Was author Stephen King responsible for John Lennon’s death? Do bar codes signify the end of times by using the number 666? Did Jesuits sink the Titanic because they wanted to eliminate wealthy Jews?
There isn’t anything like a good conspiracy theory and here are some of the oddest ever to be compiled. What is our government hiding? If you are a history buff, it goes back for decades. The idea that secret actions of leaders to control a society or a situation is as old as time. We do not trust, so we look for alternative reasons when it doesn’t appear that things add up.
Of my favorite conspiracy theories, and as a former news director at a radio station, one of the best of all time was Orson Welles brilliant radio broadcast of H.G. Wells “War of the Worlds” where listeners truly believed that aliens were attacking Los Angeles. But many believe that it was a controlled psychological experiment that studied how the masses would deal with fear. And fearful they were when they heard the faux newscast. Was the government gaging the listeners terror of alien annihilation? Not a bad theory but most likely it was just a clever publicity stunt that had an unusual, and somewhat tragic, reaction.
The thing about a conspiracy theory is that it has to be plausible enough, to have enough truth combined with nagging doubt, to work. Oddorama breaks seven of them down but there are many more that linger through the ages. And with the development of new media, (such as blogging and instant gratification of digital technology) the issue of conspiracies is even more rampant. The mystery, let’s say of the assassination and following events that followed John F. Kennedy’s death, works its way through our minds like an ear-worm.
And the fact that sometimes the myth of an alleged conspiracy becomes more relevant than the truth blurring the reality. For historians who deal in facts, I’m sure this is not an easy task to decipher what is real.
And what is not.
