On October 17, 1952, several witnesses in Oloron-Sainte-Marie, in the French Pyrenees, watched a long cigar-shaped object cross the sky, tilted at an angle and trailing white smoke, accompanied by around 30 small discs moving in pairs.
As the formation passed, a white, cotton-like material fell from the sky and caught on tree branches, telephone wires and roofs. People who picked it up said it turned to jelly and vanished. The same thing was reported at Gaillac ten days later.
French sceptics suggested the shapes were an optical effect and that the threads were gossamer from huge numbers of migrating spiders. It remains the classic European "angel hair" case.
