Alien mystery in outer limits of Lincolnshire finally solved

So it wasn't a bird; it wasn't a plane; it wasn't a piece of ice "about the size and weight of a cow". Nor, disappointingly for conspiracy theorists, was it an alien spacecraft. It is five weeks since a wind turbine in Lincolnshire mysteriously shattered, amid reports of strange flashing lights and dazzling "tentacles, like an octopus" in the night sky. Deprived of other obvious explanations, the Sun concluded in a front page story that the turbine's 65ft blade had been struck by a UFO. The Guardian later seemed to have solved part of the mystery, revealing that the "strange lights" had almost certainly been caused by a firework display hosted by the parents of Emily Bell, the paper's director of digital content, but the cause of the broken turbine remained unexplained. Yesterday, however, the turbine's manufacturer published the preliminary results of an investigation into its failure, revealing a rather more prosaic culprit: a broken bolt. In fact, discovered Enercon, the firm which made the generator, the bolts securing the blade to the turbine's hub "exhibited classic signs of fatigue failure". Though the bolts themselves had shown no flaws, it seemed a component part on either side had "induced stress in the bolts beyond their design limits".

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/11/wind-turbine-mystery