On this day in conspiracies

Lincoln dies at 7:22 a.m. in a boarding house across from the theatre. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, at the bedside, takes effective charge of the manhunt and the investigation, coordinating the pursuit of Booth and the roundup of suspects. His central role later becomes the seed of the theory that he engineered the killing.

The spent third stage of the Apollo 13 Saturn V is steered into the Moon as a calibrated seismic experiment. Its signal is detected for roughly three hours. At briefings, scientists reach for a vivid image: the Moon, they say, rang “like a bell.” The metaphor, meant to describe unusually low seismic damping, is quickly repurposed as evidence of a hollow interior.

The Kaz II, a 9.8-metre Kingcat catamaran, departs Airlie Beach in Queensland bound for Townsville, the first leg of a planned delivery voyage around northern Australia to the crew's home state of Western Australia. Aboard are three retired men from Perth: skipper Derek 'Des' Batten (56) and brothers Peter and James Tunstead (aged 69 and 63).

The United Nations Commission of Inquiry, led by Chilean diplomat Heraldo Muñoz, delivers its report. It finds that Bhutto’s security was “fatally insufficient and ineffective,” that her death could have been prevented, and that the investigation was prejudiced and hampered by intelligence agencies. It reaches no conclusion on who organized or sponsored the attack.

A digitally rendered likeness of Tupac performs at the Coachella festival, roughly fifteen years after his death. The lifelike “hologram” briefly reignites the alive rumor even though it is an openly announced visual effect.

The first total lunar eclipse of the tetrad occurs, on the night of Passover. It is visible from the Americas but not from Israel. The prophecy's clock is now formally running.

A backlash builds fast, but the loudest early criticism is about optics: that an eleven-minute joyride by celebrities and a billionaire's fiancee was being sold as a feminist milestone. Public figures mock the spectacle and its tone-deaf timing. This is aesthetic and political criticism, not a claim that the flight was faked.