Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

April 14, 1561: as the sun rose over Nuremberg, the residents described seeing an aerial battle take place in its glare — the erratic dance of orbs, crosses, cylinders and a crash-landing beyond the city. An early sighting of alien UFO?

As the sun rose on April 14, 1561, over the German city of Nuremberg, the residents saw what they described as some kind of aerial battle take place in its glare — complete with the erratic dance of orbs, crosses, cylinders, and the appearance of a large and mysterious black arrow-shaped object — all followed by a crash-landing somewhere beyond the city limits. Later that month, local artist Hans Glaser produced a broadsheet (pictured above) offering a woodcut engraving of the scene, and a detailed description of what was witnessed. The text reads:

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. At first there appeared in the middle of the sun two blood-red semi-circular arcs, just like the moon in its last quarter. And in the sun, above and below and on both sides, the color was blood, there stood a round ball of partly dull, partly black ferrous color. 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. In between these globes there were visible a few blood-red crosses, between which there were blood-red strips, becoming thicker to the rear and in the front malleable like the rods of reed-grass, which were intermingled, among them two big rods, one on the right, the other to the left, and within the small and big rods there were three, also four and more globes. These all started to fight among themselves, so that the globes, which were first in the sun, flew out to the ones standing on both sides, thereafter, the globes standing outside the sun, in the small and large rods, flew into the sun. Besides the globes flew back and forth among themselves and fought vehemently with each other for over an hour. And when the conflict in and again out of the sun was most intense, they became fatigued to such an extent that they all, as said above, fell from the sun down upon the earth ‘as if they all burned’ and they then wasted away on the earth with immense smoke. After all this there was something like a black spear, very long and thick, sighted; the shaft pointed to the east, the point pointed west. Whatever such signs mean, God alone knows. Although we have seen, shortly one after another, many kinds of signs on the heaven, which are sent to us by the almighty God, to bring us to repentance, we still are, unfortunately, so ungrateful that we despise such high signs and miracles of God. Or we speak of them with ridicule and discard them to the wind, in order that God may send us a frightening punishment on account of our ungratefulness. After all, the God-fearing will by no means discard these signs, but will take it to heart as a warning of their merciful Father in heaven, will mend their lives and faithfully beg God, that He may avert His wrath, including the well-deserved punishment, on us, so that we may temporarily here and perpetually there, live as his children. For it, may God grant us his help, Amen. By Hanns Glaser, letter-painter of Nurnberg.

Interpreted religiously at the time, more recently some have considered the event an early sighting of extraterrestrial beings — the witnessing of some kind of alien spaceship battle occurring in the Bavarian skies. Although one, perhaps, shouldn't entirely rule out such a far-fetched interpretation, it is more likely that what the good people of Nuremberg witnessed that morning, and subsequently elaborated upon, was a natural meteorological phenomenon (possibly "sundogs", or to give them their scientific term, "parhelia"?). Another interesting idea relates to the fact that a year earlier Vannoccio Biringuccio published De La Pirotechnia, Europe's first book on metallurgy which contained several chapters on the preparation and use of rockets in warfare and festivals. Could this Italian book have made its way to the hands of a Nuremberg resident keen to try out the firework recipes it included?

This mysterious event in Nuremberg, and its depiction in Glaser's broadsheet, would go largely unmentioned until the twentieth century, when it appeared in Carl Jung's 1958 work Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies.

For more on sixteenth-century broadsheets depicting wondrous, celestial events see our post here.

Celestial Phenomenon Over Nuremberg, April 14th, 1561



Contents of Abraham Lincoln’s pockets at moment of his assassination, tonight 1865, Ford’s Theatre — not shown to public for 111 years:


What was in Lincoln's pockets?

Lincoln was carrying a Confederate fiver. That’s Confederate Secretary of the Treasury Christopher Gustavus Memminger on the bottom right of that CSA $5 note. Memminger (January 9, 1803 – March 7, 1888) was a German-born American politician and a secessionist who participated in the formation of the Confederate States government. He received a presidential pardon in 1866, and returned to private law practice.


April 14, 1912: at 11:40 p.m. the RMS Titanic collides with an iceberg, about 375 miles south of Newfoundland. She sank a few hours later on April 15. Richard Howells, in his essay "The Unsinkable Myth", explores the various legends which surround the sinking of arguably the world’s most famous ship.



1st, 2nd, 3rd class dinner menu (plus The Waldorf Pudding, served on the 1st class dinner menu on RMS Titanic) for April 14, 1912:


Waldorf Pudding Dessert Recipe


April 14, 1956: A videotape recorder was first demonstrated in Chicago at a meeting of the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters, held in the Normandie Lounge in Chicago’s Conrad Hilton. The introduction of pre-recorded programmes transformed TV production.


The concept for the videotape recorder hails from Bing Crosby’s audio engineer, Jack Mullin, who brought the first German tape recorders to America after World War II. In 1946, Crosby fronted Ampex the capital to begin building audio tape recorders. Four years later, with the advent of television, Mullin talked to Crosby about the notion of recording TV programs on tape.

Alexander M. Poniatoff, founder of Ampex, created many of the major innovations in commercial recording technology and produced the first US built magnetic audio tape recorder in 1948 revolutionizing the radio industry. After creating the standard for audio recording, Ampex produced the first data instrumentation recorder for storing large amounts of information on tape.

His California company, Ampex, was supposedly named for his initials (A.M.P. plus "ex" for "excellence") but employees will tell you "ex" stands for "experimental". Ampex built industry-standard recording equipment for radio stations including the ABC network and developed tape delay radio for The Bing Crosby Show. Poniatoff served as president of Ampex until 1955 when he was elected chairman of the board.


The first production unit was sold to CBS for tape-delay broadcasts of news broadcasts in November 1956. The VRX-1000 was $50,000 (an enormous sum in the mid-1950s), but the days of live broadcasts were numbered and television production would never be the same.

Ampex Videotape Recorder, 1956


April 14, 1929: Gerry Anderson was born in London. He created Fireball XL5 and Stingray, but his most popular TV series was Thunderbirds, which ran in 32 episodes on ITV from September 30, 1965 to December 25, 1966, using puppetry called Supermarionation.



I wish I was a space man.
The fastest guy alive.
I'd fly you round the universe,
In Fireball XL-5.
Way out in space together,
Compass of the sky,
My heart would be a fireball,
A fireball,
Everytime I gazed into your starry eyes.

We'd take the path to Jupiter,
And maybe very soon.
We'd cruise along the Milky Way,
And land upon the moon.
To our wonderland of stardust,
We'll zoom our way to Mars,
My heart would be a fireball,
A fireball,
If you would be my Venus of the stars...




UNIVAC 9300 reminds me of a laundry room. Sperry Rand UNIVAC 9000-Series of Interlinking Computers.


The technikum29 is a living computer museum located in Germany.

Make mainframes, not war: how Mad Men sold computers in the 1960s and 1970s



April 14, 1962: Pres John F. Kennedy hosted foreign dignitaries aboard USS Enterprise to watch the Navy demonstrate the latest surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles against a drone. After the missiles failed to score a single hit, a dignitary asked if his country could buy the drone...



Ok, partly true.

EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA — It was a beautiful spring afternoon in 1962, April 14, to be exact.

According to the News-Times, after his journey on the USS Enterprise from Norfolk on April 14, 1962, to Onslow Beach, Kennedy met there His Imperial Majesty Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, to view an amphibious landing staged by the Marine Corps with 10,000 to 12,000 Marines. The Shah was responsible for a movement in Iran in the 1960s and ’70s with the goal of turning it into a global power. The Friday edition of the News-Times that week noted the Shah had arrived on Wednesday in Washington, D.C.

Our Coast’s History: JFK’s Visit

Have you finished your taxes yet?


Stressed About Taxes? Blame the Ancient Egyptians


Engineers in Oregon train dog robot to walk on Moon:


KOIN news or BBC or Youtube

The LASSIE (Legged Autonomous Surface Science in Analog Environments) Project is formed by professionals from Nasa, Texas A&M University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Oregon State University, Temple University, and the University of Pennsylvania.