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were angry.

At 7:17 a.m. on June 30, 1908, there was an explosion near the Stony Tunguska River in Siberia, as the object headed towards the ground. The sky would not be quite as bright again, though colorful sunsets would be reported in Western Europe, Scandinavia and Russia after this. In Irkutsk, about 550 miles away, a seismograph marked that an earthquake had just occurred. Tremors were also recorded in St. Petersburg, the capitol of Russia, and in Washington D.C. An abnormal aurora also appeared on June 30, 1908 near the volcano Erebus in Antarctica. "Black rain" fell around the Tunguska region as the shocks subsided.

The Stony Tunguska River region was and is an isolated area consisting mostly of forests, peat bogs, mosquitoes and swamps. Even nearly 100 years after the explosion, the only way to reach this area is either by helicopter or on foot. In 1908, the only ones willing to make the journey were fur traders and native tribesmen, such as the Tungus. As an emergency measure, in response to what had happened near the Stony Tunguska River, the chief of the Tungus sealed off the area where the explosion had occurred, declaring it "enchanted".

Far away, the tsar and his family were more concerned with religious mystics than mystified over the skies and explosion. Even if they had heard the rumors that, at the time of the explosion, trees were toppled in a pattern like a circle over an area greater than half the size of Rhode Island, or that people 300 miles away could see the smoke from the fire that would burn an area one quarter the size of Rhode Island and lasted for weeks, the tsar and his officials would (and did) ignore this isolated region. Did it really matter that a train 375 miles from the explosion was forced to suddenly stop because the engineer was afraid the train would jump off the tracks due to the shaking? Or that people 40 miles from the explosion were thrown into the air, one even landing in a tree, while windows broke and ceilings fell around them? The tsar sent no one to investigate these things, nor did he, nor did his officials, question why Vasiliy Dzenkoul's 600 700 reindeer, stores, teepees and hunting dogs were instantly burnt and turned into ashes following an explosion that mad noise like thunderclaps, which could be heard for 500 miles and deafened herdsmen. The only official willing to act had already sealed off the area.

No official questioned what had happened in the Tunguska region for 13 years. World War I began

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