On this day in conspiracies

A violent storm of rain, thunder and lightning strikes the market town of Bungay on the Norfolk and Suffolk border. According to the story that grows around the day, a black dog runs the length of St Mary's Church, passes between two kneeling worshippers and kills them, and scorches a third who survives.

On a hot Thursday morning in Fall River, Abby Borden is killed in an upstairs guest room and, roughly ninety minutes later, Andrew Borden is killed on the sitting-room sofa, both by repeated blows from a hatchet or similar blade. Lizzie Borden reports finding her father's body and calls for the maid, Bridget Sullivan.

In heavy weather, the Maddox and USS Turner Joy report radar and sonar contacts they believe are a second torpedo-boat attack. No physical evidence (wreckage, bodies, or debris) is ever recovered.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono issues the Kono Statement. After a government study, Japan acknowledges that comfort stations were operated with military involvement, that women were recruited in many cases against their will “through coaxing, coercion, etc.,” and that this gravely injured their honor and dignity, and extends apologies.

Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh submits his final report, concluding senior officials had violated the law and that a cover-up had reached the cabinet level.

A coronial inquest opens in the Townsville Coroner's Court before Queensland State Coroner Michael Barnes, tasked with determining whether the men were dead, how they died, and whether the search had been adequate. It hears from 27 witnesses over four days.

At 6:08 p.m. a fire in Hangar 12 sets off the ammonium nitrate. The explosion, estimated at around 1.1 kilotons of TNT equivalent, kills at least 218 people, injures more than 7,000, displaces some 300,000, and causes billions of dollars in damage across Beirut.