IncidentThe Miracle of the Sun at Fátima (13 October 1917)

The three shepherd children - Lúcia dos Santos and Francisco and Jacinta Marto - reported a series of apparitions of a luminous ‘Lady’ from 13 May 1917 and said she promised a miracle on 13 October ‘so that all may believe.’ On that rainy midday a crowd estimated at 50,000-70,000 gathered; after the clouds parted, many reported the sun as a dull silver disc that spun, cast multicolored light, danced or zig-zagged, and seemed to plummet toward the crowd, with claims that rain-soaked ground and clothing dried. Reports were notably non-uniform - some saw colored light only, and a number saw nothing. The most-cited independent witness was Avelino de Almeida, star reporter of the anticlerical Lisbon daily O Século, who described ‘a frosted silver disc’ in ‘a violent and convulsive ballet.’ No photographs of the ‘dancing sun’ exist - only of the crowd looking skyward. Skeptics (Benjamin Radford, Joe Nickell, physicist Auguste Meessen, Steuart Campbell) attribute the effects to prolonged sun-gazing (retinal fatigue and afterimage color), atmospheric optics (sundog/refraction, a possible stratospheric dust layer), and mass psychology/expectation. The case entered UFO literature chiefly through Jacques Vallée’s ‘Passport to Magonia’ (1969) and later Fernandes & d’Armada’s ‘Heavenly Lights’ (Vallée foreword), which re-read the rotating silver disc and its color-cycling as UAP-consistent and emphasized the case’s strengths (a predicted public event, tens of thousands of witnesses, hostile press coverage) - an INTERPRETIVE framing within UFO studies, not an established finding. It is primarily and historically a religious event venerated by the Catholic Church.