Pat Shingleton for Oct. 14, 2012

On Oct. 13, 1917, 70,000 people gathered in Fatima, Portugal, to witness a miracle. As noted in a previous column, they testified that the sun became detached from the sky, rolling right and left as if it were falling upon the earth. Lucia Santos and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marto testified that five months earlier the Virgin Mary appeared to the three young children — the only ones to witness her that day. During this solar phenomena, Father Ignatius Pereira, who was 9 at the time, reported that objects around them reflected colors of the rainbow, and after 10 minutes, the sun returned to its original location, but without brilliance.
Fastcast: A shower.