On this day in conspiracies

The Lord Mayor of London, Sir John Cowan, reads out at a public Mansion House session an anonymous letter signed by a 'resident of Peckham', alleging that a group of pranksters had wagered to terrify villages disguised as a ghost, a bear, and a devil. The Times reports it, and the story goes national.

Nicolai reports the sighting and local gendarmes visit the site the next day. They interview him, photograph the scene, note two roughly concentric circular impressions in the soil, and collect soil and plant samples from the marked area. The gendarmerie report is forwarded to GEPAN.

Satoshi releases version 0.1 of the Bitcoin software on SourceForge. A few days later Hal Finney, an early cryptographer and contributor, receives the first-ever Bitcoin transaction, ten coins sent from Satoshi.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says intelligence indicates the plane was downed by a surface-to-air missile, possibly unintentionally; the United States and United Kingdom reach the same assessment.

CPSC Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. tells Bloomberg that gas stoves are a 'hidden hazard' and that 'any option is on the table,' including a ban on products that 'can't be made safe.' The remark, about potential future regulation of new products, is quickly compressed online into 'the government is banning gas stoves.'

On Fox News, host Jesse Watters airs a segment musing that Swift might be a Pentagon “psyop” asset, citing a since-mischaracterized reference to a NATO panel discussion about influence and no actual evidence. The clip circulates widely and gives the idea a national platform.

The episode is cited as a benchmark case. In an NBC News report on what experts describe as a collapse of trust online, the Ukrainian surrender videos are listed among the AI fabrications that had fooled officials, alongside AI-generated material around the US operation in Venezuela and AI-generated evidence reaching courtrooms.