On this day in conspiracies

After seventeen years, the FBI closes its investigation. It concludes, on circumstantial evidence and expert opinion about the bay's cold water and strong currents, that the three men most likely drowned. The active fugitive warrants pass to the U.S. Marshals Service, which does not treat the men as dead.

A widely cited early sighting over the Kent, New York area on New Year's Eve helps kick off the wave that residents would soon nickname the "Westchester Boomerang."

The end of the world that leaders had tied to the new millennium does not come. The failure of the prophecy shakes the community, and some members, having given up everything they owned, reportedly begin to demand the return of their money and possessions.

Rather than flee, the intruder stays in the house for hours. Forensic reconstruction indicates he treated his hand wound, ate ice cream and food from the kitchen, drank barley tea, used the family's first-floor computer to access the internet in the early hours, and used the toilet without flushing. He may have rested on a sofa.

The version that goes on to travel furthest is posted to Instagram on New Year's Eve, laying out the detailed claims about what NASA supposedly knew and had planned for the August event. Snopes, tracing the rumor back, found the account was deleted within days of the post. The claim kept spreading without it, which is the ordinary pattern: once a hoax is copied, the original poster becomes irrelevant to its momentum.

The feature-length finale, titled 'The Rightside Up,' debuts on New Year's Eve (January 1, 2026 in some regions). Reaction is sharply split, with a vocal share of fans calling the ending rushed, tidy, or unsatisfying.