Short Stuff: 1561 Celestial Event

Summary

Stuff You Should Know – Short Stuff: 1561 Celestial Event

Hosts: Josh & Chuck
Date: August 27, 2025

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Overview

In this "Short Stuff" episode, Josh and Chuck delve into the mysterious 1561 celestial event over Nuremberg—a mass sighting of unexplained aerial phenomena that has become a favorite story among UFO enthusiasts. They explore what was recorded, the historical and cultural context, popular explanations, and how the event’s modern mythos developed, ultimately thanks to Carl Jung. Along the way, they blend humor and historical insight, separating facts from sensationalism.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The 1561 Nuremberg Event: What Was Seen?

• Description of the Event ([00:52]):
  • Occurred in Nuremberg, Germany, on April 14, 1561, early in the morning.
  • Hundreds of people reportedly witnessed what looked like an aerial battle between various “airships” of unknown origin.
  • Descriptions in the original account: different colors and shapes—squares, globes, crescents.
  • The phenomena ended with “ships” crashing outside the city and dissolving into smoke, followed by a black spear appearing in the sky.
• Credibility of Witnesses:
  • “A lot of people saw this and a lot of people who weren’t just like silly rubes.” — Josh ([00:52])
  • Not just drunken townsfolk; this was observed by regular citizens as they went about their morning.

Historical Documentation & The Role of Broadsheets

• Coverage came from Hans Glaser, who published a woodcut-illustrated Einblattdruck (broadsheet) detailing the event ([01:38]).
• “If you’ve even remotely heard of this, I’ll bet you’ve seen his famous woodcut from it. It’s quite lovely.” — Chuck ([02:09])
• Not unique: Over a nine-year span, 400 similar broadsheets were published in the region, documenting sky phenomena ([02:55]).

Social & Religious Context

• Nuremberg at the time was part of the Holy Roman Empire, a Catholic-ruled domain.
• The Protestant Reformation was ongoing, leading to high religious fervor and end-times anxiety.
• “When people saw things like these aerial battles in the sky, they’re like, this is clearly a sign from God … we’re doomed unless we repent and mend our ways.” — Chuck ([03:24])

Why Is the 1561 Nuremberg Event So Famous?

• This event wasn’t particularly extraordinary in its time but was later highlighted.
• Carl Jung referenced it in his 1958 book on flying saucers/mythologies, pulling it from obscurity ([06:30]).
• “Because this one event was plucked from all the other ones … it came to seem … as a singular event, like nothing like this had ever happened before.” — Chuck ([07:17])
• Stripped of historical context, it’s now often referred to as one of the earliest “UFO sightings.”

Explanations for the Phenomenon

• Sun Dogs (Parhelia):
  • Optical phenomena caused by sunlight reflecting through ice crystals; can appear as multiple bright spots (“two suns”).
  • Fit with the morning timing of the event; such phenomena are common but memorable.
  • “That would sort of make sense that it was daybreak.” — Josh ([09:16])
  • Rare sun dogs can last up to a couple hours (e.g., a 2023 event in China lasted two hours).
• Fireworks (Pyrotechnics):
  • Book De la Pyrotechnia (1540) detailed rockets for festivals—could a rogue fireworks enthusiast have caused the display?
  • Some aspects echo fireworks: shapes in the sky, objects fizzling into smoke upon descent.
  • “It sounds silly at first, but that one makes a little more sense to me than even sun dogs…” — Josh ([10:57])
• Embellishment:
  • Sensational reporting to sell broadsheets was already common.
  • Early publications often enhanced events for attention, as in this case.
  • “Even very early on in publishing, they were kind of doing some more sort of salacious stuff to get readers because there was competition going on.” — Josh ([11:31])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “This happened for over an hour, where they looked up in the sky and saw what looked like an aerial battle between airships of unknown origin…” — Josh ([00:52])
• “It wasn’t like Rusty and Eugene, who were out drinking that night, who saw it and came back and told everybody.” — Chuck ([01:30])
• “When people saw things like these aerial battles in the sky, they’re like, this is clearly a sign from God.” — Chuck ([03:24])
• “This one event … Carl Jung put in his book about flying saucers is a UFO. He’s talking about a UFO sighting. That’s where we landed today.” — Chuck ([07:25])
• “They weren’t people sitting around looking at the sky saying it was like a dragon or something…” — Josh ([08:07])
• “On its face, [the fireworks theory] seems unlikely, but when you dig in, it’s like it gets a little meatier, for sure.” — Chuck ([11:18])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:52] — Introduction to the 1561 celestial event and initial eyewitness descriptions.
• [01:38] — Hans Glaser’s broadsheet, the woodcut, and media coverage in the 1500s.
• [02:55] — Similar events reported across the Holy Roman Empire; historical context of mass sightings.
• [03:24] — Religious and societal climate of Nuremberg; explanation for apocalyptic interpretations.
• [06:30] — Explanation for the event’s fame: Carl Jung, modern myth-making, and the “first UFO sighting.”
• [08:07] — Contemporary scientific understanding; dismissing simple explanations.
• [09:16] — The three main theories: sun dogs, fireworks, and embellishment, each discussed in turn.
• [11:31] — Early sensationalism in publishing and broadsheet competition.
• [12:15] — Wrap-up and thanks to listener James Calimera for inspiring the episode.

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Conclusion

Josh and Chuck unpack the Nuremberg celestial event as a product of its time—neither naïve mass hysteria nor unambiguous alien visitation. They illustrate how context, cultural anxieties, nascent science, and evolving media practices shaped both the original report and its later reinterpretation as a proto-UFO sighting. The episode balances skepticism with amusement, offering an accessible primer on how historical events become modern myths.

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Listener Shoutout:
Special thanks to James Calimera for requesting this episode—460 years after the original event! ([12:15])

Transcript

[A]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[B]

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[A]

That's right, Nuremberg, Germany. Of course, on April 14th of that year, there were people. This is early morning, and there were a lot of people around. And this happened for over an hour, where they looked up in the sky and saw what looked like an aerial battle between airships of unknown origin, I guess is the best way you could say it. There were different colors, there were different shapes. There were squares and globes and crescents. And eventually the ships crashed outside of town and dissolved into smoke. And a lot of people saw this and a lot of people who weren't just like silly rubes.

[B]

Right. It wasn't like Rusty and Eugene, who were out drinking that night, who saw it and came back and told everybody.

[A]

Other people doing their thing in the morning.

[B]

Exactly. And we don't know how many. We just know, quote, a lot of men and women. And then after all that, something like a black spear appeared in the sky, too. So this was a big deal, you can imagine. And we know about it because there was a broadsheet that was published. Recording it or documenting it. There's a publisher named Hans Glaser, and he published in Einblatt Druck. Did I say that right? Yeah. Okay. Which is a type of broadsheet that has a headline, an illustration, usually a wood cut, and then, you know, an account of what happened. And so there's this famous Einblatt druk of the 1561 celestial phenomenon in Nuremberg that Hans Glaser made. And if you've even remotely heard of this, I'll bet you've seen his famous woodcut from it. It's quite lovely.

[A]

Yeah, I love a woodcut. We both love woodcuts.

[B]

Yeah. A good woodcut is something to behold.

[A]

Agreed. So now we look back and say, like, hey, these people saw. This is like one of the first UFO encounters. They didn't talk of such things back then. So of course they didn't talk about it that way. But it was not, as it turns out, an isolated incident even at the time. There were apparently a lot of sort of sightings like this at the time where it looked like airship battles were going on. So if you lived around that area, the Alpine, sort of Scandinavian area at the time between like a nine year period or so, there were 400 of these broadsheets. So it was like a hot thing, a hot topic.

[B]

Yeah, people were nuts for it. Right. So this was during the time where Austria, Switzerland, Germany, some other countries. And Nuremberg is in Germany. Germany, of course, they were part of the Holy Roman Empire. And the Holy Roman Empire was ruled by an emperor and the Pope. So therefore it was a pretty Catholic empire. And at the time of this event in Nuremberg, the Reformation's going on. So this is a really tumultuous time that was kicked off by Martin Luther. And during the Reformation era, there was a lot of religious fervor. There was a lot of emphasis on end times. So when people saw things like these aerial battles in the sky, they're like, this is clearly a sign from God. We don't know what it means, but what it's ultimately telling us is that we're doomed unless we repent and mend our ways.

[A]

That's right. So just to sort of reiterate, they did not call these UFOs. That's an US thing. And maybe we'll take that break and we will come back right after this and dig in once more.

[C]

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[B]

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[C]

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[B]

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[C]

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[B]

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[C]

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[A]

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[C]

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[D]

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[B]

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[D]

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[B]

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[D]

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[B]

Okay, Chuck, so if, like you said, this 1561 celestial event over Nuremberg was one of the hundreds in this, this era, this era of the trend of seeing aerial battles in the sky, why is that the one we're talking about? And there's actually a really good explanation why. The reason why is because this was a forgotten event. Because, again, it just got mixed in with all the others. It was a forgotten event in history, largely that was plucked out of obscurity to be used as an example in a book about flying saucers, or actually the mythology we create around things like Thomas Flying Saucers by none other than psychoanalyst Carl Jung. And because this one event was plucked from all the other ones that he could have used, it came to seem to us people living today as a singular event, like nothing like this had ever happened before. Right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So it loses its context in that sense. And then eventually, over time, since 1958, and that book came out and it was stripped further of its context, that Carl Jung was using this as an example of people coming up with their own mythologies about something they didn't understand, like we do with UFOs. And so this one event that happened in Nuremberg in 1561 that Carl Jung put in his book about flying saucers is a ufo. He's talking about a UFO sighting. That's where we landed today. When we think about the 1561 celestial phenomenon being a UFO sighting.

[A]

Yeah, aliens, basically.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

But, you know, I think I said in the first part that, you know, these weren't rubes. They were just regular people. It was 1561, but, like, science was around A little bit there in some form or fashion. Like less than a decade after this, they figured out like what comets were, that they were space faring natural objects. So they weren't. They weren't people sitting around looking at the sky saying, it was like a dragon or something like that?

[B]

No. Yeah. Yes. When you take that into account that these weren't just dummies, you can't just be like, yeah, it was a comet, obviously, or maybe even a couple shooting stars. Who knows? If you take that kind of easy explanation out of your toolbox, as they put it in hr, it becomes much harder to explain what exactly they saw. You also have to take into account these people had eons of collective awareness and memory of an experience with natural phenomenon. So again, it's not going to be a comet, it's not going to be a rainbow, it's not going to be something like that. Over time, basically, three main explanations have been proffered, and that's sun dogs, fireworks and embellishment.

[A]

Yeah. A sun dog is. It's not something you see every day, but it's not like super, super uncommon, apparently, like they're as common or more common than rainbows. So it's the kind of thing that happens with some frequency, but that's when the sun's reflected by these low angled ice crystals up in the air and it triples it, basically, where you have two suns on either side and it fits that it's morning because it happens. Sun dogs happen when the sun is low on the horizon. So that would sort of make sense that it was daybreak.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The one thing though is that this happens a lot. So if this is the kind of thing that. Or not a lot, but with enough frequency that people wouldn't be like, oh my God, let's make a wood cut about this.

[B]

Right. One other thing that actually is a mark in the sundog's favor is an explanation. They typically last between 15 and 30 minutes, but as recently as 2023, one in northern China was witnessed that lasted a couple hours. So it's. If this thing lasted an hour, it's not like a sundog is ruled out because of the length of time that was. One.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Another one is that in 1540 full 20 plus years before this event, a man named Venocchio Beringuccio published De la Pyrotechnia, which is the first book from Europe, at least, on how to prepare rockets, including using rockets in festivals, what we would call fireworks. So the question is like, was there somebody in Nuremberg who had gotten a hold of this book and was putting on a fireworks display without telling anybody. And there's actually. Some of the details are like, yeah, that would make sense that these things fell out of the sky and fizzled out into smoke when they were on the ground.

[A]

I mean, it sounds silly at first, but that one makes a little more sense to me than even Sun Dogs as far as like maybe creating weird shapes and the fizzling out part, like you talked about, but then you're just sort of making a theory about some rogue German that got this book. But hey, that's not unbelievable, right?

[B]

Like, on its face, it seems unlikely, but when you dig in, it's like it gets a little meatier, for sure. I mean, like, this is something that they probably wouldn't have seen before, you know, so at least it checks that box. And then there's embellishment too, right?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the obvious one. That maybe, I don't know, something happened. Maybe it was a Sun Dog gone wild in. It's a great series of videos in the 80s. A sun dog gone wild in the account, and then the woodcutting on that broadsheet. Maybe that's what happened. Because even it wasn't like the heyday of yellow journalism and tabloids, but even very early on in publishing, they were kind of doing some more sort of salacious stuff to get readers because there was competition going on.

[B]

Exactly. So it makes a lot of sense that they might have been embellishing no matter what it is. That doesn't explain what it is, but that explains probably the account of it, right?

[A]

Yeah, agreed.

[B]

So, I mean, I guess that's it. It was one of multiple stories of something that happened at the time. Plucked out of obscurity by Carl Jung, stripped of context, turned into a UFO sighting that had nothing to do with that by us. I want to also thank our listener James Calimera, who's written in multiple times to ask for us to do this one as far back as 2021, which is 460 years after the Nuremberg event. Exactly. Pretty spooky. Short stuff is out. Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.