Claimed sighting
The spindle-shaped body on the sun
A long, spindle-shaped body sat on the face of the sun and crept slowly across it, staying in view until it reached the edge on 7 September.
The Annual Register printed an observer's description of a body shaped like a spindle, three of the sun's digits wide and nine long, sitting on the sun's disk. After about two and a half hours its southern side had come away from the sun's edge, while its northern end stayed on the sun's northern edge.
Charles Fort retold the report in The Book of the Damned. In his version the body moved slowly across the sun, at half the pace or less of an ordinary sunspot, and stayed in view until 7 September, when it reached the sun's edge.
"He saw a vast, spindle-shaped body, about three of the sun's digits in breadth and nine in length, advancing slowly across the disk of the sun, or "at no more than half the velocity with which the ordinary solar spots move." It did not disappear until the 7th of September, when it reached the sun's limb."
- The Annual Register, or a View of the History, Politics, and Literature, for the Year 1766, Annual Register (1767), Internet Archive scan bwb_S0-BMC-463_9