Lightning is the natural force that in any epoch was really scary for people as its strikes bring destruction, death and fires, and leave millions of people deeply shocked.

When the lightning-conductor was invented and tested at the cost of lives of several physicians, the euphoria caused by the apparent triumph was immense. But was the invention the real triumph over the natural forces? That was not a final triumph at all, and we see that every year the number of people killed or injured with lightning is increasing. In France, about one million of lightning stokes are registered every year, and they bring death to dozens of people and some 10,000 cows.

It is not ruled out that the number of victims killed with lightning strikes would be higher if the lightning-conductor were not invented. However, this invention is not an absolutely effective protection from lightning. To be more exact, lightning-conductors wonderfully protect us from "disruption from the clouds", in other words from what lighting was believed to be after electricity was opened.

It is known that lightning obeys to majority of laws on the spread of discharge, but experience shows that not all of them and not always. Lightning consists of electric discharge and something else besides electricity. Otherwise, people do not know exactly what electricity is. Majority of weather forecasts precisely name the days when lightning is possible, but there is hardly a forecast that can predict how lightning will behave in this or that case. What is more, lightning behavior is in most cases beyond understanding indeed.

Tunguska anomaly, Krasnoyarsk region

Tunguska event - an enormously powerful explosion that occurred near the PodkamennayaTunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk region, Russia, on June 30, 1908. A number of theories based on UFOs have claimed that theTunguska event was the result of the activities of extraterrestrial beings and the Tunguska event is often referred to as "the Russian Roswell". The area has become a centre of a number of Siberian anomalies, and there are dozens of hypotheses on the reason for the blast.

Officially, the blast is believed to have been caused by an air burst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment at an altitude of 5 - 10 km above the Earth's surface. The energy of the blast was about 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and about one-third the power of the Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated.

From the wild weather to the harsh landscape, Iceland has its fair share of mystifying phenomena. But none is more fascinating than the elves. They're real. And this woman will save them.

Ragnhildur Jónsdóttir wants you to know that she's not crazy. She's gone to a doctor - two, actually - to make sure. She just wants to save the elves. After all, they're her friends.

"Of course lots of people look at you a certain way, like they're wondering, 'Are you crazy?'" Since she was a little girl, Jónsdóttir has had the ability to see and speak with elves. That means that, since she was a little girl, Jónsdóttir has been dealing with our side-eyed judgment.

Draped and wrapped in a series of scarves and sweaters with a loose braid of graying hair cascading down her shoulder, Jónsdóttir looks every bit the part of "The Elf Lady." She's sipping coffee while glancing out the window at the Elf Garden just outside of Reykjavik, Iceland, where she and her best friend Pulta, an elf woman, give tours of the hidden people's community of houses, which are rocks. "You know what they say, if everyone else thinks you're crazy, then maybe you should look inside yourself and see what's happening," she says. "So twice I went to see a doctor. I had to be sure myself, to make sure I wasn't crazy."

After a lifetime of speaking with the huldufólk (hidden people), it's been years since Jónsdóttir has questioned the sanity of her eyebrow-raising gift. But after recent headlines spotlighting the lengths to which she'll go to save the elves, strangers from all over the world once again are questioning it for her.

Last December, Jónsdóttir was among roughly 25 people arrested for protesting the building of a road through the ancient Gálgahraun lava field, about 10 minutes outside Reykjavik. The road would provide a more direct route from the country's capital to a semi-remote suburb on a nearby peninsula that houses, among other things, the president's residence. The road would also mean bulldozing Ófeigskirkja, a large lava rock that is one of Iceland's holiest elf churches.

Montanus, who lives in Greece, was standing on a dock that juts out into the bay toward the northwest, and the objects were in that direction. The frames in which they appear were recorded at 9:34 pm, he said.

He was shooting 15-second exposures, so his camera recorded images that weren't easily seen unaided and Montanus thus wasn't able to detect whether the objects were moving. But at least one of them showed up in different places in several different frames, suggesting movement.

He pulled magnified images from two different frames and superimposed them on one of the shots, and posted the image Thursday morning on Facebook and Twitter, where they are drawing drawing considerable attention.

Most people who have posted their thoughts about the images think they depict meteors. Montanus, though, isn't convinced. "It didn't look like a meteor to me. How a meteor would show up on the camera would be like a stream of light. These were weird, bizarre shapes. I said 'Look at it, it's got a parachute or something on it.' If anything looked like a UFO, it would be that."

Montanus does not think the objects were an artifact created by his camera or lengthy exposure, though he still researching that possibility.

The edible fish fell during a storm and are believed to have been lifted out of a river during a strong wind.

Villagers in the district of Chilaw said they heard something heavy falling and found scores of fish with a total weight of 50kg (110lbs).

It is not the first such incident in Sri Lanka - in 2012, a case of "prawn rain" was recorded in the south.

Scientists say that "fish rain" usually occurs when swirling whirlwinds over relatively shallow water develops into waterspouts and sucks in almost anything in the water including fish, eels and even frogs.

The marine life can be carried long distances by buffeting clouds even when the waterspout stops spinning.

A B.C. man who claims he filmed a possible sasquatch while hiking in the Tantalus Range near Squamish, B.C. two years ago is getting thousands of hits on YouTube after recently uploading the footage.

The video shows a black dot of a figure apparently moving up the slope of a snow covered mountain.

"I can't see it very well," Lamont says into the camera lens. "It's this little black dot walking in the middle of the snow in the middle of nowhere."

The video is intriguing because the shape does appear to be moving up the mountain.

"If that's human why would you walk up that ridge or that snow line?" Lamont asks. "Why would he not just go straight down?"

Football spectators have been spooked by a ghostly figure that appears to run through fans during a match in Bolivia.

The unexplained shadow glides quickly through the stands during a game in Hernando Siles Stadium in La Paz, Bolivia, on Thursday night.

It even appears to run straight through a barrier at speed.

A commercial pilot with more than 30 years' experience has been left scratching his head over mysterious lights he saw over Caloundra on Good Friday.

The pilot, who does not want to be identified, said he had never seen anything through the cockpit window that compared to the experience.

It has the self-confessed "world's greatest sceptic" questioning everything he believes about UFOs.

* MoD expert has worked with the two closest witnesses - both servicemen - of the unexplained phenomenon in 1980

* One recalls seeing a metal craft that could travel at 'impossible' speed

* Radiation levels in the area were measured at well above the norm

* The two witnesses wrote logs about the incident which they claim were later disappeared as part of a cover-up

* Staff Sergeant Jim Penniston touched the craft and claims to have 'downloaded' a message from the future in binary code

* The 'ship' was seen on three consecutive nights, including by the officer who was second-in-command of the base

Something eerie stirred in the Suffolk forest. Bright lights were flashing red, blue, white and yellow, piercing the darkness just beyond the perimeter of the U.S. Air Force base. Airman John Burroughs, on patrol in the early hours, went to investigate, the hairs on his arms standing on end with the static electricity that suddenly filled the air, his radio mysteriously malfunctioning.

Ahead, a small clearing among the trees shone as bright as day . . .

And so began a mystery that has lasted a third of a century, the truth of what took place remaining as elusive now as it was on that Boxing Day in 1980. Did an alien space ship land, as the world's UFO-hunters, ET-watchers and X-Files fans have always been desperate to believe?