What do you think about this?
On the morning of June 30, 1908, the sky over a remote stretch of Siberia split open. Reindeer herders camped near the Tunguska River saw a column of light brighter than the sun race across the sky. Then came a flash, a thunderclap heard hundreds of miles away, and a wave of heat so intense that men were thrown off their feet and knocked senseless. One herder said he felt as though his shirt had caught fire.
When the dust settled, roughly eight hundred square miles of forest had been flattened. An estimated eighty million trees lay on their sides, all pointing away from a single center, like matchsticks blown flat by one enormous breath. The blast carried the force of something like ten to fifteen megatons, close to a thousand times the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Here is the part that has puzzled scientists for over a century. There is no crater. Whatever did this never actually hit the ground. The leading explanation is that an asteroid or comet exploded in the air miles above the surface. But the first scientific expedition did not reach the site until 1927, almost twenty years later, and by then the evidence had nineteen winters to fade.
Makes you wonder how little warning we would get if the next one arrived tomorrow.
An asteroid airburst, a comet fragment, or something stranger still? What do you think tore open the sky over Tunguska?
What do you think about this? Over five months from late 1989, more than 13,000 people in Belgium reported a silent black triangle with three corner lights. In March 1990 two F sixteen jets locked radar on it, and it made moves no pilot could survive. Secret aircraft, or a genuine visitor?
What do you think about this? The Abenaki spoke of something in Lake Champlain long before Europeans arrived, and Port Henry still keeps a sign counting sightings. In 1977 Sandra Mansi photographed a long neck and a dark hump, and no hoax was ever found in it. Log, or a real animal?
What do you think about this? In 1579 Francis Drake beached the Golden Hind somewhere on the northern California coast and claimed the land for England. Nobody can say which beach. A brass plate found in 1936 was celebrated for decades, then proved a hoax. Point Reyes, or somewhere else?
What do you think about this? Among the Dead Sea Scrolls, one is engraved on copper instead of parchment, and it is a treasure map. It lists 64 hiding places holding tons of gold and silver. Not one has ever been found. Real temple gold, or an ancient legend set in metal?
What do you think about this? On August 15, 1977, an Ohio telescope caught a 72 second burst from Sagittarius, 30 times stronger than background, right on the hydrogen frequency. The astronomer circled it and wrote Wow. It never came back. Fluke, or one word of a conversation?
What do you think about this? The Shroud of Turin carries a full length image of a man that behaves like a photographic negative, which nobody noticed until it was first photographed in 1898. Carbon dating said medieval. Nobody can explain how the image formed. Artwork, or something else?
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