Top 10 Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out to Be True
#10: Roswell Cover-Up
In the summer of 1947, an object crashed down to Earth in Roswell, New Mexico. Theories that it was an alien spacecraft have pervaded pop culture for over half a century since. The U.S. Air Force claim that the object was merely a “weather balloon” only added fuel to the fire. And the conspiracy theorists were right – it was no weather balloon and there was a cover-up. But it wasn’t an alien ship either. Probably. The object was a high-altitude balloon, launched as part of Project Mogul. These balloons were intended to detect sound waves from Soviet atomic bomb tests. During the Cold War, the U.S. military couldn’t exactly be honest about that in the papers. Now whether you think that’s another cover story…well…
#9: Big Tobacco’s Big Lie
Top 50 Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out to Be TRUE
Smoking causes lung cancer and a lot of other adverse health effects. Scientists demonstrated this definitively in the 1950s. However, public opinion wavered for decades, with sources springing up to generate controversy and debate. Some suspected that the tobacco industry was suppressing and distorting the facts through a coordinated campaign. And it eventually came out that they were! Together, the world’s largest tobacco companies initiated Operation Berkshire to generate fake controversy and debate. Big tobacco knew that smoking caused cancer, and that nicotine was addictive. They decided not to make cigarettes less harmful, because addiction made them a lot of money. Just goes to show – where there’s smoke, there’s often fire.
#8: The White Sox Threw the World Series
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The Chicago White Sox are on record for having one of the longest droughts between winning the World Series, at 87 years. However, they weren’t always known for their bad luck. Back in the late 1910s, the Sox won in 1917 and they even had a wonder like Shoeless Joe Jackson on the team. Yet, rumors during the 1919 Series held that the games were fixed. The White Sox lost the series, but the rumors persisted into the next year. Eventually a grand jury found evidence that eight players, including Jackson (though his role is disputed), were involved in a conspiracy to receive money in exchange for throwing the Series. While a trial found them not guilty, they were nevertheless banned from the League permanently.
#7: Nefarious Agents Infiltrated the Government
The Church of Scientology is infamously touchy about any criticism of their organization. Their influence over celebrities is well-known, but theories about their influence over the government are also out there. And here’s the thing – Scientologists really did infiltrate the government. In the 1970s, at least 5,000 members of the organization conducted espionage on government agencies and private organizations! And this wasn’t a fringe element either – the founder’s wife, Mary Sue Hubbard, pleaded guilty and went to prison! It was one of the largest scale infiltrations of the U.S. government in history. All of this was done with the aim of destroying evidence that painted Scientology in an unfavorable light. It arguably had quite the opposite effect…
#6: The FBI Spied on Political Activists
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Those involved in political protests and other activist causes are often paranoid that they’re being watched. And they should be, because it’s happened before and it can happen again. From the late ‘50s to the early ‘70s, the FBI engaged in illegal surveillance, infiltration, and disruption of protest movements and other organizations deemed “subversive.” These ranged from independence movements, to civil rights activists, to feminist organizations. They even had John Lennon, the former Beatles frontman under watch! While this program, named COINTELPRO, was abolished in 1971, others may have taken its place.
#5: The First Female U.S. President
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While the United States has yet to elect a woman to the office of president (by electoral college, anyway), some theorized that a woman has assumed the duties of the office already. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson suffered a debilitating stroke. This left him bedridden and partially paralyzed, with some impaired judgment. For over a year, Wilson’s wife Edith aided him in governing the country, to the point where she was basically performing his job in all but name. The degree of her involvement was kept a close secret and Wilson herself denied that she made executive decisions until her death.
#4: The Government Is Spying on You
Top 10 Government Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out To Be True
The common refrain of cranks and conspiracy nuts for decades has been that the government is watching our every move. And it’s not completely wrong. With the rise of smartphones and the internet, the government has unprecedented access to information on its citizens. In the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration initiated far-reaching mass surveillance programs - both foreign and domestic. The NSA’s activities in the years since have included sucking up and storing online history, emails, metadata, text messages, you name it. Edward Snowden revealed a lot of this info with his leaks, including how other governments were also implicated. Few believe that in the time since, governments have just given up.
#3: False Justification for War
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In August 1964, the USS Maddox fired a warning shot as three North Vietnamese torpedo boats approached in the Gulf of Tonkin. After the torpedo boats opened fire, the Maddox sank all three. Two days later, the report of a second attack prompted President Lyndon B. Johnson to authorize further military action in Vietnam. For years, people questioned this justification. It was eventually revealed that the second attack was imaginary, based on wrongly interpreted communications intercepts. It wasn’t the last dubious rationale for war. In 1990, George H. W. Bush leveraged false testimony crafted by a public relations firm to initiate the Gulf War. Over a decade later, his son would falsely claim that Iraq possessed WMDs to justify an invasion.
#2: Watergate Scandal
Perhaps the most well-known political conspiracy of all time, the Watergate Scandal was unthinkable when it occurred. The scandal began when Republican President Richard Nixon’s administration illegally wiretapped and broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters. Their aim was to acquire information about Nixon’s opposition in the forthcoming election. The arrest of the perpetrators led to attempts by Nixon and his administration to cover-up their involvement. However, mounting evidence and leaks soon exploded into a scandal that has become a by-word for political disgrace - leading to Nixon’s resignation.
#1: The C.I.A. Conducted Mind Control Experiments
Top 20 Scientific Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out To Be TRUE
The idea of a government agency trying to control people’s minds might sound like science-fiction, but it really happened! In the 1970s, a commission on the CIA’s activities within the US exposed the existence of Project MKUltra, a secret program that used drugs and torture to manipulate its’ victims’ mental states. These experiments were conducted on prisoners in secret detention centers around the world, as well as within American universities, hospitals, and prisons. The CIA also funded brutal experiments involving electroconvulsive therapy in Montreal, Canada. Victims of MKUltra included Ken Kesey and Allen Ginsberg. It’s one of the darkest conspiracies out there, and we still don’t know the full extent of it.
