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It was a seemingly typical autumn day when actor William Shatner suited up, stepped into a starship, and for the umpteenth time in his career, prepared to boldly go where no man has gone before. He'd enacted this ritual countless times while portraying the beloved James T. Kirk, captain of Star Trek's USS Enterprise. But this was different. Today, you see, he wasn't simply playing an astronaut on TV. No. On October 13th of 2021, William Shatner actually became one. After months of flight simulations and training courses, the actor joined three fellow voyagers aboard the Blue Origin rocket New Shepard NS18, which successfully blasted off for a 10 minute long suborbital space flight. At 90 years old, Shatner became the oldest living person to ever visit outer space. It's hard to imagine how significant that moment must have felt for him. After all, this is a guy whose name has been synonymous with space travel since 1960, three years before the moon landing. And here he was, finally leaving the Earth's atmosphere for the very first time. You would probably expect that it was a joyful experience, a full circle moment. Shatner himself certainly thought that it would be. But as it turned out, the reality was something far different. I love the mysteries of the universe, he later wrote, reflecting on the voyage. I love all the questions that have come to us over thousands of years of exploration and hypothesis. Stars exploding years ago, their light traveling to us years later. Black holes absorbing energy. Satellites showing us entire galaxies in areas thought to be devoid of matter entirely. All of that has thrilled me for years. But when I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold. All I saw was death. So there you have it. Sometimes to find true horror all you have to do is look up. I'm Aaron Manke, and this is Lore. The spacecraft was called Soyuz 11, and in 1971 it had just returned to Earth after what everyone thought had been a successful round trip mission to the world's first space station. But when the recovery crew opened the hatch after landing, excitement quickly turned to horror. The three men inside were very, very dead. Dark blue patches mottled their faces. Trails of blood ran from their noses and ears. And it soon became clear what had happened. Soyuz 11 had accidentally depressurized while undocking from the space station some 100 miles above the Earth. The cosmonauts were gone before their journey home had even begun. And no one on the ground had any idea. It's a grim tale, but here's the really surprising thing about the Soyuz 11's casualties. These three astronauts are the only people to have ever died in outer space. That's right. Out of the 600 something explorers who have journeyed into the great unknown outside of our atmosphere, a mere three of them have lost their lives. And on the same expedition, no less. For most of us, our knowledge of space comes from media like Star wars and Star Trek, chock full of action, adventure, and, yes, lots of death. But in reality, there's only been one single deadly accident more than half a century ago. Honestly, not bad odds. But then again, that's just counting people who died while actually in outer space. If you add in those who perished in their attempts to get there, well, then that number becomes absolutely horrific. Take, for example, the fire that broke out during the launch simulation of Apollo 1, killing three astronauts back in 1967. Or a parachute failure that same year in which the lone cosmonaut aboard Soyuz 1 was reduced to, and I quote, a lump 30cm wide and 80cm long. Then there's the Challenger disaster, which I got to watch happen in real time on a TV alongside my entire sixth grade class because our teacher wanted us to watch another teacher go into space. And it's a bit of childhood trauma that I will never forget. Add to that the seven deaths from 2003's Columbia shuttle disaster, and, well, when you start adding it up, space travel clearly isn't the safest of pursuits. And that's not even counting the dogs, cats, monkeys, mice, rats, rabbits, turtles, fish, geckos and various insects who have perished in the name of spaceflight. And with all that uncertainty, it makes sense that astronauts will try to just about anything if it means being a little safer. They may be literal rocket scientists, but they're also Some of the most superstitious people on the planet, and off the planet for that matter. American astronauts, for example, will religiously eat scrambled eggs and steak before launch. Why? Well, because that's what Alan Shepard ate right before he became the first American in space in 1961. And while this breakfast of champions is strictly ritual based for today's high flyers, it wasn't a random meal choice for Shepard. In fact, the menu was carefully designed by the Aerospace Medical Lab due to its low fiber content, which was important. You see, Shepard's 15 minute suborbital flight plan didn't exactly include a bathroom break. And a low fiber meal would help reduce the need to go. Now, American astronaut superstitions go far beyond the dining hall. According to tradition, once the mission commander on American space flights suits up, they must win a card game against the tech crew before heading to the launch pad. The game of choice is usually called Possum Fargo, and the rules are simple. Each player draws five cards and the lowest poker hand wins. And you might be wondering what happens if the commander doesn't draw the lowest hand? Well, then they keep playing until he does. And apparently there have been multiple occasions where the card game came dangerously close to messing up a launch schedule. In Another example, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, or JPL, in Southern California, mission control engineers eat lucky peanuts before launch. Way back in the early 60s when JPL was attempting to send a probe to the moon, only for it to fail not once, not twice, but six times. By the seventh attempt, spirits were pretty flagged. So the engineer decided to boost morale by handing out some peanuts to snack on. Lo and behold, that seventh try was the charm. So ever since then, peanuts at launches are a required snack. Oh, and yes, this is the same JPL whose founder was super into satanic rituals and attempting to summon the Whore of Babylon along with his buddy L. Ron Hubbard. But I dig. Of course, it's not only American astronauts who get a little woohoo before blastoff. Russian cosmonauts have a whole host of their own superstitions. One of the most common involves having a little movie night on the eve before a launch. They always watch the same film too, a Russian action movie called White Son of the Desert. This good luck ritual started in 1973 when Soyuz 12 astronauts watched the film before a mission. Which was obviously a bit stressful given the Fate of Soyuz 11. Right. According to 12's commander, the movie's protagonist, Comrade Sukhoy, became like a third crew member to them during the trip. Which ended up being a huge success. And Russian rituals don't end there. Most of the others revolve around the cult, like worship of Soviet pilot Yuri Gagarin, which makes sense after all. In April of 1961, Gagarin became the first human being ever in space. And since then, Russian cosmonauts have been attempting to, oh, so precisely replicate every moment leading up to that first flight. And this includes planting a tree alongside a special grove, signing their door at the cosmonaut hotel, and getting a haircut two days before launch. Most famously, though, that would be the tradition of stopping outside the bus that brings them to the launch pad, approaching the back right tire and peeing on it. And yes, you heard that right. You see, according to the legend, Gagarin did this before his first ever flight, assumedly out of a genuine need rather than urinary spellcasting. But today, it is a must. It's also important to pay respects to Yuri Gagarin directly. Although he died in a plane crash in 1968, his office has been frozen in time as a museum. Impending voyagers will make pilgrimages to his desk there to sign a guest book and also lay flowers on his final resting place at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. And finally, there's one last important step. You have to ask Yuri Gagarin's permission to enter the skies. Which might be a problem, given the fact that he's dead. But don't worry. The Russian astronauts know exactly what to do. They simply beg the blessing of Gagarin's ghost. Long before humanity reached the stars, we were telling stories about them. You're probably familiar with the 12 signs of the zodiac, a word that quite literally translates to circle of little animals, by the way. But while astrology apps and glossy magazine horoscopes are all too trendy today, the notion that the stars present at your birth can influence the rest of your life actually stretches way back to ancient Babylon. It was the Greeks, though, who really perfected that system. And they also had some colorful ideas as to how the stars got up there in the first place. The constellations Cancer and Leo, for example, both started out as creatures on Earth. After Hercules defeated them during his 12 labors, Hera placed them in the sky as a reward for their service. Ursa Major, meanwhile, was once a nymph. Callisto and Ursa Minor, her son Arcus. According to myth, Callisto was turned into a bear after being seduced by Zeus, only for her son to mistake her for a real bear and try to kill her. At the last minute, Zeus intervened by turning both of them into constellations. Meanwhile, the seven stars of the Pleiades Cluster were once seven beautiful sisters. So beautiful, in fact, that the hunter Orion pursued them day and night to protect them from their stalker. Zeus had a creative solution. You guessed it. He turned them into stars. Here's the thing, though. The Greeks weren't the only ones to label the Pleiades as seven women. In fact, countless world cultures have similar stories, like the Tuareg people of the Sahara, the Great Plains, Kiowa people, Southern Australia's Wirongo people, and the Raji of Nepal, just to name a few. Now, before you look up at the night sky and tell me that my count is off. Yes, I know only six stars are visible in the Pleiades Cluster, but I promise you, there used to be a seventh before things shifted a bit up there, and one ended up blocked from our view. And it was, well, a bit before our time, though. 100,000 years ago. Which has amazing implications when you think about it. If the last time seven distinct stars were visible to the naked eye was 100,000 years ago, it means those stories about the seven sisters must be at least as old. In fact, some theorize that all of these seven women myths originate from one single lost story told all the way back in ancient Africa. Over the eons, that tale not only spread, but it adapted with the times. Once the seventh star became invisible, the stories changed to match, including new myths to explain why the seventh woman is missing. In some, she's hiding in shame after marrying a mortal, and in others, she's dead or abducted. And in still others, she's simply too ugly to show her face. Oh, and speaking of Africa, in South African Xa culture, where it's disrespectful to point at an elder, it's also disrespectful to point at the stars. And they're not the only ones with a taboo against star pointing. In Germany, pointing at the stars is equivalent to poking out an angel's eyes. Hardcore, I know. Oh, and it's also said to make your finger fall off. But don't worry, there is a workaround if you do accidentally point at a star while in Germany, simply bite your finger after and you're good to go. In Britain, you'll lose more than a finger if you point at the stars. You might straight up die. And this superstition extends to counting stars as well. According to legend, if you count to 100, you're dead. In Brazil, though, things are a little less dire. If you point at the stars there, you'll merely get a wart on the offending finger. Now, with all that said, stars aren't the only celestial bodies that have made their way into humanity's folklore. Comets have long been interpreted as portents by cultures all around the world. Portents of what, exactly? Mostly some type of horrible doom. But occasionally they could be good omens as well. Take the Christian folklore, for example. While usually comets are seen as a sign of God's wrath, some have argued that the star of Bethlehem from the Christmas story signaling the birth of Christ wasn't a star at all, but a comet. In China, folks couldn't help but notice that a comet's tail looked a bit like a broom of twigs. Which led to the belief that comets swept away the old and made room for the new, for better or for worse. In ancient Rome, comets tails were likened not to the bristles of a broom, but to human hair. In fact, the word comet comes from the Greek word komites, meaning a head with long hair, as if the comet were a severed head soaring across the sky, its luxurious tresses flowing behind. Of course, today we know that the effect is merely a trail of dust and ionized gas. But the whole hair analogy really had an impact on the ancients. When Roman Emperor Vespasian was warned about a coming comet, he insisted that whatever omen it brought didn't apply to him, so not to worry about it. How was he so sure? Why, because he was bald, of course. So clearly the comet was a message for the king of Parthians instead, his very hairy neighbor. All around the world and across the pages of history, it's clear that comets have been ominous signs. But at least they're the kind of signs that stay in the sky, right? Well, unfortunately, if the stories are true, that assumption would be terribly wrong. It was without a doubt the weirdest thing the people of France had ever seen. One minute it was a typical October day in 1952, and the next the residents of old Iran were frozen in place, gawking skyward at a giant cigar shaped ufo. Which was alarming enough even without what came next. Because there in the distance, nearly 30 other flying objects were following the UFO as it moved slowly southward. In the words of the local high school superintendent, to the naked eye, they appeared as featureless balls resembling puffs of smoke. But with the help of opera glasses, it was possible to make out a central red sphere surrounded by a sort of yellowish ring. And these things weren't just floating, they were leaving strange white trails behind them. Pale smoke like threads, almost like Spider silk. And once the saucers departed, these fibers slowly fell to the ground, which is where the real chaos began. Whatever this trail material was, it covered the town of Olorun. It landed in sticky clumps on rooftops, clung to trees and telephone wires. But when people tried to pick it up, the material turned to jelly in their hands before disappearing altogether. One man, a dentist named Dr. Balestra, was walking across a bridge when he became totally ensnared by the filaments. Basically a real life enactment of Frodo St. In Shelob's Web. He writhed and fought, finally managing to break free. But that was only the half of it. Because you see, that's when the threads gathered themselves back together and rose back into the air. And I know what you're thinking. This all sounds very totally made up, but I promise you, it is not. In fact, the incident in Oleron wasn't even one of a kind. Cincinnati, Ohio. Sudbury, Massachusetts. Auckland, New Zealand, and Melbourne, Australia. Even 2nd century Rome. In all of these places, witnesses have reported seeing an almost identical phenomenon occur. To quote a report from 7th century Japan, cotton like matter in strands of about 5 to 6ft long were seen to fall from the sky and drift in the wind for quite some time. And in the year 196 AD, the historian Cassius Di wrote, a fine rain resembling silver descended from a clear sky upon the forum of Augustus. Yes, whatever this stuff is, it's been flurrying down upon our little planet for quite some time. It's come to be known as angel hair, but not like the pasta. According to ufologists, the stuff is categorized as a fibrous web or silk like substance that descends to earth from above. Often, oddly enough, in the month of October. Usually it's white, although sometimes it's gray, silver or translucent. And apparently it tastes salty, although I wouldn't recommend trying it. Oh, and by the way, the angel hair that fell on Oloron, France, it wasn't the most recent sighting, because just two Octobers later in 1954, it descended upon a professional Italian soccer match in front of 10,000 witnesses. In fact, this one is worth spending just a little bit more time on. It was 2:27pm on Oct. 27, just after halftime, when gameplay in Florence's Artemio Franchi Stadium screeched to a halt. The players, you see, had noticed that their fans weren't actually watching them play anymore. Instead, they'd all began to shout and point at the sky. Soon the players were looking up as well, the ball abandoned on the ground. And what they saw is about to sound all too familiar to you, because overhead floated strange cigar shaped and egg shaped UFOs from which a stringy silvery substance began to fall, landing thick and sticky on the turf. And hey, if 10,000 soccer fans aren't witnesses enough to convince you they weren't the only ones to see the phenomenon. Similar reports flooded in from all over Florence, along with other nearby towns. Oh, and by the way, this was just one out of 961 UFO sightings in Europe just that month. Nearly 500 more than any month that year. And many of those reports, yes, they also included reports of angel hair. But back to the stadium. The phenomenon continued for a good 15 minutes before the UFOs flew out of sight. And look, Italians clearly take their soccer game seriously, because once the spectacle vanished, they went right back to playing. The home team won in a 62 victory, by the way. But it wasn't the score that would stick in players memories. Decades later in 2014, one player named Romolo Tucci recalled the feeling that he had as he stood on the field that day, watching the mysterious sky. I was spellbound, he said. And I was also so, so happy. All the wars ever fought, all the arts ever made, and all the music ever composed, every love story and every heartbreak, it's all taken place right here on this tiny blue planet, barely a speck in the vast expanse of the universe. And yes, maybe there are other livable planets, maybe there's even intelligent life out there. But if there's one thing more terrifying than the idea of something out there, it's the hollow, isolating notion that perhaps we really are utterly and entirely alone. And so we tell stories. We transform the stars into characters with names and feelings and faces. We devise rituals to appease the cosmos, as if that dark expanse cared for us at all. In other words, we bring the void to life. Of course, not every space encounter is just a story. Stringy alien angel hair really has fallen from the sky. But there are those who believe that even that has an earthly explanation. Some theorize that the gunk that fell on France and Italy in the 1950s was a substance called chaff, a tangle of tiny fiberglass and aluminum wires that planes will drop disrupt radar. Perhaps a military fighter jet was training that day and inadvertently released the stuff on unsuspecting citizens. And sure, that might explain some of the events of the 1950s. But what about the angel hair sightings from back before Chef, or before planes for that matter, were even invented? Well, some have an explanation for that as well. Remember how I mentioned earlier that these angel hair sightings are most frequently reported during the month of October? Well, here's something else that occurs in October as spider migration. Now, apologies in advance to the arachnophobes out there, because I'm about to drop a whole new nightmare on you. Literally. It's called ballooning. Basically, after certain species of baby spiders hatch, they disperse by catching a ride on the breeze, assisted by long strands of their silk. And if you have enough floating spiders, the silk can get all tangled up into a big silvery cloud of cobwebs soaring through the sky. Oh, and by the way, ideal conditions for this happen to be calm, sunny autumn days, just like the weather during those incidents in France and Italy. And I know what you're thinking. What about those oblong spacecraft seen spewing the stuff? Well, apparently when light reflects off these spider web balloons, it can cause all sorts of optical illusions, like making a glob resemble a single solid object. It is a pretty good explanation, and in most cases, probably exactly right. But it may not be good enough for those cases in the 1950s. Because you see, I left out one tiny detail from that 1954 soccer match. As sticky strands overtook the stadium, one quick thinking journalist scooped up some of the substance and tucked it away. And then he took it to a lab at the University of Florence. Chemical analysis revealed it to contain calcium, magnesium, boron and silicon. But do you know what is very much missing from this little cocktail? That's right. It has neither plain chaff nor spider silk. I hope you enjoyed today's adventure through folklore's final frontier. Seems like the only thing expanding faster than the universe itself are the tales that we tell about it. But we aren't done with airborne legends just yet. In fact, I've been hiding one last story under the rug that's just about ready to fly. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. This episode was made possible by Simplisafe. Look, I'm just going to say it. 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