On this day in conspiracies

Earhart and Noonan, on the next-to-last leg of a round-the-world flight, vanish en route from Lae, New Guinea to tiny Howland Island in the central Pacific.

Mary Reeser, 67, is found in her St. Petersburg, Florida apartment reduced almost entirely to ashes in her armchair, with part of her spine, her skull, and one slippered foot remaining, while much of the room is only lightly damaged. The case becomes the most famous American example of alleged SHC.

George is convicted of murder at the Old Bailey and sentenced to life imprisonment. The prosecution leans heavily on a single microscopic particle of firearms-discharge residue found in a coat pocket, said to link him to the shooting.

The NTSB denies a petition to reopen the investigation, finding that the petitioners' radar analysis was flawed and that none of the physical evidence supports the theory that the streak of light was a missile.

The FBI arrests Maxwell in New Hampshire. She is charged in the Southern District of New York with conspiracy and enticement offenses tied to Epstein's abuse of minors, and is held without bail after judges rule she is a flight risk.

In the afternoon, Rainmaker Technology, a California-based cloud-seeding company, seeds two small clouds near Runge, in south-central Texas, roughly 150 miles south of Kerr County. The team disperses a small quantity of silver iodide (reported at about 70 grams) as part of a contracted effort to boost water supplies. Its meteorologist notes moisture flowing in from the Gulf, and the company suspends operations. The seeded clouds dissipate within hours.

The jury returns a split verdict. It acquits Combs of racketeering conspiracy and of both counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion, and convicts him on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution under the Mann Act. No other person is charged as a participant.

The IAU Minor Planet Center announces the object as interstellar in electronic circular MPEC 2025-N12, giving it the designation 3I/ATLAS (and the cometary name C/2025 N1). It is the third confirmed interstellar object, after 1I/ʻOumuamua in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2019.

The department defends its handling to the court, saying that releasing the material it has withheld, reported at roughly 2.5 million further pages, would harm victims and the government, and offering instead to let the judge review additional records privately, in camera. No verified 'client list' has emerged from anything released, while the dispute over the withheld pages and the redactions keeps the process questions at the center of the story open.

The World Health Organization declares the outbreak over in a Disease Outbreak News notice, having found a limited cluster consistent with the known biology of Andes hantavirus and no evidence of engineering or staging.

AAP FactCheck and outlets including Forbes address the HAARP claims directly, quoting seismologists that no one can intentionally create a large earthquake and that induced quakes do not exceed roughly the mid-5 magnitude range, far below Venezuela's 7.2 and 7.5.