Articles

Unusual stories. The sources behind them.

• The Joint Chiefs proposed fake attacks to justify war with Cuba

  A 1962 memorandum proposed manufactured incidents as pretexts for U.S. military intervention in Cuba; the schemes remained proposals, not an executed campaign.

• The fallout study that catalogued babies' bones around the world

  Project Sunshine's 1955 bulletin organizes human-bone samples by age and geography, including stillborns and babies; the tables alone cannot establish how consent was handled for every specimen.

• The Air Force commissioned a study of a nuclear explosion on the Moon

  Leonard Reiffel's report examined the feasibility of a lunar nuclear detonation; this is Volume I of the study, and the proposed explosion never happened.

• Two nuclear bombs fell on North Carolina. Why didn't they explode?

  One bomb descended by parachute and landed nearly intact; the other fell without its parachute. Sandia concluded that the weapons' safety switches prevented a nuclear explosion.

• Facebook changed 689,003 people's feeds for an emotion experiment

  Changing the emotional content of feeds produced small shifts in users' own language; the linked paper includes the journal's concern about consent and the ability to opt out.

• Unit 731: when biological-warfare data took priority over prosecution

  A U.S. coordinating committee judged Japanese biological-warfare intelligence more valuable than prosecution; the records also preserve State Department objections to granting immunity.

• The U.S. experiments that exposed people to disease without consent

  A presidential commission reconstructed the deliberate exposure of people in Guatemala to sexually transmitted diseases in 1946–1948; these experiments were distinct from the withholding of treatment at Tuskegee.

• Researchers asked sleeping dreamers questions—and received answers

  During controlled lucid REM sleep, some participants answered simple questions through eye movements or facial signals—a limited exchange between dreamers and experimenters.

• Pig brain perfusion began four hours after death—and some cellular functions returned

  Researchers restored circulation and some cellular activity in isolated pig brains; they did not revive the animals or restore consciousness, and cellular recovery did not amount to normal integrated brain function.

• A remote viewer was asked to describe Mars a million years ago

  This 1984 session transcript records the subject's descriptions in response to a Mars target; it preserves what was said without verifying ancient Martians, time travel or remote-viewing ability.

• The CIA tried to turn trained cats into intelligence tools

  A memo in this animal-research packet explains why trained cats failed the CIA's practical requirements. The memo begins on PDF page 15.

• Volunteers kept increasing the shocks they thought they were giving

  Milgram's obedience experiment placed volunteers under pressure from an experimenter to continue; the shocks were simulated, and the deception and study design limit sweeping conclusions about human nature.

• Paperclip: the request to rewrite German scientists' security reports

  A specific request to rewrite German scientists' security reports appears in the interagency group's account of their recruitment after the war.

• The Stanford prison experiment looks different in its archives

  Thibault Le Texier used archival records and participant interviews to challenge the experiment's familiar account; this is his documented critique, with methodological arguments to assess rather than an uncontested replacement history.

• The Army built a nuclear-powered camp beneath Greenland's ice

  Camp Century's engineering report follows the design, construction and performance of the camp; the much larger Iceworm missile network remained a proposal and was never installed.

• A psychologist trained pigeons to steer a missile

  B. F. Skinner recounts Project Pigeon's training and demonstrations; the birds never guided weapons in combat, and the foundation's linked reprint contains only the first part of his account.

• A secret test released radioactivity over the Pacific Northwest

  GAO describes the 1949 Green Run release and the absence of public warning; its investigation did not establish that the test's purpose was to study biological effects on people.

• Brain stimulation repeatedly induced an out-of-body-like experience

  During an epilepsy evaluation, stimulation produced unusual body perceptions in one patient; the case concerns a neurological illusion and does not establish that consciousness physically left the body.

• One person's brain signal moved another person's hand across the internet

  An EEG signal, computers and magnetic stimulation linked six participants in a rudimentary brain-to-brain experiment, translating one person's signal into another person's hand movement.

• The Air Force's real flying-saucer plans

  AVRO's Project 1794 report studied a saucer-shaped aircraft for the Air Force; its projected capabilities were engineering ambitions, not demonstrated flight performance or evidence of an alien craft.

• The hearing that put the CIA's mind-control research on the public record

  Seven newly found boxes of MKULTRA records brought CIA Director Stansfield Turner before senators in 1977 to explain what earlier inquiries had not uncovered.

• The Army report that approached altered consciousness through sound and physics

  An Army officer assessed the Gateway Process by drawing together sound, consciousness and speculative physical explanations; the report is his assessment, not proof of out-of-body travel or a scientific endorsement by the CIA.

• The second Gulf of Tonkin attack: an NSA historian's case that it never happened

  This released NSA history examines intelligence surrounding the reported attack of August 4, 1964; its conclusion concerns that second incident, not the separate encounter two days earlier.

• CIA officers secretly examined a Soviet spacecraft—and put it back

  A CIA account describes secretly examining a Lunik exhibit while it was touring, then returning it without alerting its handlers.

• The 'mining ship' built to lift a Soviet submarine from the ocean floor

  Project AZORIAN used a mining cover story for a covert submarine salvage mission; the recovery was partial, and the released history leaves some of what was obtained outside the public record.

• What researchers could infer from your Facebook Likes

  A 2013 experiment showed how ordinary clicks could become sensitive predictions. Understanding its accuracy measures is essential to understanding the privacy problem.

• The phone traces that exposed spyware marketed as leaving no trace

  The strongest evidence came from devices and their timelines. A phone number on a list and a confirmed infection are different findings.

• A psychology journal published a case for precognition. Then came replication

  Bem's unusual experiments are best read beside a precise attempt to repeat one of them. The disagreement is a useful lesson in what replication can establish.

• The interrogation manual that became less redacted in 2026

  The newly released passages matter, but so does the paper trail: a 1963 manual, a 2021 review request, a 2024 appeal and a 2026 disclosure are different events.

• How Soviet intelligence helped spread the false story that AIDS came from a U.S. lab

  A false medical-origin story acquired credibility through repetition. The documentary problem is to trace who circulated it without mistaking circulation for corroboration.

• The Army dispersed tracer particles over American cities

  A 1997 toxicology review separates a documented military dispersion programme from harder questions about exposure, risk and individual illness.

• The Moon became a reflector for spying on Soviet radar

  Soviet radar signals escaped into space. A lunar reflection gave distant receivers a way to study them without crossing the Soviet border.

• How close had a NATO exercise brought the world to a nuclear crisis?

  A 1990 review argued that American intelligence had underestimated Soviet fear in 1983. Its sharpest warning concerns how analysts handle a dangerous alternative explanation.

• Before Apollo, the Army planned an outpost on the Moon

  Project Horizon converted a Cold War ambition into a logistics study. The detail is real; the proposed Army lunar outpost was not built.

• The CIA asked its staff to list activities that could cause a scandal

  The Family Jewels are a collection of internal reports, written for institutional scrutiny. Their form matters as much as their extraordinary contents.

• A brain scanner reconstructed the meaning of stories people heard

  The reconstructed sentences captured aspects of meaning, but the experiment depended on individual training and cooperation. It was not a transcript of unspoken thoughts.

• False stories travelled farther than true ones—and bots did not explain the difference

  A historical Twitter study found a striking gap in diffusion. The next question is what its measures tell us about human sharing—and what they leave out.

• Chernobyl: the report that reconsidered who—and what—was to blame

  INSAG-7 revisited the 1986 account and placed reactor design and institutional failure beside operator decisions. The revision is itself part of the accident's history.

• The nuclear-war model in which catastrophe continues after the explosions

  A 2022 modelling study follows the consequences of soot from the atmosphere into crops, fisheries and calorie supplies. Its projections are conditional, but the chain of risk is global.

• An intelligence manual treated pointless meetings as weapons

  The 1944 OSS manual recognized organizations as systems that could be disrupted through their own procedures. Its familiar office examples belong to a wartime document.

• Scientists flew into storms to test whether they could change a hurricane

  Stormfury tried to weaken hurricanes through cloud seeding. Later observations showed how easily a natural change could be mistaken for an experimental success.

• The simulation argument is more complicated than 'we live in a computer'

  Bostrom's argument links three possibilities about civilization and simulated observers. It does not choose one of them by discovering a flaw in reality.

• NASA commissioned a study of humanity's reaction to extraterrestrial life

  The 1960 Brookings report put extraterrestrial discovery inside a much wider research agenda about space and society. Its questions are often mistaken for decisions.

• Could ‘Oumuamua behave like a light sail?

  A radiation-pressure model offered one explanation for an interstellar object's acceleration. The important distinction is between a possible mechanism and evidence of artificial origin.

• Five million objects, seven unusual candidates: a search for stellar megastructures

  Seven infrared-excess objects survived a large search. Follow-up on candidate G shows why a shortlist is the beginning of an investigation.

• LSD scans linked visual activity to more of the brain—even with eyes closed

  The imaging study linked changes in brain activity to reported experiences. Its measures show associations across a small sample, not a complete explanation of hallucination.

• After Snowden's revelations, visits to sensitive Wikipedia topics fell

  A traffic study found a change after the 2013 surveillance disclosures. The evidence concerns collective reading behaviour, while individual motives remain unobserved.

• Your browser could identify you without a tracking cookie

  The 2010 Panopticlick study showed that combinations of ordinary browser properties could distinguish users. Its lesson is about uniqueness within a population, not a permanent identification rate.

• The Cold War experiment that put a ring of tiny copper antennas around Earth

  Project West Ford tested a passive communications reflector made of orbiting copper dipoles. Its unusual design moved much of the complexity back to Earth.

• The panel that called for an end to the Tuskegee study

  The October 1972 recommendation treated ending the study and caring for its participants as connected obligations. The men had been denied treatment, not deliberately infected.