Top 10 Famous Rumours That Turned Out to Be True

Even though his legacy is tarnished, there is still no bigger name in cycling than Lance Armstrong. This athlete broke through the cycling community to become a bonafide celebrity. A big part of that was his cancer survival story and seven consecutive Tour de France wins. But many believed that he was a little too good and accused him of doping. In fact, allegations began almost immediately, with rider Christophe Bassons writing about widespread cheating within professional cycling. Armstrong denied the rumors for years until the United States Anti-Doping Agency revealed that Armstrong was heading a massive doping conspiracy. Bassons was proven right, and Armstrong was stripped of all his accomplishments.

While he’s now a household name, Jeffrey Epstein didn’t make mainstream news until the mid 2000s. For a long time, Epstein was a nondescript owner of a brokerage firm. But around 2005, rumors started spreading that Epstein was a sexual predator. They began in March of that year, when a Florida woman accused Epstein of targeting her stepdaughter. This accusation drew the attention of the FBI, who discovered that Epstein was running an extensive sex ring. However, Epstein only spent one year in custody, after agreeing to a plea deal negotiated by the infamous Alan Dershowitz with state attorney Alexander Acosta. Epstein was famously arrested again in 2019, but died in prison before he could be convicted.

The 2016 presidential election was a historic one, with billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump riding populist, nationalistic sentiments to a shocking victory. Rumors soon emerged that Russia had interfered in the election. It sounds made-up … but turns out it was true - and U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA, FBI, and NSA, had the proof. Russian agencies hacked into Democratic email accounts and computer networks, and created thousands of fake social media accounts to sow discord in the United States, criticize Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, and support Trump. A Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee concurred with these conclusions.

There are a ton of kooky conspiracy theories out there. For a while, “the government is spying on us through an intricate global surveillance program” sounded like one of them. Well, in 2013, whistleblower and former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed mass surveillance programs undertaken by the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence alliance - consisting of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Leaked documents revealed that data was being harvested through covert wiretaps, commercial partners, servers, and even undersea cables. The information obtained ranged from metadata to actual text messages, emails, images, and video chats. Yeah, browsing history is the least of your worries. U.S. officials cast Snowden as a traitor, while public opinion was divided, with some seeing him as a hero.

For years there have been rumors of rampant sexual misconduct within the Catholic Church. It’s the type of rumor that no one wants to believe. After all, the Church is supposed to represent the divine will, an institution of benevolence and safety. Rumors of this sort began in earnest throughout the 1980s, although the alleged abuses go back even further. The rumors picked up steam throughout the ‘90s before The Boston Globe blew the story open in 2002. Their investigation proved that there were systemic issues within the Catholic Church, and the work led to numerous criminal prosecutions. The team would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize for their journalism.

It was October 9, 1919, and the Cincinnati Reds just beat the Chicago White Sox to win the World Series. This wasn’t just an upset - many people literally couldn’t believe it, and rumors abound that the Sox had intentionally thrown the Series. The rumor continued to swell until 1920, when a grand jury uncovered the truth. Jewish mafia crime boss Arnold Rothstein made tons of money on the series through his illegal gambling syndicate, and eight members of the team received kickbacks for throwing the games. The integrity of baseball was utterly shattered and the players were banned from both the sport and future Hall of Fame eligibility, including the iconic Shoeless Joe Jackson.

If there’s a single name that evokes corporate malpractice, it’s Enron. This Texas energy company was huge in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, with massive stock price gains that made people tons of money. This rate of growth was substantially higher than that of the S&P 500. But it wasn’t all champagne and yachts. Some believed that the company was valued way too high, and even professional economists couldn’t make sense of their balance sheets and financial statements. Nothing added up, and rumors of malfeasance began to circulate. Everything collapsed in 2001, when it was revealed that Enron was cooking their books and hiding debts and losses for financial gain. With the fraud exposed, Enron filed for bankruptcy.

For decades, producer Harvey Weinstein was a Hollywood titan. But in 2017, bombshell articles in The New York Times and The New Yorker reported dozens of accusations of sexual abuse and assault. More and more women courageous came forward, sparking the #MeToo movement. In March 2020, Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years behind bars. But rumors had actually circulated for years. Gwyneth Paltrow alluded to Weinstein as being ‘coercive’ back in 1998. Other celebrities like Courtney Love and Seth MacFarlane dropped public references, and “30 Rock” included not-so-subtle jabs about it. It was less ‘rumor’ and more ‘open Hollywood secret.’ Justice eventually prevailed and Weinstein’s crimes were finally acknowledged and punished.

On August 2, 1964, North Vietnamese forces attacked the USS Maddox, which was on patrol in North Vietnamese waters. Two days later, a second attack allegedly occurred against the USS Maddox and the USS Turner Joy. President Lyndon B. Johnson used this incident to justify open warfare in Vietnam. However, many questioned whether the second attack had ever happened. This was finally confirmed decades later, when it was revealed that the second ‘attack’ was based on wrongly interrupted communication intercepts. Even though the evidence was dubious at best, Johnson ran with it and never looked back.

Not a crook eh? On the night of June 17, 1972, five men broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters, having already wiretapped phones in a previous break-in. Naturally, suspicion fell on Republican President Richard Nixon’s administration, despite strong denials. Subsequently, a Senate committee, journalists at the Washington Post, and audio recordings of Nixon himself exposed his administration’s complicity. The burglary had been orchestrated by Nixon’s Committee for Re-election. Nixon had obstructed justice by attempting to cover it up. Facing certain impeachment, Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974. He was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford, who had been his Vice President.