As a person with a rather dark sense of humor, one of the funniest things I know about is Operation Starfish Prime. This really happened.

Long story short, we (as a species) discovered the Van Allen Belts, then immediately nuked them “for science.” But then we forgot to get any rockets to send up to study the explosion. So we didn’t really learn much.

What’s that, you say? We learned to not nuke the sky? Well, one thing is that we already knew that. And the other thing is that I don’t think we learned even that.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/07/09/the-50th-anniversary-of-starfish-prime-the-nuke-that-shook-the-world/

Like I said, this really happened.