On this day in conspiracies

Syndicated columnist Dorothy Thompson, in her 'On the Record' column, treats the episode as proof of how easily propaganda could stampede a public, elevating a night of scattered alarm into a grand lesson about mass delusion, and helping fix the panic frame in elite opinion.

Around 11 p.m., near Levelland in Hockley County, Texas, Pedro Saucedo and Joe Salaz phone the police station. They tell the night-desk officer, A. J. Fowler, that a blue flash and a glowing, rocket or torpedo-shaped object rose up near their truck about four miles west of town, and that the truck's engine and lights died as it passed close overhead before recovering.

In the evening, sixteen-year-old Ronald Johnson is tending sheep with his dog on his family's farm near Delphos, in Ottawa County, Kansas. He reports a mushroom-shaped object, glowing and covered in multicolored light, hovering low over a grove of trees roughly twenty-five yards away, giving off a low sound. It brightens sharply at the base and rises away at an angle, and he says the glare leaves him briefly unable to see clearly.

A user named TimeTravel_0 begins posting on the Time Travel Institute forums, discussing the theory and mechanics of time travel. At this stage the posts make no dramatic predictions and do not use the name John Titor.

A decapitated body is discovered in woodland near Tarashcha, roughly 100 kilometres south of Kyiv. Relatives later identify it by jewellery and old injuries; a formal identification of Gongadze drags on for years amid contradictory statements from the authorities.

Hundreds of QAnon believers gather at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, the site of President Kennedy's 1963 assassination, expecting John F. Kennedy Jr. (and in some tellings his father) to appear and announce Donald Trump's reinstatement. No one appears; a committed remnant lingers in Dallas for weeks afterward.

The UN Security Council rejects a Russian draft resolution to investigate the biolab allegations under the Biological Weapons Convention. Only China joins Russia in voting yes; France, the UK, and the US vote no, and ten members abstain, well short of the nine votes needed.