contacted local police with
Speaker 1: an incredible story of his own. It was around ten
Speaker 1: thirty pm on the night to September tenth, as Deveild
Speaker 1: was preparing for bed, that is dark, began barking manically.
Speaker 1: Believing that something outside was distressing her, he grabbed a
Speaker 1: torch and promptly headed out to investigate. In the silence
Speaker 1: of the evening. He walked a few steps along the
Speaker 1: rail tracks when a sudden noise caused him to spin around. There,
Speaker 1: Caught in the beam of his flashlight, as he later
Speaker 1: told police, were two humanoid figures, each no more than
Speaker 1: a meter in height, standing beside some kind of craft.
Speaker 1: When he pointed the light at their heads, it apparently
Speaker 1: reflected bright and silver, as if the figures were wearing
Speaker 1: mirrored helmets. Not unlike Facchini's experience, Devilda is then said
Speaker 1: to have suddenly found himself in the grip of a
Speaker 1: mobilizing beam of light. Unable to move, he simply watched
Speaker 1: as the figures then stepped into the craft. Moments later,
Speaker 1: it shot off into the sky, rippling with effervescent color
Speaker 1: as it went. Officers despatched to investigate first interviewed da
Speaker 1: Vilde's wife and neighbor to see if they could corroborate
Speaker 1: his story, but neither had seen anything. Unimpressed, the officers
Speaker 1: nonetheless agreed to follow Devilda out to the spot where
Speaker 1: he'd apparently seen the strange craft. When they got there,
Speaker 1: they found a six meter depression in the ground. De
Speaker 1: Vilda then cried out suddenly and bent over, seemingly in
Speaker 1: the grip of an intense pain. In that moment, the
Speaker 1: torch he'd been carrying in his hand seemed also to
Speaker 1: suddenly stop working. In one report, it was said that
Speaker 1: three days later, the wilder's dogged guide while Davilda developed
Speaker 1: respiratory problems that he couldn't shake. Three cows were later
Speaker 1: found dead in a neighboring field, all apparently completely drained
Speaker 1: of blood. After Dville's apparent inexplicable encounter, a number of
Speaker 1: similar sightings were reported throughout France over the next few weeks.
Speaker 1: From Brie to Bergerac and Clermont Ferrand, came bizarre tales
Speaker 1: of floating crafts, strange lights, and the sudden onset of
Speaker 1: paralysis inflicting those who reported the sightings. On October eleventh,
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four, Henri Gaulois and Louis Vigneron were driving
Speaker 1: together in Assier, in the south of France, when they
Speaker 1: suddenly felt as though they'd been struck by something, ending
Speaker 1: an electric shock through their bodies. Both expected the car
Speaker 1: to spin wildly out of control, but instead it came
Speaker 1: to a swift halt, as though someone had simply switched
Speaker 1: it off. As the pair remained paralyzed, the men claimed
Speaker 1: they then spotted what appeared to be some kind of
Speaker 1: machine like object in the distance, being approached by three
Speaker 1: strange creatures. The creatures then disappeared inside the object, and
Speaker 1: moments later it rose into the air, gained rapid speed,
Speaker 1: and vanished. With the peculiar craft gone, the car came
Speaker 1: back to life and their movement returned. Two nights later,
Speaker 1: a near identical event is said to have happened to
Speaker 1: a doctor Henri Robert in Balliolet, seven hundred kilometers to
Speaker 1: the north. Whether it's the rumour that a UFO followed
Speaker 1: the flight path of a plane from New York to
Speaker 1: London in June of nineteen fifty four, or it's the
Speaker 1: sighting of a strange green ball over Madagascar in August
Speaker 1: of nineteen fifty four. That year certainly seemed to be
Speaker 1: a hotbed of apparent UFO related incidents. It was even
Speaker 1: said that an unscheduled dentist trip for America's President Eisenhower
Speaker 1: in February of nineteen fifty four was in fact a
Speaker 1: meeting with multiple alien species. Despite the flurry of supposed
Speaker 1: UFO sightings in nineteen fifty four, not everyone was so
Speaker 1: easily persuaded that something truly otherworldly was taking place. Scientists
Speaker 1: suggested that many of the UFO sightings in Italy and
Speaker 1: France of that year were caused by temperature inversions, which
Speaker 1: occur when a layer of hot air moves over a
Speaker 1: layer of cool, which can bend light rates so that
Speaker 1: it seems an object on the ground is in fact
Speaker 1: hovering somewhere above in the sky. Others advised that the
Speaker 1: silver glitter or angel hair as seen at the Italian
Speaker 1: football match, was likely due to migrating spiders who send long,
Speaker 1: whitish strands of their silk into the air to travel
Speaker 1: by wind. Roberto Pinotti, the president of Italy's National UFO
Speaker 1: Center disagreed, however, stating that the migrating spider's theory is
Speaker 1: an old and stupid hypothesis. According to Pinotti, the chemical
Speaker 1: analysis of the angel hair samples was nothing like spider silk,
Speaker 1: which is a protein, an organic compound containing nitrogen, calcium, hydrogen,
Speaker 1: and oxygen. On the day the apparent UFOs stopped his
Speaker 1: team's football match, Giorgio Battini, a journalist at the Florentine
Speaker 1: newspaper The Nazione, gathered several samples of the angel hair
Speaker 1: and took them to the Institute of Chemical Analysis at
Speaker 1: the University of Florence. After thorough testing, the lab concluded
Speaker 1: it actually contained the elements boron, silicon, calcium, and magnesium,
Speaker 1: not radioactive, but not spider silk either. In fact, not
Speaker 1: like anything they'd ever seen before. Sadly, the samples were
Speaker 1: destroyed by the testing process and their true provenance remains
Speaker 1: a mystery to this day. This episode was written by
Speaker 1: Ella mcleoud and Richard mc lean smith. Unexplained as an
Speaker 1: Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard mc clain smith.
Speaker 1: All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are
Speaker 1: also produced by me Richard mc lean smith Unexplained. The
Speaker 1: book and audiobook, with stories never before featured on the show,
Speaker 1: is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon,
Speaker 1: Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, and other bookstores. Please subscribe to
Speaker 1: and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts, and
Speaker 1: feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or
Speaker 1: ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps
Speaker 1: you have an explanation of your own you'd like to share.
Speaker 1: You can find out more at Unexplained podcast dot com
Speaker 1: and reach us online through Twitter at Unexplained Pod and
Speaker 1: Facebook at Facebook dot com, Forward Slash Unexplained Podcast. Ba
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