It was October of 1917 and Europe was tearing itself apart in the First World War. But in a tiny village in Portugal called Fatima a completely different kind of chaos was unfolding. Three young shepherd children had been telling everyone that a glowing lady from heaven was visiting them. They claimed she promised to perform a massive public miracle on the thirteenth day of October so that all the nonbelievers would finally know the truth.
Word spread like absolute wildfire across the country. By the morning of the big day a massive crowd had gathered in a muddy field called the Cova da Iria. Journalists from major newspapers were there alongside scientists and government officials who fully expected to expose a childish hoax.
The Sky Breaks Open
The weather that morning was miserable. A freezing rain had turned the entire field into a giant swamp. Tens of thousands of people stood soaking wet for hours just waiting for something to happen. Then right around noon the youngest child shouted at the crowd to look at the sky.
The heavy dark clouds suddenly split apart and the rain stopped instantly. The sun broke through the gray sky but it did not look right at all. People realized they could stare directly at it without hurting their eyes. It looked like a spinning disc of dull silver.
Then the terrifying part began. Witnesses reported that the sun started spinning frantically like a massive fiery pinwheel. It shot out flashes of bright red and blue and yellow light that colored the clouds and the faces of the stunned crowd.
Plunging Toward The Earth
The spinning light show was scary enough for the people watching. But then the sun seemed to detach itself from the sky entirely. It began zigzagging downward right toward the screaming crowd.
People completely panicked. Thousands fell to their knees in the thick mud begging for their lives because they thought the world was ending right there in that field. Even the hardcore skeptics and cynical reporters who came to mock the event wrote down that they were completely paralyzed with fear as the giant ball of fire rushed toward them.
Just as quickly as it started the sun stopped falling. It climbed back up to its normal spot in the sky and returned to its usual blinding brightness. Then the crowd realized something impossible had just happened. People who had been soaked to the bone just minutes before suddenly noticed their clothes and the muddy ground were completely dry.
A Mystery We Still Cannot Solve
Figuring out what actually happened that day is still a massive headache for historians and scientists. This was not a small group of highly religious people in a dark room. This was a massive crowd of seventy thousand people standing in broad daylight.
Skeptics argue it was a massive case of optical illusions caused by staring at the sun for way too long. Some weather experts think it might have been a rare atmospheric event called a sundog where ice crystals bend the light to create optical tricks in the sky. But none of those scientific theories fully explain how the freezing mud dried up in a matter of seconds.
Over a century later this event remains completely baffling. It leaves us wondering if our understanding of the natural world is actually as solid as we think it is.
References: You can read more about the scientific theories regarding this event in this breakdown of the solar anomaly by Live Science. For a closer look at the historical records and witness testimonies check out this historical retrospective by the BBC.