On this day in conspiracies

During the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, Red forces who had raided the society's rooms execute seven Thule-linked hostages, among them the secretary Countess Heila von Westarp and Prince Gustav of Thurn and Taxis. The killings, the Münchner Geiselmorde, are seized on as anti-communist and antisemitic propaganda.

The submarine HMS Seraph releases the body, wearing a life jacket with the briefcase attached, into the sea off Huelva on Spain's southern coast, a location chosen because a pro-German Abwehr agent operated there. A local fisherman recovers the body.

The National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), which had been cooperating with the study, severs its ties. Its director, Donald Keyhoe, circulates copies of the Low memo, framing the project as a foregone conclusion dressed up as science.

The ISU announces that Le Gougne and French federation president Didier Gailhaguet are each suspended for three years and barred from any role at the 2006 Turin Olympics. Le Gougne is sanctioned for misconduct and for failing to report the pressure she said she had received.

Joshua Dean, 45 and reported to have been in good health, dies in a Wichita hospital after about two weeks of illness. He had tested positive for influenza B and MRSA and had developed pneumonia. Coverage everywhere notes he is the second Boeing-linked whistleblower to die in two months.

CNN traces how the story traveled from fringe forums to the White House press pool in a matter of weeks, and skeptics and sociologists weigh in describing the pattern as an artifact of selective list-making rather than evidence of a plot.