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Case · C-013

Florence 1954: the match suspended at the stadium and the “cotton wool” that fell from the sky

Municipal stadium (today Artemio Franchi), Florence, Tuscany · Italy · Oct 27, 1954

In flight Civilian witnesses Physical traces

Disputed explanation

What happened
During Fiorentina–Pistoiese, in front of about ten thousand spectators, play stopped because the crowd and the players were looking at objects in the sky; according to the referee's report the match was suspended for this reason. In the same period a filamentous substance, similar to cotton wool or cobweb, which fell apart on contact, fell over Florence and other Tuscan cities. A sample analyzed at the Institute of Analytical Chemistry of the University of Florence, directed by Professor Giovanni Canneri, turned out to be a fibrous substance with a macromolecular structure, non-radioactive; the residue left by heating contained mainly boron, silicon, calcium and magnesium. The analysis destroyed the material without clarifying its origin.
Proposed explanation
The skeptic James McGaha attributes the objects and filaments to migrating spiders hanging from silk threads (ballooning); an article on the blog of the Geological Society of London objects that boron, silicon, calcium and magnesium are not components of spider silk. On the Metabunk forum it is replied that those elements were detected in the residue after the organic part had been eliminated by heating and could be contaminants picked up by the threads.
Official investigation
Institute of Analytical Chemistry of the University of Florence (spectrographic analysis of the material); the referee's report of the match

Sources

  1. BBC News, “The day UFOs stopped play” (2014) (press)
  2. La Nazione, “28 ottobre, Quando il mondo seppe degli Ufo su Firenze: sorvolarono il Franchi” (press)
  3. The Geological Society Blog, “Football, geothermal energy and the 1954 wave of UFOs” (2014) (analysis)
  4. Metabunk, “Claim: UFOs appeared at the Stadio Artemio Franchi in Florence” (analysis, skeptical)

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