weirdexperiments.com

Common Cold Research at Salisbury
When researcher at the British Government’s Common Cold Unit in Salisbury 90 miles southwest of London tried to find out how one gets a cold they were in for a surprise: their experiments demonstrated that the common cold had nothing to do with cold temperatures. Although most people believe differently that is true to this day.

Being a guniea pig was especially popular with students. They considered it a cheap holiday: free accommodation in spacious flats which were fully equipped with books, games, a radio and telephone and spend your leisure time playing table tennis, badminton, or golf. You even got paid three shillings a day for your trouble. The only risk was: one could catch a cold.
Watch this hilarious movie about the experiment.

The Vomit Comet
To this day, nobody has managed to create a machine that could produce even the slightest reduction in gravity at ground level. The only way of getting 35 seconds of weightlessness was invented in 1951: by flying a bombtrajectory with a plane. The KC-135, a military version of a Boeing 707, that was later used to train astronauts was aptly called "vomit ccomet". Anyone who doubts that people in the cabin of the KC-135 really attain a state of weightlessness during parabolic flight should watch the film Apollo 13 starring Tom Hanks. The film crew hired out the actual ‘Vomit Comet’ to shoot the relevant scenes.

Stephen Hawking flies in the Vomit Comet
Here is world famous physicist Stephen Hawking who was on board of the vomit comet in 2007.

"Altered States" (Title Sequence)
What would happen if the brain was cut off from all external stimuli? When neither a person’s eyes, ears, skin or nose could register a single thing? That was the question John Lilly wanted to answer in the 1950ies. He invented a sensory deprivation tank where he had halluzinations and other experiences "too personal to relate publicly", as he reported.

In the 1980s, Lilly had isolation tanks (also known as Samadhi tanks) manufactured and marketed as relaxation aids. He became a guru of the New Age movement, wrote several zany volumes of autobiography, and combined his spells in the tank with acid trips.

The plot of the film ‘Altered States’ (1980) with William Hurt was based on John Lilly’s experiments. To no ones surprise the real experiments were done with much less flashy equipment than the Hollywood ones. As a matter of fact Lilly sometimes had to switch of the light himself and then climb in complete darkness into a tank, that was more or less a oversized bathtub. Here is the title sequence with a very sophisticated vertical tank.

Floating
Since the initial experiment Lillys tank pops up time and again as relaxation device and meditation machine. This footage is from 2006.