Going up in flames

Reuters reports on a small village in Sicily called Canneto di Caronia where all sorts of gadgets, including fuse boxes, lamps, cellphones, air conditioners, microwave ovens, and cars have been spontaneously combusting — and it keeps happening even though they've evacuated all the local residents and cut off the village's electricity. While the local Catholic priest is considering a massive exorcism and somebody is trying to convince the town's mayor to sacrifice a black goat in order to solve the problem, all sorts of scientists have now staked out the village and the leading explanations for what's going on are that is something to do with a buildup of electrical energy from the groundwires running off of nearby railroad tracks or maybe some sort of rare surge of electricity rising from the earth's core (we like this theory best).

[Via Metafilter]