Almost 101 years ago, a gigantic explosion levelled parts of remote Russia. You’ll know it as Tunguska. It was about 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, but nobody knows what caused it.

Sure, various theories have arisen, from a black hole puncturing the earth, to a comet or a meteorite, to aliens, to a “natural” hydrogen bomb or even antimatter.

The most intriguing part of the mystery is that there doesn’t appear to be an impact crater (although recent research points to Lake Cheko as a possibility).

Now, an even newer study suggests that the comet responsible actually “skipped” off the atmosphere (after partially exploding) and headed back out into space — to return circa 2045.

But perhaps they are all wrong! What if it was a secret experiment conducted by Nikola Tesla, trying to electrify the earth and give free power to all!

That’s the hypothesis advanced in at least two websites. The Tesla Society links to this site, which says:

The nature of the Tunguska event, also, is consistent with what would happen during the sudden release of wireless power. No fiery object was reported in the skies at that time by professional or amateur astronomers as would be expected when a 200,000,000 pound object enters the atmosphere at tens of thousands miles an hour. Also, the first reporters, from the town of Tomsk, to reach the area judged the stories about a body falling from the sky was the result of the imagination of an impressionable people. He noted there was considerable noise coming from the explosion, but no stones fell. The absence of an impact crater can be explained by there having been no material body to impact. An explosion caused by broadcast power would not leave a crater.

The theory goes that Tesla, broke and desperate, was looking to make a splash:

Given Tesla’s general pacifistic nature it is hard to understand why he would carry out a test harmful to both animals and the people who herded the animals even when he was in the grip of financial desperation. The answer is that he probably intended no harm, but was aiming for a publicity coup and, literally, missed his target.

At the end of 1908, the whole world was following the daring attempt of Peary to reach the North Pole which he claimed in the Spring of 1909. If Tesla wanted the attention of the international press, few things would have been more impressive than the Peary expedition sending out word of a cataclysmic explosion on the ice near or at the North Pole.⁽³⁷⁾ Tesla, then, if he could not be hailed as the master creator that he was, could be seen as the master of a mysterious new force of destruction. The test, it seems, was not a complete success.

From the presumed “launch place” of Tesla (near New York), you can draw a straight line up and over the North Pole to land at Tunguska.

Intriguing — if true!