On a tiny speck suspended amid the great black abyss of space, exists everything we have ever known and possibly will ever know, every person that has ever existed, every thought that has ever been thought, every love affair, every war, every lie, every kiss, every piece of music that has ever been written, and every glimmer of a future not yet realized. All of it. That tiny speck is, of course Earth, home to us and everything that makes us us.
But it's estimated there are roughly ten thousand stars in the universe for every grain of sand found on our planet itself, only one of over a bit billion planets in our galaxy. That galaxy, the Milky Way, is one of two trillion galaxies in the observable universe, an incomprehensibly vast space ninety three billion light years from end to end. The rest of the universe that we can't yet see could be anything from one hundred and fifty to two
hundred and fifty billion trillion times bigger. In nineteen eighty one, Alan Guth of Stamford University proposed the theory of cosmic inflation, the idea that the nascent universe passed through a phase of exponential expansion and has been continually expanding ever since.
Is the universe vast but finite with opposite ends, or is it something else, some as yet unquantifiable, non Euclidean space with wraparound properties, like a game of pac Man, where traveling so far in one direction eventually brings you
back to where you started. Or is the entire universe as we know it just the inside of a black hole existing inside a whole other universe, or inside an infinite number of other possible universes for that matter, Is the universe itself infinite in space, never ending no matter what direction we travel through it, be that spatially or temporarily, we simply don't know. But from astronomers to philosophers to stargazing stoners, all of us grapple with this dizzy in conundrum.
Either way, For most people, far more than wanting to know what shape our universe actually takes, what we really want to know is are we alone in it? You're listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard McLean Smith the twenty seventh of October nineteen fifty four. The early autumnal sun is sweet and crisp where it turns the Tuscan Street's gold.
Shouts of laughter and good natured talk fill the streets of Florence, Italy, as crowds of people head towards the Stadio Comunale later to be known as the Stadio Artemio Francie. Tens of thousands of fans turn out in their drogues to watch a highly anticipated local derby, a match between home team Fiorentina and their rivals Pistoiese. There's much excitement from even the Pistoiese fans at the site of Ardco Magnini de Fender, local legend and World Cup star of
the summer, as he runs out onto the pitch. He would become famous in nineteen fifty six for a photograph depicting him flying through the air and appearing to roundhouse kick a ball, his mouth open in a defiant shout, but for now he is taking it easy. It's a friendly match and the atmosphere is jovial. The first half is much like any football match, people drinking and cheering and swearing animatedly at the ref whenever the moment called for it. Half time arrives and the teams huddled together
in intense conversation, patting each other on the back. Fifteen minutes later, the crowd roared as one as the players fanned out onto the pitch again. It was about twenty minutes past two, barely a few minutes into the second half, when a sudden, eerie silence fell across the whole stadium, like someone had suddenly turned down the volume on a radio.
From the middle of the pitch, ardco Magnini looked up at the crowd, who, as though the radio had been suddenly cranked on again, let out a deafening roar and pointed to the sky. Magnini followed the many outstretched arms to where they were pointing, and his eyes grew wide in astonishment. Up above him, a large silver egg like shape was moving slowly, slowly, slowly, as Magnini would later describe it, right over the stadium. All the players stopped
to marvel at the bizarre site. Moments later, there was a bright sparkling in the air underneath the object, as a strange silver glitter began to fall from the sky. In the aftermath of the peculiar event at the football match, the silver glitter would remain a common denominator in the many accounts of the event given by numerous spectators. Some described it as being like silvery filaments descending from the heavens, while others noted how the sky itself seemed to shimmer
and glow with random flashes of light. Roberto Pinotti, the president of Italy's National UFO Center, recalled the light, sticky substance falling from above. In English, they called this angel hair. He said, the only problem was after a short period of time it disintegrated. But I remember in broad daylight seeing the roofs of the houses in Florence covered in this white substance for one hour, and like snow, it
just evaporated. Gigi Bonni, a lifelong Fiorantina fan, remembered many objects in the sky that day, describing them as being silver and shaped like Cuban cigars and moving unusually fast, then stopped over the pitch before dropping the shimmering silver rain. In the official match record, it stated that the match was suspended due to something in the sky. Others, including another player, Romolo Tucci, reported seeing multiple smaller crafts in
those years. He said, everybody was talking UFOs and we had the experience. We saw them directly for real. Tucci was not wrong. In those years the nineteen fifties, everyone really was talking about aliens. As the governments of the US and the Soviet Union invested increasingly heavily in space exploration in an effort to prove to the world who was the true superpower. Talk of space probes and satellites
quickly entered the mainstream. In October nineteen fifty one, the Soviet engineer Mikhail to Konovoff published an article titled Flight to the Moon. In it, he described in evocative detail the hypothetical spaceships of the future, laid out the science needed to create them, and ended his article with what to many imaginative, impressionable minds must have read as a call to arms. We do not have long to wait.
We can assume that the bold dream will be realized within the next ten to fifteen years, not to be outdone. Over the next three years. The United States Colliers magazine responded with a series of seven articles titled man will Conquer Space Soon. Then, in nineteen fifty five, Disney screened an animated episode of their television series Disneyland titled Man
in Space. It reached an audience of forty million people and was even nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short The space race had not yet begun, but the competitors were well and truly at the start line, limbering up and poised for the starting pistol. It's no wonder, then, that UFO sightings during the early nineteen fifties skyrocketed, with
reports soon numbering in their thousands across the world. For the people of Italy, it was factory worker Bruno Faccini who was perhaps more responsible than anyone for kicking off that country's own wave of bizarre aerial sightings that would eventually peak in nineteen fifty four. On that strange summer afternoon in Florence. It was the evening of April twenty fourth, nineteen fifty a little after ten p m. On the outskirts of the city of Tredate, just north of Milan.
All day long, the city had been shrouded by thick, dark clouds and pummeled with rain. Having waited for the latest downpour to stop, Facchini stepped hurriedly from his back door, leaving his wife and young son inside as he made a dash for their outdoor toilet located at the back of the garden. After relieving himself, Faccini stepped outside and lit a cigarette, savoring the musty smell of wet grass and warm rain on concrete. As he made his way
back down the garden path toward the house. It was then that he noticed the strange flashes of light in the dark sky above. Naturally, at first he thought it was simply lightning, but the storm clouds had since moved off, and in any case, when he looked again, he saw the light was in fact coming from a field opposite his house, so Facchini went to investigate. As he made
his way over, the lights continued to flash. He began to wonder if maybe it was the electrical spark of a broken power line damaged by the storm, but as he drew nearer, the flashing light suddenly stopped. He stood for a moment in the silence and scanned the field ahead, but saw nothing unusual. Perhaps it was just light reflecting off some glass, he thought, Feeling a little stupid, He felt cold suddenly and pulled his light jacket a little
tighter together. Turning back to his house, he was just about to set off for home when he sensed the light flashing again from out the corner of his eye, and sure enough, there it was, just where he'd seen it before. Once again, he set off toward it, convinced it probably was a faulty power line. He was just thinking about calling it in to the police when he froze.
Suddenly there about two hundred yards ahead of him, as if it had just suddenly materialized then and there was what he later described as a huge, dark shape, like a ball, but with a flattened top. He judged the object to be about thirty feet high and twenty feet across, and as he drew closer he saw it was illuminated by an unearthly greenish glow. And then he saw ladders stretching down from the underside of it, and at the bottom of one of them a man, or at least
he thought it was a man. The human like figure was wearing some kind of thick suit and a large, bulbous helmet with a black, sheeny visor down over the eyes. Though Facchini didn't quite know how to describe it at the time, he would later compare it to the suits worn by the Apollo astronauts of the nineteen sixties more than a decade later, as Flashes of light continued to come from the direction of the object. Bruno Facchini figured the man in the suit was welding something, perhaps carrying
out repairs of some kind. Then a secondary glow emerged from the peculiar craft, this time coming from inside it, shining out of some kind of hatch. Once the light subsided, Facchini claimed he was briefly able to glimpse inside the craft, where he apparently saw another ladder leading to a higher level, as well as an odd array of items that he described as being like bottles connected together in rows, with
gauges and tubes between them. Stepping in for a closer look, he then claimed he could see two other figures moving clumsily around inside. Years later, Fackini would again reference the Apollo Astronauts to describe the manner in which the figures moved, languid and heavy, as if floating in space. He continued staring on as the figures apparently passed pipelike objects between them and occasionally sent more metallic sparks shooting out all
around them. Steadily, he noticed more and more strange things. What he was seeing was like a polar the Royd picture slowly emerging in front of him. He saw dials and cylinders along the interior walls, and heard a distinct and constant buzzing sound reminiscent of a swarm of bees,
And all about him, the air grew strangely warmer. Bicckini wondered if the men were from the military, operating a brand new, state of the art aircraft and had been forced to make an emergency landing due to the storm. It was only then that he realized the men were speaking, but not in any language that he had ever heard before. The bizarre guttural utterances they were apparently making caused him to realize the men weren't men at all, at least not of the human kind. Just then, one of the
figures on board the craft gestured in his direction. Fear sliced through him. He stumbled backwards, suddenly realizing just how exposed he was out there, and with that he turned and ran, sprinting for his house. Across the field, Vacchini saw in his peripheral vision one of the figures point something in his direction. A sudden, bright beam of light blinded him, and a burning pain split him in two. He felt as though he'd been cut in half. Across
his torso. Looking down, he saw, much to his relief, that his body was still intact, but he could no longer move. Then he collapsed heavily to the ground in the grip of utter panic. Vacchini claimed to have then watched the figures, convinced they would chase after him, only for them to continue doing what they were doing, as though they had merely meant to keep him away. Facchini watched wide eyed, trying to keep his face out of the dirt, as the figures finished up and returned inside
the craft. Then the greenish light that had been emanating from the vessel throughout began to dim as the hatch door was slowly closed. A moment later, with only the half light of night, Facchini watched on as that peculiar buzzing sound grew louder in intensity, until he heard a great whush and felt the rush of the aircraft as it shot into the sky and disappeared. Bruno Facchini claimed to have remained on the ground for some time until he felt it was safe enough to return home. After
a sleepless night. The next morning, he returned to the sight. There he noticed four more distinct circular impressions and noted that the grass had considerable burn markings, pieces of scrap and melted metal littered the ground, all confirming to him that whatever he had seen had genuinely happened. At least that's what he reported to the police. Despite their skepticism, some officers were sent out to investigate the site and
collected pieces of the strange metal for analysis. The results were mostly inconclusive, but did conclude the fragments were comprised of some kind of heat resistant and anti friction material. They also stated that the metal would quote be ideal in spaceflight to face the burn up as a craft entered the Earth's atmosphere. A secondary examination found that the metal was comprised of mostly bronze with traces of lead. Vacchini later said that a few days after his apparent encounter,
he was struck down with excruciating back pain. When he turned to get a look at his back in the mirror, he found there a huge black mark, darker than any bruise he'd ever had, stretched across the entirety of it. By the October of nineteen fifty four, UFO sightings were being reported throughout Europe. In unprecedented numbers. In September nineteen fifty four in north just south of Lille in northern France, train station guard Marius de Veilde contacted local police with
an incredible story of his own. It was around ten thirty pm on the night to September tenth, as Deveild was preparing for bed, that is dark, began barking manically. Believing that something outside was distressing her, he grabbed a torch and promptly headed out to investigate. In the silence of the evening. He walked a few steps along the
rail tracks when a sudden noise caused him to spin around. There, Caught in the beam of his flashlight, as he later told police, were two humanoid figures, each no more than a meter in height, standing beside some kind of craft. When he pointed the light at their heads, it apparently reflected bright and silver, as if the figures were wearing mirrored helmets. Not unlike Facchini's experience, Devilda is then said to have suddenly found himself in the grip of a
mobilizing beam of light. Unable to move, he simply watched as the figures then stepped into the craft. Moments later, it shot off into the sky, rippling with effervescent color as it went. Officers despatched to investigate first interviewed da Vilde's wife and neighbor to see if they could corroborate his story, but neither had seen anything. Unimpressed, the officers nonetheless agreed to follow Devilda out to the spot where he'd apparently seen the strange craft. When they got there,
they found a six meter depression in the ground. De Vilda then cried out suddenly and bent over, seemingly in the grip of an intense pain. In that moment, the torch he'd been carrying in his hand seemed also to suddenly stop working. In one report, it was said that three days later, the wilder's dogged guide while Davilda developed respiratory problems that he couldn't shake. Three cows were later found dead in a neighboring field, all apparently completely drained
of blood. After Dville's apparent inexplicable encounter, a number of similar sightings were reported throughout France over the next few weeks. From Brie to Bergerac and Clermont Ferrand, came bizarre tales of floating crafts, strange lights, and the sudden onset of
paralysis inflicting those who reported the sightings. On October eleventh, nineteen fifty four, Henri Gaulois and Louis Vigneron were driving together in Assier, in the south of France, when they suddenly felt as though they'd been struck by something, ending an electric shock through their bodies. Both expected the car to spin wildly out of control, but instead it came to a swift halt, as though someone had simply switched
it off. As the pair remained paralyzed, the men claimed they then spotted what appeared to be some kind of machine like object in the distance, being approached by three strange creatures. The creatures then disappeared inside the object, and moments later it rose into the air, gained rapid speed, and vanished. With the peculiar craft gone, the car came
back to life and their movement returned. Two nights later, a near identical event is said to have happened to a doctor Henri Robert in Balliolet, seven hundred kilometers to the north. Whether it's the rumour that a UFO followed the flight path of a plane from New York to London in June of nineteen fifty four, or it's the sighting of a strange green ball over Madagascar in August of nineteen fifty four. That year certainly seemed to be
a hotbed of apparent UFO related incidents. It was even said that an unscheduled dentist trip for America's President Eisenhower in February of nineteen fifty four was in fact a meeting with multiple alien species. Despite the flurry of supposed UFO sightings in nineteen fifty four, not everyone was so
easily persuaded that something truly otherworldly was taking place. Scientists suggested that many of the UFO sightings in Italy and France of that year were caused by temperature inversions, which occur when a layer of hot air moves over a layer of cool, which can bend light rates so that it seems an object on the ground is in fact
hovering somewhere above in the sky. Others advised that the silver glitter or angel hair as seen at the Italian football match, was likely due to migrating spiders who send long, whitish strands of their silk into the air to travel by wind. Roberto Pinotti, the president of Italy's National UFO Center disagreed, however, stating that the migrating spider's theory is
an old and stupid hypothesis. According to Pinotti, the chemical analysis of the angel hair samples was nothing like spider silk, which is a protein, an organic compound containing nitrogen, calcium, hydrogen, and oxygen. On the day the apparent UFOs stopped his team's football match, Giorgio Battini, a journalist at the Florentine newspaper The Nazione, gathered several samples of the angel hair and took them to the Institute of Chemical Analysis at
the University of Florence. After thorough testing, the lab concluded it actually contained the elements boron, silicon, calcium, and magnesium, not radioactive, but not spider silk either. In fact, not like anything they'd ever seen before. Sadly, the samples were destroyed by the testing process and their true provenance remains a mystery to this day. This episode was written by
Ella mcleoud and Richard mc lean smith. Unexplained as an Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard mc clain smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me Richard mc lean smith Unexplained. The book and audiobook, with stories never before featured on the show, is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon,
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