Nuremberg, Germany — 14 April 1561
Vertical cylinders
At sunrise many spheres and disks, red, blue and black were seen to come out of two vertical cylinders. They flew across the face of the Sun in an apparent “aerial fight”. In a contemporary engraving some of the spheres appear to have landed on a hill to the right of the city, where much smoke is rising, while an elongated shape resembling a great black spear is seen in a horizontal position. Fig. 16: The sighting at Nuremberg “Beyond balls of a red color, bluish or black, and circular disks, two large pipes were seen…within which small and big pipes were found three balls, also four and more. “All these elements started fighting against one another.” The fight seems to have lasted about an hour, then “as mentioned above, from the Sun and the sky, it fell onto the earth as if everything was burning, and with great smoke everything got consumed.”
Source: This pamphlet is preserved in the Wickiana collection of the Central Library in Zurich: Erscheinung am Himmel uber Niirnberg am 14. April 1561. Zurich Zentralbibliothek [ZB PAS II 12:60]. Case: W147