On this day in conspiracies

On Friday 13 October, acting on secret royal orders, King Philip IV of France has the Templars across his kingdom arrested simultaneously, including the grand master Jacques de Molay. Deeply in debt to the order and eager to seize its assets, Philip charges the knights with heresy, denying Christ, idol worship, and other crimes. Many confess under torture and later recant.

The astronomer and former Project Blue Book consultant J. Allen Hynek and the engineer James Harder, of the civilian group APRO, travel to Pascagoula and interview the men, partly under hypnosis. Both tell the press the men are sincere and the case is credible and puzzling, basing that on demeanor and consistency rather than any physical trace.

The Coard faction, commanding a majority on the Central Committee, places Bishop under house arrest and takes control of the government.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration clears the VeriChip, the first implantable human RFID microchip, for medical-record use. A rice-grain-sized chip implanted under the skin gives the tech-is-the-mark reading its most literal target yet. Adoption stays minimal and the product is later discontinued, but the image of a subdermal chip endures.

The Dutch Safety Board publishes its final report: MH17 was destroyed by a Buk 9M38-series missile with a 9N314M warhead that detonated just outside and above the left of the cockpit, causing an in-flight break-up. The Board explicitly excludes a bomb, technical failure, a meteor, and an air-to-air attack.