Today, I thought I'd take a look at the "The Philadelphia Experiment". There's a fair chance that you might never have heard of it, but assuming that it really happened, it was perhaps one of the most momentous events of the 20th century, and that's saying something!
The year was 1943, and the US War Department had gotten wind of research work into electro-magnetism at Princeton which had apparently succeeded in making some small objects invisible. Of course, the only thing of interest to the War Department was how they could use the technology to influence the course of the war. It was decided that it might be possible to make ships invisible to radar using the technology.
The USS Eldridge was appointed to the task. First, they tried animals on board. The ship disappeared, but when it reappeared many animals had radiation type burns. Despite this they decided to try it out with a crew. The crew were unaware of what was about to happen. What exactly did occur over the following 5 hours until the ship returned is unclear, but what came back was a horrific site. Many sailors were insane, some were on fire, others were already dead or sticking out of the ship's super-structure. Some sailors were disappearing and reappearing at random, for instance several disappeared while in a pub several days later, and others still, reported seeing aliens and monsters.
It has been suggested that the greatest scientsists of that time were involved; Albert Einstein, Jon von Neumann and Nikola Tesla. Einstein was purported to have been so horrified by the results of the experiment that he burnt all of his personal notes relating to the experiment, declaring "Mankind is not yet ready for this technology!" Did the ship travel to the future (40 years some witnesses have testified), or alternative dimensions? Who can say? If you want to read more, there's a nice article here!
