There are records of "signs" in the first Russian chronicles. But … they are so short that in most cases it is impossible to say what it was. These days, such stories would be immediately put aside in a separate folder labeled "Not enough information" to return to as soon as additional data emerged.
Here is the very first "plate" message of the Russian chronicles: in 911 AD. e. "… a sign appears great in the west in a copeck manner."
Of course, it is tempting to think of a "spear" as a cigar-shaped object - a "mother ship". But, without resorting to such exaggerations, it is much easier to assume that the formidable "spear" was a horizontal layer of ice crystals, illuminated from below by the setting sun or even an image of the sun itself, raised from the horizon and distorted beyond recognition by anomalous refraction. No wonder the chronicler emphasizes that the phenomenon was observed "in the west" and says nothing about its movements! But for the final conclusion on this case, the data is clearly not enough …
Many messages from the Russian chronicles are easy to recognize. In 1028, "a sign appears as a serpent in heaven as if you saw all the earth." The ubiquitous spread of the "sign" suggests that people have seen only one form of the northern lights. Other researchers are of the same opinion.
The "Tale of Bygone Years" says that in 1066 "… there was a sign in the west, the star of the greatest ray of blood has blood, rising from the evening at sunset and stay for seven days." The chronicler clearly talks about the appearance of Halley's comet: it came closest to Earth on March 27, 1066.
If we put aside, so that they do not interfere with us, the identified and "supposedly identified" signs, the "first Russian UFO" will be the observation of "fiery clouds" in May 922 over the Volga Bulgaria. This state flourished at the turn of the millennium on the Itil River (Volga). In the future, Bulgaria will become a part of Russia, and even then many "Rus" lived in it - ambassadors, traders, just guests.
In July 921, an embassy left Baghdad, sent to persuade the king ("khan") of the Volga Bulgaria, Almush, to a military alliance against the Khazar Kaganate. The "scientific secretary" of the embassy was Ahmed Ibn-Fadlan ibn-al-Abbas ibn-Rashid ibn-Hammad.
And this is what Ibn Fadlan and his companions saw on May 11, 922:
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“On the first night that we spent the night in his [Almusha] country, I saw how, before the final disappearance of the light of the sun, at the usual hour of prayer, the heavenly horizon turned red. And I heard loud sounds and loud hubbub in the air. Then I raised my head, and there was a cloud not far from me, red, like fire, and this hubbub and these sounds from it. And in it there are likenesses of people and horses, and in the hands of the individual figures that are in it, similar to people, bows, arrows, spears and drawn swords. And they seemed to me either completely clear or only apparent. And here was another, similar to them, a black detachment, in which I also saw husbands, horses and weapons. And this detachment began to attack that detachment, as a squadron attacks a squadron.
We looked for a long time at the unit attacking the unit. Both of them mixed together for a while, then both separated and thus this phenomenon continued for some part of the night, then it disappeared from us. We asked the king about this, and he said that his grandfathers used to say that these horsemen belonged to the faithful and unfaithful genies. They fight every night, and truly, since they existed, they have not been absent from this battle for a single night. "And we've always seen it this way."
Ambassador Susan ar-Rassi himself attributed the phenomenon to 12 Muharram 310, that is, 12 May 922. He wrote that against the background of the reddened horizon, an hour before sunset (!), Two strange, fire-red "clouds" appeared. There was noise and voices coming from them. There was a collision of the "clouds" and the "horsemen" who were there. Further, the Baghdad ambassador wrote:
“We were frightened by this and began to pray to God with obedience, and the inhabitants of the country mocked us and marveled at our action. We all watched how one cloud rushed to another, they either mixed for a while, then separated again, which lasted until one in the morning; then they disappeared. We asked the king about this, and he answered us that his ancestors said that they were worshipers of devils and rejecting them, who fight every evening and never stop it."
Modern commentators attribute the observation of Ibn Fadlan and ar-Rassi to the northern lights. Let it be known to venerable skeptics that this is simply ridiculous: firstly, the "sign" began in sunlight, and secondly, in May - a month not typical for the northern lights, and even in southern latitudes, where they are extremely rare. South of 45 degrees north latitude, auroras are observed on average once per 11-year solar cycle.
Nevertheless, the Bulgars did not share the superstitious fear of the Arab envoys and laughed at their fear: this means that they saw such phenomena quite often and got used to them. Thirdly, the sounds accompanying the northern lights are, at best, a quiet rustle ("rustling"), and not rumbling, loud sounds or "hubbub". Even if we write off the black figures of "horsemen with swords" on the living imagination of the Arabs, the phenomenon will not become less mysterious.
The historian Bozidar Dimitrov from Sofia suggested that Ibn Fadlan saw alien ships that chose a place above Itil for some kind of regular operation - like refueling. This hypothesis too gives off the spirit of our time, but a more plausible explanation has not yet been found.
Collisions of red "clouds" are also found in other medieval chronicles. The 12th century German abbot-chronicler Ekkehard of Aura in the tenth chapter of his work "On the oppression, liberation and restoration of the holy Jerusalem Church" mentions "… blood-red clouds that floated from west to east, and then collided with each other."
Nowadays, researchers have found that the "cloud" effect can occur around the solid body of a UFO. White is the result of condensation of water vapor around the ice body, either storing the cold of the cosmic depths, or taking energy from the environment. The red "cloud" is the glow of neon contained in the atmosphere, which has fallen under super-powerful radiation, and the black one is apparently an increase in the concentration of dust particles attracted by UFOs. There are a lot of such messages to this day. The "plate" itself, which created the "cloud" effect, may not be visible.
A. S. Kuzovkin, who studied 2000 reports of UFOs over our country, wrote that in 57 cases the object seemed to stand out from itself a "cloud": black (7 times), white (4), gray (2), blue (1), green-blue (7), green (4), yellow (1), light green (1), translucent (2), luminous (9), red (3), color not specified - 16 times.
If we count the cases when the object appeared immediately surrounded by a "cloud", then there will be much more of them …
Once in winter at an altitude of six kilometers a regular flight Moscow-Kuibyshev was flying. At three o'clock in the morning, the navigator came out and told the passengers to look at the strange object. He flew about seven hundred meters from the plane.
“The outlines of the object were vague,” wrote an eyewitness to the ufologist Yuri Smirnov. - It seemed that it was a cloud - elliptical, indistinct … He moved quickly and after 4-5 minutes disappeared from sight. The eye did not blind, it was red. It was just getting light … He flew over the clouds and illuminated them under him. The crew of the plane and several passengers who were not asleep saw this…”.
In medieval chronicles there are descriptions of the departure of objects from under the cover of "clouds". Pierre Boestuo recorded that on December 5, 1577 at 7 o'clock in the morning over Germany, a few miles from Tübingen "… several dark clouds appeared near the Sun, which are usually during a strong thunderstorm; soon more clouds, fiery and blood-red, separated from the Sun, and others - yellow like saffron.”From behind these clouds appeared some bright glowing bodies, resembling large, high and wide hats, and even the earth lit up with yellow and blood-red light. It seemed that it was covered with these hats … iridescent different colors: red, blue, green, and most of all black."
Russian chronicles report that in 1360 "… a terrible sign came to heaven, a cloud passed from the east like blood to the west." In the year 1281 "… the same winter there was a sign in heaven, a cloud of fire in the western countries, and sparks all over the earth I go, and there is little standing and perish" In 1288 "… the same winter there was a sign in heaven, a cloud appeared persecuted in the western countries, from which sparks go to the whole earth, and after a little perishing."
What are these sparks emanating from the fiery clouds? Electric discharges accompanying the glow of the air around the UFO, or something else?
The first mention of the separation of "pieces of fire" from such a cloud we find in Plutarch in the life of the commander Lysander:
“Some said that when Lysander's ship first left the harbor against the enemies, the Dioscuri were glittering above it on both sides of the stern in the form of stars. Some argued that the sign of defeat was the fall of a stone: a huge stone fell on the banks of the Egospotam, and most claimed that it fell from the sky. It is shown now, and for the inhabitants of Chersonesos, it is an object of worship. They say that Anaxagoras predicted that one of the bodies attached to the sky, in the event of a vibration or shock, could break off and fall down …
Daimach in his essay "On Piety" confirms the words of Anaxagoras, telling that for seventy-five days before the fall of the stone, a huge body of fire, similar to a flaming cloud, was continuously visible in the sky, which did not stand still, but swept along a complex, crooked path, so that as a result of a powerful shock, pieces of fire were torn off from him, which scattered in all directions and sparkled like shooting stars.
After this body collapsed on the ground in the named place and the local inhabitants, having come to themselves with amazement and fear, came to him, they did not see any traces of fire: a stone lay in front of them, it is true, large, but completely incommensurate with that huge fiery body. That Daimach needs indulgent listeners is clear. If his story corresponds to the truth, then the opinion of people who claim that it is a piece of rock that was torn off by winds and storms from some mountain peak and rushed, caught by a whirlwind, like a top, and then fell is completely refuted …"
Plutarch hinted at Aristotle, who did not believe that stones could fall from the sky. But he could not keep silent in his "Meteorology" that the fall of the "stone" was accompanied by some kind of heavenly phenomena:
“The years when comets appear frequently and several times are, as we argue, noticeably dry and windy. When comets appear occasionally and smaller in size, this does not happen; nevertheless, even here, as a rule, winds of extreme duration or strength rise. So, for example, when a stone fell from the air near the Egospotams and, caught by the wind, descended in the middle of the day, just then a comet appeared in the west.
What kind of "stone" it was - a meteorite or not, now it is already impossible to say. However, the separation of some incandescent, fiery fragments from UFOs has been seen more than once in our days. The fall of the burning body. apparently does not mean an accident aboard the "saucer". Any object thrown overboard or an unwary bird caught in the flaming cloud zone can catch fire: the level of radiation that makes the atmosphere shine with a crimson-red light must be very high.
Spiritual Magazine for 1877 reported that over Ireland “during an outdoor meeting attended by 600-1000 people, something like a fire cloud appeared in the sky, hovered and descended over the people, then rose and floated at some distance, hung again … The light was very bright, and everyone saw it with awe. " Obviously, someone intelligent was in control of the "cloud" or the apparatus that was hiding under his cover …
In November 1899 people all over Russia were waiting for … the end of the world. Long before the announced date, a thin booklet entitled "Four years later (November 1, 1899) as predicted by Professor Rudolf Falb" was sold. The professor predicted the complete destruction of the Earth from the terrible blow inflicted by the comet Biela!
By November 1, passions ran high. A wave of panic swept through the world, accompanied by pogroms and suicides. In Tunisia "… a terrible panic arose over the prediction of the collision of the Earth with the comet of Biela. The Jews sent their wives to the synagogues to pray; many workers refused to work, claiming that it no longer made any sense. The Mohammedans organized religious processions, and fired guns and committed all sorts of atrocities."
In Russia, panic did not let go of people even after the appointed date. And two weeks later, on November 14, the sky over the Minsk province flared up!
“We are informed that a comet appeared in the sky at 1 am on November 14,” the Minsk leaflet reported. - At the first moment, the whole sky was enveloped as if by the glow of a fire; in this light, little by little, a fiery circle began to stand out, which, gradually increasing in diameter, reached enormous dimensions. A fiery shining point appeared in the middle of the circle; a few minutes later the comet's tail was formed, which soon disappeared from the sky. All this lasted no more than 10-15 minutes."
In our time, such phenomena cause only one association: the launch of a heavy launch vehicle. But a hundred years ago there was nothing like this …
The next night, an even more fantastic spectacle was lit in the sky over the Kiev province. People prayed in horror, thinking that the fiery cloud, which they called a "comet", was about to crash into the Earth!
“Yesterday, at 12 am, residents of Zhytomyr could admire the following phenomenon,” the Volyn newspaper reported. - On the southeast side of the sky, a long narrow, arrow-shaped, brightly lit strip appeared. It seemed to consist of two parts, interrupted in the middle by a thin line. In the center of the parts, two lighter oblong nuclei were noticeable, brighter illuminated closer to the viewer. On close observation, these nuclei seemed to contract and expand, like the rings of a worm. Under this bright arrow, closer to the horizon, a glow spread, as if from a fire, hidden under a thin veil of clouds.
This luminous arrow could be observed for about an hour, then it gradually died out until it completely disappeared from the horizon. Together with her, the glow also disappeared. At various ends, small groups of the waking population gazed at this celestial phenomenon with curiosity and even secret fear. There were rumors about the appearance of a comet expected in recent days, which was supposed to collide with the Earth and destroy it. But together with the disappearance of the bright arrow, the excitement subsided and the inhabitants peacefully dispersed to their homes.
Hopefully, astronomers will not hesitate to explain the nature and causes of yesterday's interesting phenomenon."
In Kiev, they also saw a "comet" in the form of a "narrow strip of almost equal width" and wanted to know what it was. The correspondent of the newspaper "Kievlyanin" asked the professor of astronomy MF Khandrikov for clarification.
The scientists of that time were even more skeptical than our contemporaries. For two decades, Professor Khandrikov persistently "explained" the appearance of unidentified flying objects over Kiev with bright planets, meteors and meteorological balloons. This time he declared that it was not a comet at all, but … a reflection of a fire on the outskirts of the city!
“The phenomenon has nothing to do with a comet and, in my opinion, has a simple explanation,” he wrote. - From 10 pm light cirrus clouds moved across the sky from west to east. At about half past midnight, a fairly strong fire broke out on Demiyivka, and its glow illuminated the clouds that appeared. One of the cirrus clouds, which had a regular rectilinear shape, probably descended below the others and, being in the glow of the fire, was illuminated by it …”.
Immediately messages were poured from places distant from Kiev, tens and hundreds of miles away, that is, from the regions from where it was impossible to see the Kiev fire.
“At 12.20 am on November 15, a luminous body was visible in the sky,” wrote an eyewitness from Prazhev. - With the appearance of the comet it became, one might say, light … The phenomenon of the comet was observed for more than an hour. The people … with great excitement expected that the comet would “fall” on the Earth and destroy it”.
Letters came from the villages of Lipovetsky uyezd, from the lines of the South-Western railways, from Belaya Tserkov and dozens of other places. In some places, not only the "fiery arrow" was visible. From the border of the Kiev and Podolsk provinces it was reported that "… near this phenomenon, two meteors fell, one of which seemed rather large."
An eyewitness from the Verkhnyachsk sugar plant wrote: “I can say with confidence that the phenomenon pretended to be a strip … It would be very interesting if someone explained this, but not by fire. On the opposite side of the firmament one could see for some time also something resembling a comet, but only this phenomenon was rather short."
When the new evidence was brought to the attention of Professor Khandrikov, he burst out with another "open letter":
“We have offered an explanation of the phenomenon according to our understanding, but by no means insist on its infallibility,” he wrote in the second person. - If we are talking about a simple atmospheric phenomenon, then its interpretation is not part of our specialty. We have never dealt with meteorology and will not do it. This does not concern us. We just wanted to categorically declare that no comet was visible and that there was no reason to expect the appearance of meteors on the mentioned day … In any case, we will not enter into further polemics regarding this unimportant issue."
Another "specialist", whose name has not been preserved in history, said that it was the northern lights! When asked why it was observed in the south, he said: "It was the local northern lights!" This absurdity was obvious even in those days. The correspondent of "Kievlyanin" remarked:
“Suppose, if there are domestically made Havana cigars, then why not the northern lights of local fabrication? But all this does not satisfy the curiosity of the inhabitants of Kiev, and they continue to rack their brains to this day … If astronomers cannot agree on this in any way, it is clear that philistine assumptions are even more varied and fantastic."
At that time, there were no experiments with the release of artificial barium clouds into the upper layers of the atmosphere, flashing with bright crimson light. In volcanic and earthquake-prone areas, clouds can also glow - either due to saturation with electrically charged volcanic ash, or due to the state of the bowels, dumping excess tectonic energy into the atmosphere. But Kiev and the adjoining provinces never belonged to such areas. There are no volcanoes and earthquake centers here.
Some experts suggested that the clouds could be lit up due to harmful emissions from various (especially chemical) enterprises. But in 1899 the level of industry in the Kiev province was such that there is nothing to say about any strong influence on the atmosphere …
There remains only one phenomenon, no less mysterious than the "flying saucers". A phenomenon much rarer and almost never mentioned even in UFO research circles. I mean wild fire …
Mikhail Gershtein