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From shadowy assassins to extraterrestrial encounters, history's most contentious moments have sparked endless speculation. Join us as we explore the historical events that have generated the wildest conspiracy theories! Our countdown includes mysterious deaths, unexplained disappearances, and global tragedies that left people demanding answers beyond the official narratives.
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00:00There's nothing more to believe in.
00:02You want to blow this whole thing wide open?
00:05God knows what it might do to everybody.
00:07Welcome to WatchMojo, and today, we're counting down our picks for the moments in history
00:12that inspired the most fringe beliefs and off-the-wall explanations.
00:16It's almost spiritual.
00:18There's a lot of research to be done.
00:19There's not just Roswell, there's lots of UFO events.
00:22There's, you know, lots of witnesses that you can make your own decision on.
00:26This is just one event.
00:27Number 10. Sinking of the Titanic.
00:41Possibly the most famous marine disaster in history,
00:44the sinking of this luxurious ship has sparked many bizarre theories over the years.
00:49Some believe that the Titanic was intentionally sunk by either J.P. Morgan or the Rothschilds using explosives.
00:56Their motivation was supposedly to kill off rich people who opposed the establishment of the Federal Reserve.
01:02Over 50, mostly first-class passengers, cancelled their passages on the Titanic at the last minute.
01:08Many of them close friends and business associates of J.P. Morgan.
01:11Others say it was actually Titanic's sister ship, the Olympic, that sank.
01:15But the owners claimed it was the Titanic to cash in on an insurance scam.
01:20Still others, including the Washington Post, have suggested that a mummy's curse caused the ship to sink.
01:26None of these ideas have stood up to scrutiny.
01:28There were 20 boats floating nearby.
01:32And only one came back.
01:36One.
01:37Number 9. Disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
01:41The aircraft was continuing to signal a request for service, not for minutes up to the loss,
01:48but for over seven hours after it had disappeared from the radar system.
01:53In 2014, this plane vanished with 239 people on board, while on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
02:00Theorists have blamed different governments and intelligence agencies, including China, Russia, and the US,
02:06for hijacking the plane to get their hands on valuable cargo, or bring supposed Chinese hackers to justice.
02:13It's like the criminalization of aircraft accidents.
02:15It detracts from aviation safety overall.
02:18And it's a noise that you don't need when you are dealing with families of victims.
02:23Absolutely. And that's part of the problem.
02:26Others have suggested that the disappearance was part of a terrorist attack that was covered up.
02:31More outlandish ideas include alien abduction, or the plane being hidden in remote locations like the Taklamakan Desert or even North Korea.
02:40The lack of evidence and real answers has turned Flight MH370 into a hotbed of speculation.
02:46What kind of catastrophe could shut down the plane's communications, but still have allowed it to fly?
02:53Anybody that chooses to hang their hat on one scenario or the other, in my view, is heading for a fall.
03:04Number 8. The AIDS Crisis
03:06Paranoia was running rampant. The media was doing a sensationalist number.
03:12People were running scared, including many health professionals.
03:15When this devastating disease turned into an epidemic in the 1980s, theories about its origins immediately took off.
03:21A shocking number of people believed that it was created in a lab in order to reduce or eliminate members of marginalized groups, including Black, Latino, or gay communities.
03:31The first thing that goes through my mind is, you should not be positive.
03:36And young men should not be leaving this planet with AIDS, with this disease.
03:43Others thought it was intended as a means of broader population control.
03:47The KGB spread propaganda, claiming that the U.S. created AIDS as a bioweapon.
03:53At the time, many leaders were accused of ignoring the crisis because it was deemed a gay disease.
03:58By AIDS!
03:59President Reagan didn't give his first major speech on AIDS until 1987, six years after the first diagnosed case.
04:06Many people still believe that HIV doesn't cause AIDS, with some arguing that vaccines are the real cause.
04:13If all of this sounds familiar, it's probably because many of these exact conspiracy theories have sprung up around COVID-19.
04:20Sometimes, a comforting lie is easier to face than a scary truth.
04:24The pandemic has galvanized an army of conspiracy theorists, from anti-vaxxers to anarchists, the far left to the far right,
04:33new agers to religious hardliners, and everything in between.
04:37Number 7. Death of Marilyn Monroe.
04:40There was no declaration of a crime scene.
04:43There was no preservation of all of the evidence within the residence.
04:49The famously troubled star had a history of substance use disorder, and her death in 1962 was caused by an overdose.
04:56That didn't stop people from spreading rumors that she'd actually been murdered, or at least, that her real cause of death was covered up.
05:02It was believed that she'd had an affair with one or both of the Kennedy brothers, and that one of them, or the CIA, had had her killed.
05:10According to the forensic people who I have talked with, they said that those injection marks should have shown up somewhere.
05:17Some propose that she died as a result of medical malpractice, and that her own doctors have covered it up.
05:23Sudden celebrity deaths always seem to fuel conspiracy theories.
05:26I hate to be really speculative here, but you can't get too far in the landscape of this case without running into the name Kennedy.
05:34And I think there's absolutely no doubt at all that the Kennedy brothers were having sexual relations with Marilyn Monroe.
05:42When Princess Diana died in a car crash, there was immediate speculation that she'd been murdered by MI6, or even by Prince Charles.
05:49She said, on m'a prévenu, on veut me faire assassiner dans un accident de voiture.
05:57Number six, the pyramids.
05:59While flying above the Giza Plateau, a British Air Force pilot photographs one of the most amazing features of the Great Pyramid.
06:08The structure actually has eight sides instead of four.
06:12Thanks to the so-called History Channel, you've probably heard the theory that various ancient civilizations were visited by aliens, and that they helped the Egyptians build the pyramids.
06:22But that's just one fringe hypothesis connected to these incredible structures.
06:26Some people have claimed that the Egyptians must have had access to some advanced technology, possibly provided by a lost civilization like Atlantis.
06:34In the Great Pyramid, the blocks of the burial chamber fit precisely.
06:38The sides of these blocks had to be almost perfectly flat to make these astonishing joins.
06:46The really out-there theories say that they used magic to build the pyramids.
06:49Proponents of pseudoscience have also latched on to these monuments, claiming that they have special cosmological or numerical significance,
06:57or even that they harness energy or cosmic vibrations.
07:00You have a civilization that's around for about 2,000 years, yet they only spent about 300 to 400 years designing these magnificent structures.
07:08So among the many mysteries surrounding the pyramids, one important question is, why did they stop being built?
07:16Number 5.
07:17Hitler's death.
07:18There had to be a Hitler legacy.
07:19If Hitler wasn't going to survive the war, he needed to sort of martyr himself for the Nazi cause.
07:25On April 30th, 1945, when it became clear that the Allies were going to win the war and the downfall of Nazi Germany was inevitable,
07:32Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun, took their own lives.
07:35But rumors immediately began swirling that he was still alive, thanks in part to the Soviet Union.
07:41In June of 1945, Joseph Stalin ordered his military leaders to spread the claim that Hitler had actually escaped Germany alive.
07:49When Stathenberg returns, when he gives me confirmation that Hitler is dead, then we'll proceed.
07:55Some said he was living in South America or Europe, or even a secret Nazi base in Antarctica.
08:00Then there are those who said that he died long before the war ended, and Nazi leaders replaced him with a body double.
08:06Number 4.
08:18Roswell Crash.
08:20Hey, what have you got?
08:21This was found at the site, but it's locked.
08:23Okay, let me see that, please.
08:29Doug, what is that?
08:31I don't know, yet.
08:32Most people know that the town of Roswell, New Mexico, is associated with numerous conspiracy theories about aliens.
08:39But you might not know that the U.S. military is to blame.
08:42In the summer of 1947, Americans became obsessed with flying saucers.
08:46It started with a pilot who claimed he saw nine shiny disks flying near Mount Rainier.
08:51We have researched our records extensively, and on that specific date and time, and even that month, we had nothing that could conceivably be within that area.
09:02We had been launching some balloons, but nothing in that particular month when the crash at Roswell occurred.
09:09At this time, the U.S. had thousands of secret spy balloons circulating to detect Soviet nuclear tests.
09:15When one crashed near Roswell, the military initially announced that it was a flying disk, causing a media frenzy.
09:22Then they retracted this statement and said the debris was from a weather balloon.
09:26Of course, this led many people to believe the government was hiding evidence of aliens.
09:30There are many theories on what happened on that July morning in 1947, but seeing this wreckage site was an unforgettable moment for visitors.
09:38Number three, moon landing.
09:39The greatest achievement in human history, and of the man whose first step echoed around the world, dawning a new age of scientific enlightenment, there is only one full-body picture of him on the moon, besides this ghostly reflection.
09:53The belief that humans have never actually landed on the moon mainly stems from a 1976 book, self-published by former U.S. naval officer Bill Kaysing.
10:02It was expanded in 1980 by the Flat Earth Society, which introduced the idea that Hollywood elites, funded by Disney, including director Stanley Kubrick, faked the videos of the moon landings.
10:13Just go to any Apollo site and look and you'll see that they have to hide the bottom of the screen, and you can always see the set screen separation line in every Apollo footage, every Apollo image, and the video footage that has a background.
10:32The motivations for the supposed hoax vary, from beating the USSR in the space race, to distracting the public from the Vietnam War.
10:40Considering that more than 400,000 people worked on the Apollo program over the course of 10 years, it would probably be impossible to keep it a secret if the landings actually were staged.
10:50Oh, the marvels of American science. Here we are, millions of miles from Earth. We can still send out for pizza.
11:00Number two, 9-11.
11:02It's a different kind of detonation. They would not leave detonator cords and devices as they do in traditional, more economical detonations. This is a very different kind of operation.
11:15Did Bush know about the September 11th terrorist attacks before they happened? Was it an inside job? Was the Pentagon actually hit by a missile, not a plane? These are just a few of the many, many conspiracy theories surrounding this massive tragedy.
11:29Was September 11th a surprise attack on America by 19 Islamic terrorists?
11:33Some people think the buildings were brought down by controlled demolitions, and the planes were just a cover-up, or there weren't actually any planes involved at all.
11:48Others claim that the attacks were real, but they weren't perpetrated by Al-Qaeda, and that the Israeli government, or some other country, is responsible.
11:55You can live with the stress, or you reform the narrative.
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12:16Number one, assassination of John F. Kennedy.
12:21What's wrong, dude?
12:22Boss, the president's been shot in Dallas five minutes ago.
12:29Oh, no.
12:30Maybe the CIA killed JFK.
12:32Maybe it was the Mafia, or Cubans, or even the Vice President.
12:36Maybe Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy who took the fall for someone else.
12:40Or perhaps he really did shoot the president, but someone put him up to it.
12:43There might have been a second gunman on the grassy knoll.
12:46George H.W. Bush could have had something to do with it.
12:49Or the government of Israel, or Russia.
12:51Heck, maybe even Ted Cruz's dad did it.
12:54He wasn't interested in the bigger picture questions about who was involved.
12:59Was it the CIA?
12:59Was it the Mafia?
13:01Thompson was exclusively focused on how many shots were fired, and what did those shots do.
13:06There are so many theories surrounding the assassination of the 35th president, we can't even begin to list them all.
13:12Most can easily be debunked.
13:13But that doesn't stop people from speculating about it more than 60 years later.
13:17President Kennedy and Governor John Connolly have been cut down by assassins' bullets in downtown Dallas.
13:23They were riding an open automobile when the shots were fired.
13:26The president, his limp body, carried in the arms of his wife, Jacqueline, has rushed to Parkland Hospital.
13:30Do you believe any of these conspiracy theories, or are they all ridiculous?
13:35Let us know in the comments below.
13:37The president and his wife and party are going to be visible all through Dallas.
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