Members of the Bearded Kitten/Sugar House Gang held a mad science themed party in Hackney, just North of London. Group members dragged out old chemistry sets, dressed up in wigs and lab coats, and conducted theatrical experiments for their guests with such hazardous materials as food coloring, vinegar, and talcum powder. It was all fun and games until the police showed up:

Caretaker of the property, Richard Watson, 29, was arrested under The Anti-Terrorism Act and questioned while the entire area was evacuated and roads cordoned off with police tape.

He said: 'I was handcuffed and put in the back of the police van for over an hour while the bomb squad and drugs team came down.

'There was a ridiculous amount of police there. Every time I looked out of the van I could see a new group of them swarming around…

'They told me they were arresting me on suspicion of making explosives. I laughed at first but then I realised they were being serious.’

Watson was eventually released without charges, but it isn’t clear what prompted the police to raid the party. The group was probably fortunate that the experiments they were conducting were more stage magic than actual science. Would the police have been so quick to release Watson had he been using his equipment for more serious science experiments?

Students in 'Weird Science' Halloween party arrested under anti-terror laws [Daily Mail]

Jacques Tardi illustrated Adele's adventures, although he had to find a way to move her from the 1910s and out of World War I where "Her feisty nature made it impossible to provide her with a place in the war. She would not have been allowed to fight, and could no more have settled for being a nurse, than she could have remained home rolling bandages." So, he had her get stabbed through the heart, and then frozen until World War II, when she could have a much larger role.

Adele frequently had run-ins with prehistoric creatures, mad scientists, and conspiracy theories. She also wasn't afraid to dish out both bullets and fisticuffs, and she was sometimes aided in her escapades by a resurrected mummy which was brought back from the Middle East by her great grand-uncle. EuropaCorp is planning a three movie Aventures series to begin hitting theaters in 2009, and we wouldn't mind seeing a gun toting Audrey Tautou go head to head with a pterodactyl and Adele.

Besson buys 'Aventures' rights [Variety]

• He worked for Thomas Edison and was promised a huge bonus if he redesigned his electric motors and generators. He did so, and gave Edison several patents as an employee, but Edison never paid out. Tesla quit and developed the more efficient "alternating current" that opposed Edison's "direct current" and eventually became the standard electrical current that we still use today.
• He was one of the first people to work with x-rays, and he invented an "X-Ray Gun" that you could use to fire x-ray beams at someone with, and it would develop on unexposed film hung behind the subject. A favorite target of this gun? Mark Twain.
• He thought that memories and thoughts were recorded on the brain and could be watched, like a movie, through the retina.
• He thought he could control the weather, and attempted to develop this technology. Eventually he was able to produce spectacular artificial lightning bolts.
• He developed the first radar system.
• He built his own wireless radio transmission tower in New York in conjunction with a German company named Telefunken, but the government tore it down in 1917 for fears that the Germans would use it to spy on the U.S.
• He transmitted radio waves before Marconi, but was never seen as the "father of radio," even though the Supreme Court decided to uphold his radio patent over Marconi in 1943. He died before the case was heard.
• He tried to develop anti-gravity airships, teleportation, and time travel after becoming fascinated with idea of light as both a wave and a particle. He put a lot of theoretical work into Tesla's Flying Machine, which would have been an ion-propelled airplane.
• There is a crater on the moon named after him.
• He believed that women would become the dominant sex in the future, and that they would rule over mankind like "Queen Bees."
• He was developing a way to harness energy from space, and said that one day all of man's inventions would run on this energy.
• He had plans to illuminate the world's oceans and build a massive ring around the Earth that would allow people to travel around the world in a single day.
• He developed something late in life called Nikola Tesla's Death Ray, and had a press conference to publicize it, stating it could "send concentrated beams of particles through the free air, of such tremendous energy that they will bring down a fleet of 10,000 enemy airplanes at a distance of 200 miles from a defending nation's border and will cause armies to drop dead in their tracks." It later became the basis for the Strategic Defense Initiative or "Star Wars" satellite defense system that is still being developed today.
• He died alone and in massive debt in his New York hotel room in 1943 at the age of 86. Upon his death, the FBI declared all of his papers and research to be "top secret" and seized them. Eventually, some were returned to his family. Some have never been found. Cue conspiracy theories.
• Visitors frequently request his room at The New Yorker Hotel, room 3327. Supposedly they hope for a "spark" of inspiration.
• He was portrayed by David Bowie in the film The Prestige, although he sadly never invented the machine shown in the film, which we won't spoil for you here. Although you can check out a clip here featuring Bowie as Tesla, which we hope will inspire you to rent this excellent "science meets magic" film.

• "Space Oddity" by David Bowie: Mercury Records considered this song about a stranded astronaut to be a gimmick track, and didn't pay much attention to it during production. However, they decided to rush it out to coincide with the Apollo 11 moon landing taking up much of the public attention, and it shot up the UK charts as a result.

  Best lyric: "And I think my spaceship knows which way to go"

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• "Rocket Man" by Elton John: Elton John's single about an astronaut's mixed feelings about leaving his family behind on a journey to Mars echoed a bit of Bowie's previous "Space Oddity," but has surpassed it in popularity and become one of his most popular.

  Best lyric: "Rocket Man, burning out his fuse up here alone."

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• "She Blinded Me With Science" by Thomas Dolby: Dolby's over the top homage to mad scientists actually featured a real British scientist with a cool name, Magnus Pyke, yelling out "Science!" during the song. On a side note, this also served as the opening song to the short-lived mutant teenagers tv show, The Misfits of Science.

  Best lyric: "Good heavens, Miss Sakamoto! You're beautiful!"

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• "Fly Me To The Moon" by Frank Sintatra: Originally titled "In Other Words," this song became one of Sinatra's staples, recorded with Count Basie with an arrangement by Quincy Jones. The song was also played by the Apollo 10 astronauts while on their lunar mission, meaning it did literally fly to the moon.

  Best lyric: Let me see what spring is like, on Jupiter and Mars.

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• "Red Barchetta" by Rush: This song was inspired by the futuristic short story "A Nice Morning Drive" in Road and Track magazine about vehicles of a dystopian era which have become huge, safe, and boring. In the song, the narrator drives an old and illicit car kept by his uncle, and the new futuristic cars can't keep up when he zooms across a narrow bridge. Very early 80s. Very awesome.

  Best lyric: "I strip away the old debris, that hides a shining car."

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• "Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, Pt. 1" by The Flaming Lips: This song from the Lips' concept album of the same name is about a young Japanese girl who works for the city, battling the giant robots that keep invading. She's a black belt in karate, she takes a lot of vitamins, and the robots don't stand a chance.

  Best lyric: "Those evil-natured robots, they're programmed to destroy us."

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• "Mr. Roboto" by Styx: Styx performed this song on their rock opera album Kilroy Was Here. In it, the hero Kilroy is placed in a futuristic rock and roll prison, and escapes by hiding himself inside a menial custodial robot, The Roboto. He escapes the prison inside the metal shell, and offers up his thanks in the form of this song.

  Best lyric: "With parts made in Japan, I am the modern man."

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• "Space Age Love Song" by Flock of Seagulls: Granted, nothing is particularly science fiction about this song other than the title, but it's so firmly rooted in the 1980s that we had to include it for the sheer amount of nostalgia-power it resonates with. If you catch the retro-arcade wonders documentary Chasing Ghosts, this song runs over a brilliant montage of the videogames of yesteryear.

  Best lyric: "I saw your eyes, and you touched my mind."

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• "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath: This song about a time-traveling man of steel seeking revenge has not only become a mainstay of anthem rock and Black Sabbath, but it's had a resurgence in popularity thanks to both Guitar Hero and the filmmakers of the upcoming Marvel superhero flick of the same name using it prominently in the trailer. Probably one of the most identifiable guitar riffs in all the world.

  Best lyric: "He was turned to steel, in the great magnetic field."

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• "Love Missile F1-11" by Sigue Sigue Sputnik: This song, filled with simple repeated lyrics and sound effects, has been brought back to life by being featured in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Bowie even covered it in 2003. We're still not sure why it continues to endure, but hey, it's a love missile, and it closes out our outer space playlist.

  Best lyric: "There goes my love rocket red."