Conspiracy theories come from distrust in government, media, and institutions

A movie helped make JFK assassination conspiracies widespread

Oliver Stone's film "JFK" (1991) imagined the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy as the result of a conspiracy by US government agents. Before the film, this belief was not common, but it became widely adopted afterward. The film's impact contributed to the release of major CIA files in subsequent decades. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

Conspiracy theories persist around Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1968 assassination

Despite multiple investigations—including FBI inquiries and a 1979 House committee report—questions and conspiracy theories have continued to surround the 1968 assassination of Dr. King long after his assassin’s conviction.

US intelligence allegedly pursued more than 600 schemes to assassinate Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro.

US intelligence allegedly pursued more than 600 schemes to assassinate Fidel Castro

From exploding cigars and poisoned Cohibas to an infected scuba suit and plans to drug a TV studio with LSD, this account catalogs the CIA's strangest—and consistently unsuccessful—attempts to kill Fidel Castro over decades.

Limited transparency soon after Chernobyl made it a source of conspiracy theories

Some rumors about the event became perceived as more reliable than the Soviet mass media, which had omitted key information during the early days of uncertainty. The resulting theories included CIA involvement in the disaster, three-headed birds, aliens, and a weaponized earthquake.

Some believe Princess Diana's fatal car crash in 1997 was planned

The tragedy that killed the Princess of Wales; her partner, Dodi Fayed; and their driver, Henri Paul; in Paris has been the subject of popular conspiracies. Diana, known to have a difficult relationship with the royal family, was believed by many to have been the victim of a murder plot.

The reptilian conspiracy theory posits that humanoid lizards run the world

Conspiracy theorists believe shape-shifting reptiles have taken human form and gained authority to manipulate human populations. From US politicians to British royalty, could lizard people be holding positions of power?

'Birds Aren't Real' parodies the way memes traffic conspiracy theories

Peter McIndoe claims the US government killed 12 billion birds only to replace them with drones. These statements have powered protests—and McIndoe's fictional campaign that highlights how conspiracies and their theorists are treated.

Psychology research shows that conspiracy theorists tend to have a desire to be unique

While conspiracy theorists are often understood to have feelings of powerlessness in their lives, research suggests they may also be inclined to set themselves apart from the masses.

The long history of Kurt Cobain suicide conspiracy theories

Cobain died by suicide in 1994, but it wasn't long before fans began espousing conspiracy theories alleging that the government or his wife and lead singer of Hole, Courtney Love, had him killed. Seattle police revisited the case in 2014, but determined that it was indeed a suicide.

Camus died in a car crash, which some believe was orchestrated by the KGB

Albert Camus died in 1960, at the age of 46, after his publisher's car crashed into a tree. Italian author Giovanni Catelli, however, alleges that what appeared to be an accident was actually an assassination by the Soviet spy agency as a way to silence the French writer's anti-Soviet beliefs.

A fake vaccine campaign was used to locate Osama bin Laden, fueling vaccine distrust

As part of the intelligence operation to find bin Laden in Pakistan, the US Central Intelligence Agency recruited a Pakistani doctor who ran a fake hepatitis B vaccine campaign and obtained DNA samples from bin Laden. News of this fake campaign fueled further distrust of healthcare workers, attacks on them, and stymied efforts to vaccinate against polio in the region.

Explore a podcast devoted to uncovering different conspiracy theories

Hear stories of controversial events from all around the world and come to your own conclusions about why they happened—and if someone shaped the narrative around them. From art fraud to the death of a Roman emperor, this Spotify podcast covers it all.

Abraham Lincoln was almost assassinated weeks before his inauguration as he traveled from Illinois to DC through Baltimore in 1861; it took two independent claims for Lincoln to be convinced the threat was real

Abraham Lincoln's missing bodyguard

The night President Abraham Lincoln was shot, his bodyguard John Frederick Parker was late for his shift—and reportedly left his post to drink at the bar. Infamous assassin John Wilkes Booth entered the booth at Ford's Theater where the president sat while Parker was absent, leading to one of the United States' greatest political tragedies. Read more about the troubled history of Parker here.

Denver International Airport is associated with numerous dark conspiracy theories

Since opening in 1995, the country's largest airport has spurred a variety of conspiracy theories. Some believe the runways form a hate symbol; others believe its giant horse statue is cursed.

Hollywood’s best scandals

With all the money, power, and beautiful people in Hollywood, it’s no wonder there’s no shortage of scandals. This list highlights 10 of the most salacious ones, from Marilyn Monroe’s affair with then-president John F. Kennedy, to the mysterious death of starlet Natalie Wood in 1981.

The quiz show scandals eroded trust in the media

Many viewers were attracted to the shows because they were filled with real people winning real money. After it was exposed that “Dotto,” “Twenty-One,” “The $64,000 Question,” and others had been fixed, the genre struggled to regain viewers’ trust. The government intervened, too: President Eisenhower called the shows’ deception “a terrible thing to do to the American people” and Congress amended the Communications Act in 1960, explicitly outlawing fraudulent game shows.

Spikes in pizza orders near US government buildings are thought to be signs of international crises

Theorists have long believed that sudden increases in pizza deliveries near the Pentagon signal a major event is about to occur. Historical examples include the CIA ordering 21 pizzas the day before the beginning of the Gulf War, and another surge of deliveries before former President Bill Clinton's impeachment hearings. Citizens have since begun monitoring food orders in the area. See a tracker of Pentagon pizza orders here.

US intelligence failures contributed to the success of the Japanese attack

Despite breaking Japan’s diplomatic codes, US agencies failed to integrate warnings, successfully track Japan’s carriers, or even believe a Hawaii strike was possible (they also had not cracked Japan’s naval codes). Missed signals, ignored reports and poor coordination led to one of the worst intelligence failures in US history.

Murder rates spiked in the US after COVID-19, and then declined in 2023

Criminologist and former investigator Jillian Peterson says whether a murder is solved in the US is nearly up to the flip of a coin, with the clearance rate for murder cases being about 50%. The US, which has more guns than citizens, has about roughly five gun homicides per 100,000 residents, resulting in the 28th-highest rate of deaths from gun violence compared to the rest of the world.

The Federal Reserve Act's foundation was laid in a secretive meeting at the world's most prestigious club

Republican Sen. Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island organized a highly secretive meeting of the minds at the world’s most prestigious club on Jekyll Island, Georgia, where a who’s who in the financial world hashed out details over the course of a week.

The dead internet theory suggests that mostly bots are interacting online

The dead internet theory proposes that bots create most online content. These bots are believed to create social media posts to boost engagement and increase advertising revenue. However, the accounts doing the liking and commenting are also believed to be bots. The theory suggests governments use bots to manipulate public opinion.

The story of Kryptos, the long unsolved cryptographic sculpture outside the CIA's headquarters

Made by American artist Jim Sanborn, the sculpture features four copper plates engraved with messages written with the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet and question marks. The last of these plates was solved in 2025, but the piece remains of interest to cryptoanalysts.

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

Five key causes of World War I

What caused World War I? The ready answer refers to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. But there was more to it than that. This article, accompanied by a short explanatory video, outlines how mutual defense alliances, imperialism, militarism, and nationalism also had a heavy hand in the start of what some considered a "preventable war."

John Mearsheimer argued that the liberal international order was bound to fail

University of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer argued in his influential essay Bound to Fail that expanding liberal democracy and open markets into other great powers' spheres inevitably leads to conflict, and that the liberal order contains the roots of its own collapse.

See 33 images that became central to huge scandals, including a young Charles and Camilla, Michael Jackson's baby on a hotel balcony, and Hugh Grant's mugshot.

The FBI is the largest agency within the Department of Justice

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is the DOJ's largest component, leading national efforts to fight terrorism, cybercrime, organized crime, and corruption. It has roughly 38,000 employees and functions as both a domestic intelligence agency and the federal government's main investigative body.

After her fellow cult members tried to kill her with an LSD-infused hamburger, one member of the Manson Family, the murderous cult led by Charles Manson, decided to testify against the group's leader.

The identity of the Tank Man in the iconic photo from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests remains unknown and was possibly killed.

The US first hosted the World Cup in 1994, a tournament that lives in soccer infamy for its poor planning and the murder of Colombian player Andres Escobar, who'd accidentally scored on his own net.

The rivalry between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson centered on federalism—the question of how much power the federal government should hold relative to the states.

Discover the catastrophic consequences of a failure of the US electrical grid—something that is more likely than many Americans think.

The US dollar is the most widely circulated currency in the world, and is involved in nearly 90% of global transactions

In 2009, the nation was gripped by the story of a missing young boy who was believed to be floating over Colorado in a homemade balloon, until it was revealed that he was at home the whole time.

American short story writer Flannery O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became potent symbols for her fiction's elegant violence

'Saturday Night Fever,' the 1977 film that introduced disco to the mainstream, was based on a fabricated magazine story.

Many legends about George Washington, including his supposed wooden teeth and the story of cutting down the cherry tree, lack evidence.

During the French Revolution, a botanist's letter asking about "dear Rhus" (poison ivy) was intercepted, leading authorities to suspect he was conspiring with the Russians.

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

Chaos theory—informally known as the butterfly effect—is the reason why weather forecasts are presented with probabilities rather than certainties.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps is independent of Iran's regular army and is one of the most powerful and influential military-political organizations in the Middle East.

Against his wishes, Albert Einstein's brain was removed before his cremation, and the pathologist responsible stored it for decades in mason jars within a beer cooler.

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.

Sunflowers have long been a symbol of nuclear disarmament because they can extract large amounts of radioactive cesium from soil.

Animal phobias are likely the most common type of phobias, followed by an extreme fear of heights.

Shooting stars, or meteors, are fragments of asteroids and comets that burn up as they enter Earth's atmosphere, creating streaks in the sky called meteor showers.