O Século

The most vital piece of secular documentation comes from a man named Avelino de Almeida.

He was the chief editor of O Século.

And that was the largest, most influential, heavily anti-clerical newspaper in Portugal, right?

Exactly.

He functions almost like a modern news anchor.

Oh, interesting.

He reads direct extended quotes from the secular Portuguese newspapers like O Século.

He describes the plaque of dull silver and the spinning sun using the exact vocabulary of the skeptical press.

We can definitely safely say, whatever the number is, we can safely say it's tens of thousands.

Uh, and one of the people there was a guy named Avelino de Almeida, and Almeida was a journalist for O Seculo, one of Portugal's largest newspapers.

It was a secular Lisburn, Lisbon paper and certainly not a publication devoted to promoting, um, religious apparitions.

Uh, he had come to see what would happen, and so had photographer Judah Rua.

What happened next, though, is the reason we're still talking about this to this very day over 100 years later.

At that moment, the rain stopped, the clouds began to break, and people started to look at the sun.

Avelino de Amil- Almeida was watching, and two days later he published in his, uh, report in O Seculo.

He described the sun as looking like a dull silver disc that the people could stare at without immediately hurting their eyes.