On this day in conspiracies

Shipmaster Solomon Allen III observes the animal over parts of several days, estimating a length of eighty to ninety feet and a head somewhere between a rattlesnake and a horse. Sightings multiply across the harbor and along the shore.

Lord Castlereagh, having risen to Foreign Secretary and a central role in the coalition against Napoleon, dies by suicide amid a severe decline in his health. Believers read his career and sudden end as the omen fulfilled: the rise to power, then the violent death.

The 'Monster with 21 Faces' mails a final letter mocking the dead superintendent and announcing it will stop 'torturing food-making companies.' After this, the group is never heard from again. The kidnapping statute of limitations expires in 1995, and the last count, for the poisonings, expires in February 2000 with no arrests.

During a large Northern Fleet exercise in the Barents Sea, two explosions strike the Kursk about two minutes apart. Seismic arrays across northern Europe, including Norway's NORSAR, record the events; the second registers around magnitude 4.2. The submarine sinks to the seabed at roughly 108 metres. Naval command loses contact.

A catastrophic explosion tears through a chemical warehouse in the port of Tianjin, China, an event covered worldwide at the time, including by the BBC. The dramatic fireball clip will later be recycled as “live” footage of several unrelated conflicts.

Two days after Epstein is found dead in his New York jail cell, FBI agents raid Little Saint James by boat and helicopter, executing search warrants and seizing computers, documents, and other physical evidence as part of the ongoing federal investigation.

The only real astronomical event dated to August 12, 2026 is a total solar eclipse visible from parts of Europe and the Arctic, an ordinary, predicted alignment of the Moon between Earth and Sun that does nothing to Earth's gravity.