On this day in conspiracies

The first widely recorded fatal attack: Jeanne Boulet, a fourteen-year-old shepherdess, is killed near Saint-Étienne-de-Lugdarès in the Gévaudan. Deadly attacks on people herding cattle and sheep multiply through the summer and autumn.

A small asteroid, probably around 50 to 60 meters across, explodes in an airburst over Tunguska in Siberia, flattening roughly 2,000 square kilometers of forest. It is the largest impact event of the modern era and a real reference point for what a small body can do; no crater is left, and no one is hiding it.

At roughly 7:14 a.m. local time, an enormous airborne explosion occurs over the Podkamennaya (Stony) Tunguska River basin in central Siberia. Witnesses up to 100 km away report a fireball brighter than the sun, a shockwave that knocked people off their feet, and heat strong enough to be felt on exposed skin.

The Supreme Court rules 6–3 in New York Times Co. v. United States that the government failed to justify the injunction; publication resumes immediately.

Epstein pleads guilty in Palm Beach County state court to felony solicitation of prostitution and procuring a person under 18 for prostitution. He is sentenced to 18 months and registers as a sex offender. His victims are not notified in advance of the plea.

PolitiFact publishes a Spanish-language version as the same clips spread across Latin American feeds. Fact-checkers document that several 'collapse' videos are AI-generated and others are years-old footage from Turkey and from a 2021 Caracas metro incident.