This planet would have been five times bigger, then a collision blasted most of it away.
5. We used to think another planet orbited between the Sun and Mercury.
We called it Vulcan, and its name lives on in Star Trek lore.
6. NASA scientists designed the spaceships in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
7. We were so sure Martians existed, we excluded them from a contest.
An 1890 content offered big money to whoever contacted another planet … except for Mars, because Mars was too easy, everyone knew aliens lived on Mars.
8. Radiation may have kept earth from freezing with laughing gas.
This happened because the Sun blasted us with ten superflares a day, the kind we thankfully get now only once a century.
9. Van Halen’s Sammy Hagar had something “uploaded” into his mind by an UFO.
According to Sammy Hagar, anyway. He says they inserted a numerical code, but since it used a different system from ours, we’ll never know what it meant.
10. In the ’60s, the truly devoted believed aliens would save us from nukes.
This was thanks to one nut named George Van Tassel, who built a dome to commune with aliens and said they warned him of upcoming nuclear destruction.