Residents of the English city of Manchester and a few of its suburbs heard a loud explosion late Monday night and Manchester fire officials spent an hour looking for the source of the bang, but found nothing, Manchester Evening News is reporting .
At about 10:30 p.m. Monday, Manchester time (5:30 P.M. EST), several hundred people began taking to social media to report a loud explosion, according to BBC .
Everyone in Manchester ok? “Loud bang in Salford” could be anything.
— Shinydan Howell (@shinydan) November 24, 2014
Everyone is talking about a loud bang in Manchester I hope nobody is hurt — Lana Habbal (@Lanachoo) November 24, 2014
Twitter user Francis Jenkins tweeted that the Manchester explosion caused damage to TV and mobile phone networks; however, Manchester police are denying this claim.
Manchester Explosion Summary- Twitter reports Loud bang in Salford area, Electrical, TV and Mobile network outages Police/Fire Investigating
— Francis Jenkins (@RF_Jenkins) November 24, 2014
Manchesterite James Duffy posted a picture on Twitter that appears to show smoke wafting up towards the sky.
Wow that was a bloody loud bang it’s caused sum smoke in the air & my telly wobbled clean pants plz!! @MENnewsdesk pic.twitter.com/WrDqFbKVbQ — JAMES DUFFY (@JDUFFYSECURITY) November 24, 2014
Fire officials were called out and spent over an hour searching for the source of the explosion. No evidence of a fire, or any explosions, was found.
Since the source of the Manchester explosion remains unknown as of this post, the Manchester Evening News invited readers to submit their own theories. Some of those theories are rather, well, odd — to say the least.
One reader suggested extraterrestrial spacecraft, covered up by the British government.
“UFOs. The same bangs were heard across Arizona a few years ago, believed to be spacecraft crashing. If it was our own Roswell, expect top secrecy. Thus no reports of anything.”
Another suggested a meteor.
“Probably a small meteorite burning up and exploding as it passed through the atmosphere. The bang is the sonic boom produced by these things since they move faster than the speed of sound, and the vapour in the photograph is the debris trail it left as it exploded. Scary, but not a conspiracy!”
Another reader suggested a much more mundane explanation: bored teenagers.
“Chances are it’s just some clowns with a bin bag, car fuse and a mix of Oxy Acetylene. They produce a very deep and extremely loud explosion. There are numerous videos of stupid people using these on YouTube. I believe some use water containers from the office dispensers and should imagine these would produce a very large boom.”
What do you think caused the Manchester explosion?
[Image via Twitter: James Duffy ]
