Did you know that several governments have spent millions since the 1950s on weather control programs? Did you know that China claims that it will not rain at the opening ceremonies at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games?Somehow, in the ever-expanding torrents of information we filter through each day, we haven’t categorized this one as important. True, the efficacy of cloud-seeding is debated, since creating a weather-control is both the ends and the means of properly testing the process (a real catch-22!) But I’m still amazed I never heard of this until now.

Apparently silver iodide (aka dry ice) is shot into the sky, in order to somehow cause rain. There is a perceived dependency of this in dry areas of China, where tanks routinely shoot large quantities of the stuff into the air to produce rain. Even in the United States, companies exist solely to drop dry ice from airplanes for rainmaking purposes.

If you trust any of this at all, research more at Wikipedia.