1561 celestial phenomenon over Nuremberg

An April 1561 broadsheet by Hans Glaser described a mass sighting of celestial phenomena or unidentified flying objects (UFO) above Nuremberg (then a Free Imperial City of the Holy Roman Empire).

The broadsheet claims that witnesses observed hundreds of spheres, cylinders, and other odd-shaped objects that moved erratically overhead.

The text of the broadsheet has been translated by Ilse Von Jacobi as follows: In the morning of April 14, 1561, at daybreak, between 4 and 5 a.m., a dreadful apparition occurred on the sun, and then this was seen in Nuremberg in the city, before the gates and in the country – by many men and women.

Likewise there stood on both sides and as a torus about the sun such blood-red ones and other balls in large number, about three in a line and four in a square, also some alone.

"If the UFOs were living organisms, one would think of a swarm of insects rising with the sun, not to fight one another but to mate and celebrate the marriage flight.

"[7] A military interpretation would view the tubes as cannons and the spheres as cannonballs, emphasize the black spearhead at the bottom of the scene, and Glaser's own testimony that the globes fought vehemently until exhausted.