On this day in conspiracies

Eleven-year-old Mary Ramey is killed; her mother, Rebecca Ramey, is attacked but survives. The death of a child intensifies public fear and pressure on the authorities.

The last total solar eclipse to cross mainland Spain sweeps over the country. More than a century will pass before totality returns to Spanish soil, a gap that helps make the 2026 event feel momentous when it is rediscovered in the run-up.

Franciszek Honiok, a 43-year-old Silesian farmer known for pro-Polish sympathies, is arrested by the Gestapo. He is selected to be the planted 'dead saboteur' at the Gleiwitz radio station.

Furuhata and other forensic experts are called to testify before the Committee on Judicial Affairs of the Diet's House of Representatives, pulling the dispute into national politics. The Mitaka rail incident (15 July) and the Matsukawa derailment (17 August) that summer deepen the sense of a country gripped by rail mysteries.

Carl Hart Jr., a Texas Tech freshman, sees the lights from his backyard, fetches a 35mm Kodak camera, and captures five photographs of a V-shaped formation of glowing dots against the night sky.

He freezes again, this time at an event in Kentucky, unable to answer a reporter's question. Calls for a fuller medical explanation grow louder.

On the eve of the massacre's centenary, Japan's chief cabinet secretary Hirokazu Matsuno says the government has found no records that allow it to state that the killings took place, drawing criticism that a century on the state is still declining to acknowledge an atrocity that is thoroughly documented.