The Conspiratory

The archive, day by day

On this day in conspiracies

The dated turning points behind the case files: assassinations, crashes, leaks, votes, and the moments a theory was born, each drawn straight from a file's sourced timeline. We only place an entry on a day the record actually names.

  1. 1912
    Villisca axe murdersUnsolved Crimes & Disappearances

    On Sunday evening the Moores attend the Children's Day program at the Presbyterian church, an event Sarah Moore had helped organize. Their daughter Katherine invites two friends, sisters Lena (12) and Ina (8) Stillinger, to sleep over. The program ends around 9:30 p.m. and the group walks back to the Moore house.

  2. 1946
    Ananda Mahidol's deathUnsolved Crimes & Disappearances

    At about 9:20 in the morning, the king is found shot dead in his bed in the Boromphiman Throne Hall inside the Grand Palace, killed by a single bullet to the forehead. His U.S. Army Colt pistol lies beside him. A first official announcement attributes the death to an accident with the gun.

  3. 2014
    Politkovskaya assassinationGovernment & Intelligence

    The Moscow City Court convicts five men. Rustam Makhmudov, the gunman, and Lom-Ali Gaitukayev, the organizer, are sentenced to life; the former police officer Sergei Khadzhikurbanov to 20 years; and Dzhabrail and Ibragim Makhmudov, who tracked and drove, to 14 and 12 years. The family welcomes the verdict but says those who ordered the killing are still unidentified.

  4. 2023
    Data-broker surveillance loopholeGovernment & Intelligence

    ODNI declassifies and releases a January 2022 internal report on “commercially available information,” prepared at Senator Ron Wyden's request. It confirms the intelligence community buys large volumes of CAI, including sensitive location data, and warns the scale can now replicate intrusive surveillance once reserved for targeted operations.

Drawn from 1,911 dated events across our case-file timelines. Dates reckoned in UTC.