• Giant space mirror would have concentrated the sun's rays on Earth
• German army would use it to 'burn enemy cities' or 'boil part of an ocean'
  
• Would also contain a manned space station complete with gardens

It sounds like something only a Bond villain would propose, but the Nazis planned a mile-wide ‘space gun’ powered by the sun. The giant mirror could be used to focus the sun on a target – like the magnifying glasses used by children to create fire. A long-forgotten article from Life magazine in 1945 revealed how ‘US Army technical experts came up with the astonishing fact that German scientists had seriously planned to build a “sun gun”’. [DM]

Though George Romero's 1968 film "Night of the Living Dead" is often considered to be the original modern zombie film, the first actually appeared nearly 40 years earlier in "White Zombie," starring Béla Lugosi as an evil voodoo priest in Haiti who zombifies a beautiful young woman. In the years since, only a handful of zombie films have returned to their Haitian origins — most notably "The Serpent and the Rainbow."

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word "zombie" first appeared in English around 1810 when historian Robert Southey mentioned it in his book "History of Brazil." But this "Zombi" was not the familiar brain-eating manlike monstrosity but instead a West African deity. The word later came to suggest the vital, human force leaving the shell of a body, and ultimately a creature human in form but lacking the self-awareness, intelligence, and a soul. It was imported to Haiti and elsewhere from Africa through the slave trade.

Excluding the possible tail, the animal stretches for about 900 feet (275 meters) at its farthest points (northwest to southeast), the researchers estimate, equivalent to two American football fields. The figure faces north and would have been visible from a nearby ridge.

But suddenly the ire of the heavens opens up above the highway- and a bolt of lightning slams into the roof of an SUV, leaving the driver stunned, shaken - and perhaps a little shocked.

Luckily for the driver, he appears to be left unharmed by the thousand-volt hit and in the footage, uploaded to YouTube this month, he carries on driving for a few seconds, before rolling to a stop.

Tangey, a filmmaker, managed to capture some very rare footage of the startling phenomenon while out scouting locations near Alice Springs, Australia, according to The Australian. One term for the event he recorded, a fire tornado, is a misnomer, according to Mark Wysocki, New York's state climatologist and a professor of atmospheric sciences at Cornell University. The columns of spinning fire are much more similar to dust devils than tornadoes, Wysocki said.

“I thought it was thunder,” said one person.

“It’s definitely not thunder; too consistent. I thought it was just mining,” said another person.

“I always considered them to be sonic booms from flying aircrafts for years,” said Loring Brunius, owner of Sierra Rock Diamond Quarry.

People who live near Pleasant Valley say their days have been interrupted by loud booms, shaking the floor beneath them.

The team focused on the relationship between sea surface temperature and the energy associated with the destructive potential of hurricanes. Rather than seeding storm clouds or hurricanes directly, the idea is to target marine stratocumulus clouds, which cover an estimated quarter of the world's oceans, to prevent hurricanes forming.

"Crazy -- something out of a movie," said resident Michelle Cavalieri who saw the birds fall from the sky. [link ]

The video posted to YouTube seems to show a round, blurry object floating above the station on Aug. 10. Speculation has run rampant, with conspiracy theorists and UFO buffs swapping explanations ranging from government collaboration with aliens to a top-secret test of some new cutting-edge secret weapon.

A recent National Geographic Society poll reported that 36 percent of Americans -- about 80 million people -- believe UFOs exist, only 17 percent do not, and the rest of the people are undecided. The survey did not specifically equate UFOs with flying saucers or little green men, however.

The market research company Kelton Research conducted the survey by polling a random nationwide sample of 1,114 Americans ages 18 and older, who were representative of the demographics of the nation as a whole. The survey was commissioned by the National Geographic Channel to promote its new series "Chasing UFOs." [link]

The students, almost all of them girls, and mostly friends, began experiencing involuntary jerks and tics. Sometimes their limbs, neck or face would suddenly spasm; other times they would twitch, grunt, or shout. It was strange and troubling behavior, made all the more scary because it had no clear cause. [DISCOVERY]

Alas, it was not the end of the world - or worse, the beginning of a real-life movie starring Will Smith: It was just nature.

The giant cumulonimbus—which spanned several miles—was accompanied by lightning, swallowing up the capital's skyline for an hour, according to the Daily Mail.

Scientists have created more than 150 human-animal hybrid embryos in British laboratories.

The hybrids have been produced secretively over the past three years by researchers looking into possible cures for a wide range of diseases.

The revelation comes just a day after a committee of scientists warned of a nightmare ‘Planet of the Apes’ scenario in which work on human-animal creations goes too far. [DM]

1. This year is a special one for Friday the 13ths: There are three of them: Jan. 13, April 13 and July 13. The freaky thing? The dates fall exactly 13 weeks apart. That hasn't happened since 1984.

2. If that scares you, you may have paraskavedekatriaphobia (also known as friggatriskaidekaphobia). Those are the scientific terms for fear of Friday the 13th. Triskaidekaphobia is fear of the number 13.

According to NASA, 30 years of observations show that there's a consistent uptick in the number of fireballs — meteors that glow brighter than the planets as they scorch through Earth's atmosphere — during the spring compared with other times of the year. "There are two peaks: one around February and the other at the end of March and early April," said Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. "And this remains a mystery."

The video, picked up by a blogger at gather.com, shows what appear to be a triangular group of white lights flitting about the night sky above Las Vegas. As the seven-minute video rolls on, dozens more lights join the action.

The astounded and salty-tongued witness, who goes by the YouTube handle NuroNews, narrates the video: "Nobody's paying attention to this [s---] but me... this is absolutely incredible ... Look how they move around, they're attracted to the light." The video was apparently shot March 21.

So what is it? Does this video really defy explanation? Or, as is the case with many UFO videos, is the explanation much more mundane?