On this day in conspiracies

Jane Alsop reports that a cloaked man called at her father's house in Bow claiming to be a policeman who had caught Spring-heeled Jack; when she brought a candle he threw off the cloak, vomited blue and white flame, showed eyes like 'red balls of fire', and tore at her dress with claws she believed were metallic. The account becomes the defining description.

A Moscow jury acquits three defendants, including two of the Makhmudov brothers and a former police officer, for lack of evidence, in a trial widely criticized as flawed. The Supreme Court later overturns the acquittals and orders the case retried; the accused gunman, Rustam Makhmudov, is still at large.

The Justice Department, FBI, and US Postal Inspection Service formally close the Amerithrax investigation and release a 92-page Investigative Summary laying out the circumstantial case that Ivins acted alone.

A maintenance worker, sent to investigate guest complaints of low water pressure and discolored water, climbs to the roof and finds Lam's body in one of the hotel's large rooftop water tanks. She had been dead for days.

Brunel, 75, is found hanged with bedsheets in his cell at La Sante at around 1:30 a.m. Prosecutors open the routine inquiry into a death in custody. His lawyers say his decision was driven not by guilt but by a sense of injustice over his conditions of detention. The parallel to Epstein's 2019 death is drawn immediately.

Public messaging promoting vitamin A as a measles treatment begins to circulate widely; researchers later flag this date as the start of the surge in interest. In late February, US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. publicly discusses vitamin A in the context of the outbreak, which is widely covered and amplifies the idea that supplements are a front-line answer to measles.

New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez formally reopens a criminal investigation into Epstein's activities in the state, centered on Zorro Ranch, after new tips and the release of federal files renew scrutiny.