Falcon Lake and the Burn on the Chest
On 19 May 1967 an amateur geologist named Stefan Michalak was prospecting for quartz by Falcon Lake in Manitoba when, by his account, he saw two cigar-shaped craft; one landed a few dozen metres away. He walked up, touched the hot skin — his glove melted — and when the object lifted, hot gas from a grille in its side set his shirt alight. Michalak was hospitalised with burns in a grid pattern across his chest. The burns were photographed by doctors, and the pattern matched the grille he described. The Canadian government handled the case; a thick file survives in the archives, including soil analysis from the site that found raised radioactivity. The file contains no explanation.
The Min Min Lights
A town deep in Queensland that gave its name to the lights seen on the roads of the burnt west: glowing spheres that follow a car or a rider and keep their distance for hours. Aboriginal people described them before Europeans arrived. In 2003 the physicist Jack Pettigrew showed experimentally that under a temperature inversion a light source beyond the horizon can appear as a nearby object — an elegant explanation that does not cover every case.
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