On this day in conspiracies

Identical advertisements for the mermaid appear across the New York papers. Tellingly, the printed images show alluring, human-figured mermaids, nothing like the small, blackened, contorted object on display.

French investigating magistrate Claudine Forkel rules the case not prosecutable, finding insufficient evidence to charge anyone. The judicial file is effectively frozen, and the formal docket is later closed by 2002 after a decade with no new evidence.

TWA Flight 800, a Boeing 747-100 flying from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Paris, explodes in mid-air about twelve minutes after takeoff and crashes into the Atlantic near East Moriches, Long Island. All 230 people aboard, 212 passengers and 18 crew, are killed.

When the flight fails to arrive, a Coast Guard and Navy search begins along the intended route. Luggage, aircraft fragments, and personal effects wash ashore or are spotted on the water over the following days as the search narrows to the seabed off the Vineyard.

On the afternoon of 17 July, Kelly leaves his home in Southmoor, Oxfordshire, for one of his customary walks. When he does not return that evening, his family reports him missing and a search begins overnight.

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, a Boeing 777 en route from Amsterdam Schiphol to Kuala Lumpur, disappears from radar and crashes in fields near Hrabove in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, an area held by pro-Russian separatists. All 298 people on board, 283 passengers and 15 crew, are killed; 196 are Dutch nationals.

David Auerbach’s Slate article, “Roko’s Basilisk: The most terrifying thought experiment of all time,” brings the story to a mass audience and cements the framing of the Basilisk as an object of dread, while also explaining why the argument does not hold up.

The European Court of Human Rights, in Mazepa and Others v. Russia, rules that while Russia convicted the men who carried out the killing, it violated the procedural limb of the right to life by failing to take adequate steps to identify who commissioned the murder, and awards the family damages.

The House passes the GENIUS Act 308–122. In the same stretch it passes the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act (H.R.1919) by 219–210, a bill written to forbid the Federal Reserve from issuing a CBDC directly or indirectly, from offering retail accounts, and from using a CBDC for monetary policy.

The Odyssey opens in theaters in the United States and much of the world. It earns an A CinemaScore from opening-night audiences and critic scores in the mid-to-high 90s on Rotten Tomatoes.

FactCheck.org publishes 'RFK Jr.'s Flawed Claims About Sperm Count and Fertility,' concluding he baselessly tied disputed sperm-count data to a fertility crisis, that evidence on trends is mixed, and that falling US births have more plausible social and behavioral explanations.