Paul R. Hill was an aerodynamics scientist who led some key projects for NASA. Also, like moon-walking astronaut Edgar Mitchell, he believed in UFOs, in part because of two personal sightings. In fact, Hill marshaled his aerodynamic and mathematical expertise to the task of determining what made them fly. . . and stop on a dime. . . and change [...]

Was the race on to see who could post the first waste of three minutes of our lives on YouTube for 2010? On January 1st, it appears someone might have won the dubious prize. Over on Coast to Coast AM’s “Photo of the Day,” they are showing an alleged “Maine Tree Creature.”Over at YouTube, the poster there, “Webtech88,” on an [...]

The Kray twins ran a lucrative bodyguard and 'protection' business for Hollywood stars from behind bars which prison officials were powerless to stop, secret documents reveal today. The gangland crime lords controlled the business from their cells while Reggie was in jail and paranoid schizophrenic Ronnie was in Broadmoor high-security hospital. The brothers boasted on their business card that their [...]

He fought the Nazis. He braved the Pacific. And he hated being called a hero. Jonathan Brown looks at the extraordinary career of Knut Haugland, the last Kon-Tiki survivor Adventure stories rarely come more epic than that of Knut Haugland, the Norwegian resistance fighter who died on Christmas Day at the age of 92. His exploits were already the stuff [...]

Did Hitler develop top-secret flying saucers? One Polish artist is looking at myths of secret Nazi technology in a new exhibition at the site where the notorious V-2 rocket was developed in the German coastal city of Peenemünde. The Nazis weren't defeated at the end of World War II. Instead, they fled to Antarctica in a flying saucer constructed by [...]

Three oddly related items appeared in the Dec. 17 Today in History feature on the Viewpoints page. One item mentioned that in 1903 the Wright brothers of Dayton, Ohio, conducted the first successful manpowered airplane flight. Another item notes that in 1957 the Air Force test-fired its first intercontinental ballistic missile. A third item noted: In 1969, the U.S. Air [...]

A lozenge designed to fight off all cold and flu bugs has been created by scientists. It would be taken once a day before breakfast and would cost only 20p a day. The lozenge could be sold over-the-counter in as little as two years. It would prime the immune system to attack every cold and flu bug including 'normal' winter [...]

The glowing embers left behind by one of the most powerful type of explosions in the Universe have been revealed for the first time. Remnants from giant fireballs unleashed by a supernova are still glowing at temperatures 10,000 times hotter than the Sun thousands of years after the event. They were captured by the Japanese Suzaku space observatory, after unusual [...]

Daredevil Travis Pastrana has smashed the world record for the longest jump in a rally car by leaping 269ft in his Subaru. He made the near perfect jump from a pier in Long Beach, California to a barge anchored in the harbour, beating the previous record by 98 feet. His vehicle skidded sideways after landing and slammed into a safety [...]

On December 24, 2009 at 15:54 hours, the crew of an Aeromexico Boeing 737-800 reported that it had come across spherical traffic in the vicinity of Cerro de la Estrella (east of Mexico City). The aircraft had recently taken off from the airport. I heard the conversation myself. I heard when they asked if there was other traffic on the [...]