On a cool March afternoon in 1954 at the Artemi Franchi in Florence, Italy, the normally chaotic stadium fell completely silent after halftime. Even the soccer players stopped to gaze up at the bizarre spectacle in the sky that was upstaging the game. What ten thousand people saw that day was never truly explained by modern science, even 61 years later.
It appeared to the fearful players and spectators that one or two UFO entities were ominously soaring over the field. One player on the field, Ardico Magini, described them as “shaped like an egg” emitting strange “silver glitter.”
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“I think they were extra-terrestrial. That’s what I believe, and there’s no other explanation I can give myself.” –Ardico Magini
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That same day and several days later, similar sightings were reported in other Italian towns near Tuscany. Newspapers set the public into a panic, writing that the mysterious shapes were aliens and they were from Mars. Could Magini and the newspapers have been right? Why would so many people lie?
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Some scientists think this phenomenon occurred due to the migration of spiders. Some species of spiders use their webs to “balloon” to warmer climates. When entangled, these “balloons” can create some bizarre shapes. It would also explain the glittery substance.
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Around the time of the “invasion” it was, in fact, the spiders’ migration season. But when the glittery substance was tested, it was composed of boron, silicon, magnesium, and calcium. These are not elements typically found in the silk “balloons” the spiders travel in.
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(via Unbelievable Facts)
We may never know what truly happened that day in 1954. Even as new scientific information attempts to explain what happened, the ten thousand people are certain that whatever it was, it was nothing of this Earth.
