On this day in conspiracies

White finally lands back on Roanoke Island, on what would have been his granddaughter Virginia Dare's third birthday, and finds the settlement dismantled and deserted, with no bodies and no sign of a fight.

The Linnaean Society of New England, meeting in Boston, appoints a committee that includes Judge John Davis, physician Jacob Bigelow, and Francis C. Gray to collect evidence. A questionnaire is drawn up, and Justice of the Peace Lonson Nash of Gloucester administers sworn depositions from local witnesses.

In Munich, Rudolf von Sebottendorff, an occultist and head of the Bavarian branch of a schismatic offshoot of the Germanenorden, formally dedicates his lodge under the public cover name Thule Society, folding in a study group associated with Walter Nauhaus. The name Thule invokes a mythical far-northern Aryan homeland.

In the early morning, Ness leads a large police raid on the shantytowns of Kingsbury Run and the surrounding flats, detaining dozens of men and ordering the shacks burned. The raid is widely criticized then and since, and no killer is caught.

A Japanese Mitsubishi Ki-21 bomber carrying Bose crashes on take-off from Taihoku (Taipei) airfield in Japanese-held Taiwan. According to survivors and Japanese authorities, Bose, drenched in leaking fuel that caught fire, suffers severe burns and dies that evening at the Nanmon military hospital. Japanese Lieutenant General Tsunamasa Shidei is also killed.

Biko is stopped at a police roadblock near Grahamstown and detained under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act, which permitted indefinite detention without charge or access to a lawyer. He is taken to Security Branch offices in Port Elizabeth and held, largely naked and at times shackled, in a room later known in the case as room 619.

A private funeral is held at Graceland; thousands of fans file past the open casket and line the streets for the procession to Forest Hill Cemetery.

The San Jose Mercury News publishes the first installment of Gary Webb's Dark Alliance. Over three days it links the Blandon-Meneses ring and Ross to the crack trade and to Contra fundraising, and raises the CIA's proximity to the players. An accompanying website posts source documents, an unusual move for the era.

Gary Webb's three-part Dark Alliance series runs in the San Jose Mercury News, tying a Nicaraguan-supplied cocaine pipeline in Los Angeles to the Contras and to the CIA's tolerance of it. Published online, it becomes one of the first viral investigative stories.

The STL Trial Chamber delivers its judgment: it convicts Salim Ayyash of co-perpetrating the attack and acquits Merhi, Oneissi, and Sabra. The judges state they found no evidence that Hezbollah's leadership was involved and no direct evidence of Syrian government involvement, while noting Syria and Hezbollah may have had motives.

A Mexican federal Truth Commission (COVAJ) publishes its report, describing the disappearance as a 'state crime' and pointing to the involvement of authorities, including military elements, and to the fabrication of the historic truth. The former attorney general is arrested the following day on charges connected to the case.