The Bell Island Boom

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On April 2, 1978, there was a loud explosion on Bell Island that caused damage to some houses and the electrical wires in the surrounding area. Two cup-shaped holes about two feet deep and three feet wide marked the major impact. A number of TV sets in Lance Cove, the surrounding community, also exploded at the time of the blast. Weather men confirmed that atmospheric conditions at the time were not conducive to lightning. The blast was heard 45 kilometers away in Cape Broyle.The incident was investigated by John Warren and Robert Freyman from the Los Alamos National Laboratory (then called the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory) in New Mexico. It has been speculated that, due to the two men's place of work, they were investigating a secret weapons test and were Men in Black. However, reacting to data received from the Vela satellites, they were in fact investigating a superbolt - an unusually large bolt of lightning, lasting an unusually long time: about a thousandth of a second.

 

A recent documentary aired on The History Channel about electromagnetic pulse weapons investigated the speculation that the incident may have been a result of top secret experiments. It was postulated that either the Russian or U.S. governments were the cause of the 'attack' and that it involved high energy beams focused into the ionosphere that were attracted by the iron in abandoned mines. In the Skeptoid podcast 'The Bell Island Boom', presenter Brian Dunning dismisses this theory stating "Although iron is magnetic and can be magnetized, natural iron ore has its molecules jumbled in every direction and rarely happens to have a significant magnetic field, certainly not strong enough to divert or attract a particle beam.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Island#The_Bell_Island_Boom

 

 

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIBtCtUNcnU