Archive Gallery: Diabolical Death Rays from the Pages of Popular Science
One of the Many Death Rays That Emerged in the 1930s Not just for fictional villains anymore The words "death ray" conjure up a lot of mental images: twirling mustaches, evil laboratories, a dashing man in a suit to foil the plot, etc. But it turns out death rays aren't just the things of stories. They actually make a few entries in the pages of history as well, especially in the 30s, for some reason. Click here to enter the archive gallery. The results are about what you'd expect--experiments killing mice, detonating mines from a distance, shutting down engines and so on. All to be taken with a healthy serving of skepticism. Of course, it's not all doom and gloom. Sometimes the rays rained death upon germs, or cancer. And one brave soul realized that the horrible power of a death ray was too much to entrust a human to wield,...