between Urbino and Gubbio, central Italy — 1501
Abortions caused by a horrible object in the sky
Professor Carlo Pedretti, specialist of Leonardo da Vinci Studies at the University of California, has published an article about relations between the “monstrous” and the Renaissance. He stated that the Florentine physician Antonio Benivieni (1443-1502), who was interested in monsters from the pathological point of view, mentions a wonder that took place between Urbino and Gubbio in 1501: “a horrible appearance in the stormy sky that caused many abortions - what we today call the appearance of a UFO.”
Source: Antonio Benivieni, De abditis nonnullis ac mirandis morborum et sanationem causis, G. Weber, ed., in Academia Toscana di Scienze e Lettere “La Columbaria, ” 142 (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1994), 190; Carlo Pedretti, La Nazione, 28 July 1979. Case: W114