The Odd News Of The Flat Earther Who Died In A DIY Rocket Mission To Prove Earth Is Flat
YouTubeSome argue Mike Hughes falsely claimed to be a flat-Earther for attention, yet his stunt cost him his life.
Mike “Mad Mike” Hughes had a reputation as a daredevil and an outspoken flat-Earther. Unfortunately, both these traits led to his demise when he set out to prove that the Earth was flat in a makeshift rocket.
Hughes is one of the thousands who adhere to the archaic and long-refuted claim that the Earth is flat. In order to test his theory, Hughes planned to reach the Kármán line, which is a 62-mile-high threshold that officially delineates the barrier of Earth’s atmosphere, in a homemade rocket of his own design.
This wasn’t a first for Hughes, who performed a similar albeit successful stunt in 2018, during which he reached 1,900 feet before safely landing.
“I expect to see a flat disk up there,” he said at the time. “I don’t have an agenda. If it’s a round Earth or a ball, I’m going to come down and say, ‘Hey, guys, I’m bad. It’s a ball. OK?”
And yet, Hughes felt the need to attempt the stunt again. Tragically, his launch from the Barstow desert in California this year went awry, and his rocket plummeted back to earth where it crash-landed.
“When the rocket was nosediving and he didn’t release the three other parachutes he had in the rocket, lots of people screamed out and started wailing,” said freelance journalist Justin Chapman. “Everyone was stunned when he crashed and didn’t know what to do.”
It’s unclear what exactly caused all three of the 64-year-old’s parachutes to malfunction. Some have maintained that his ideas about flat Earth were merely a ploy to attract media attention.
The weird news chronicled here is a reminder that we share a strange and wonderful world. What weird news will 2021 bring? We can only imagine.
After reading these 11 weird news stories from 2020, check out the biggest science articles from this year. Then read upon the most outrageous crime news stories from 2020.
