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? On January 20, 1996, three young women in Varginha, Brazil, saw a four foot creature with oily skin and red eyes crouched by a wall. The army was in town that morning. A policeman said to have handled it died a month later. Cover story, or Brazil’s Roswell?
What do you think about this? In 1800 settlers at Conneaut, Ohio, opened a four acre burial ground in rows and reported skeletons over seven feet, jaws that fit over a man’s face, double rows of teeth. The graves were plowed under within a generation. Tall tale, or a people buried twice?
What do you think about this? The Iron Pillar of Delhi is six tons of forged iron from around 400 AD. It has stood outside through 1,600 years of monsoons and never rusted, thanks to a protective film from phosphorus rich iron nobody made again. Lucky recipe, or knowledge lost on purpose?
What do you think about this? North Sea trawlers pull up mammoth teeth, flint tools and a carved harpoon from 120 feet deep. Until 8,000 years ago that seabed was Doggerland, a forested land the size of Britain, drowned by rising seas and a tsunami. The lost land of every old story?
What do you think about this? In 1974 a Florida family found a polished 22 pound steel ball in burned brush. It hummed when a guitar played, rolled across rooms on its own and changed direction. Navy X rays showed objects inside, origin unknown. Valve ball, or something that landed?
What do you think about this? The Whaley House in San Diego was built in 1857 where a man was slowly hanged five years earlier. A baby and a daughter later died inside. Visitors report footsteps in empty rooms and a pressure on the throat where the gallows stood. Old house, or long memory?
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