On October 13th, 1917, approximately seventy thousand people stood in the rain in a muddy field near the village of Fatima, Portugal. They were there because three shepherd children had told them a miracle would happen at that exact place, on that exact day, at noon.

The children's names were Lucia dos Santos, Francisco Marto, and Jacinta Marto. Since May, they had reported seeing apparitions of a woman they identified as the Virgin Mary. Each month, more people came. Each month, the children said the lady had promised a miracle on October 13th so that everyone would believe.

By that morning, the crowd filled the field. Farmers, priests, soldiers, skeptics. Journalists had come from Lisbon to document the failure. Avelino de Almeida, the chief editor of O Seculo, one of Lisbon's most prominent anti-clerical newspapers, stood among them in the rain, expecting to write the story of mass delusion.

At noon, the rain stopped. Lucia called out to the crowd to look at the sun. The clouds parted.

The sun appeared to spin on its axis. It threw off bands of coloured light that swept across the landscape and the faces of the crowd. Then it appeared to plunge toward the earth. Seventy thousand people fell to their knees. Some cried out in terror. Some prayed. Some tried to run.

Then it stopped. The sun returned to its normal position. The event had lasted roughly ten minutes. The crowd's clothes, which had been soaked through by hours of rain, were reportedly dry.

Almeida published his eyewitness account on the front page of O Seculo on October 15th. He did not convert. He did not endorse the miracle. He reported what he saw. Other newspapers, including those hostile to the Church, ran similar accounts.

People as far as eighteen kilometres from Fatima, who had no idea what was happening, independently reported seeing the same phenomenon at the same time.

No scientific explanation has been universally accepted. Hypotheses include atmospheric phenomena, a stratospheric dust veil, and mass suggestion. None accounts for the reports from observers miles away who did not know the event had been predicted.

Three children said a miracle would happen on a specific date, at a specific time, in a specific field. Seventy thousand people came. Something happened that none of them could explain.

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