Hey Thoughty2 here, conspiracy theorists are often mocked and called tin-foil hat wearing
loonies, but whatever people may say, they have got the occasional thing correct.
And sometimes the truth is even scarier than speculations and theories.
These are the terrifying conspiracy theories that turned out to be true.
1.
We start with the conspiracy of the MKUltra project.
The theory goes that between 1950 and 1973 the CIA carried out top secret and disturbing
mind control experiments on US citizens.
Unfortunately the theories turned out to be very true.
In 1995 President Clinton actually issued a formal apology on behalf of the US government
for the atrocities they committed.
The experiments carried out as part of the MKUltra project were highly illegal.
All the test subjects where unwilling and the experiments involved drugs, electronics,
hypnosis, sensory deprivations, verbal and sexual abuse, and torture.
To distance the project from the US government the CIA subcontracted the work to 80 different
institutions, including universities, hospitals and prisons.
20,000 classified MKUltra documents were uncovered to the public in 1977 under the Freedom of
Information act, which confirmed people's suspicious.
However the director of the CIA, Richard Helms had most of the more damming MKUltra files
destroyed in 1973, so much of what happened during the experiments is still unknown to
this day.
2.
Next up is the great diamond conspiracy, during the late 1870s when huge diamond mines were
opened in South Africa it was suspected that the diamond supply was actually far greater
than advertised and the price of diamonds had been artificially inflated, conspiracy
theorists believed that diamonds were actually worthless.
Well, they couldn't be closer to the truth.
Until the 19th century diamonds were only found in very small quantities in riverbeds
in India and the jungles of Brazil.
However, in 1870, huge diamond mines were found in South Africa and diamonds were soon
being mined by the truck load.
Very soon the market was flooded with an excessive amount of diamonds.
The British investors who funded the diamond mines soon realised that the price of diamonds
rested solely on the fact that they were so rare.
If too many diamonds came into the market their price would plummet, diamonds would
no longer be a precious stone and their investment would be worth nothing.
So what did they do?
The investors realised they had to restrict the supply of diamonds to keep the prices
high.
So in 1888 the handful of British diamond mine investors banded together into a single
entity to form a cartel, called De Beers Consolidated Mines.
In one fell swoop they had completely monopolised the diamond market worldwide.
The global selling price of diamonds was now completely under their control.
The De Beers corporation achieved this by stockpiling massive quantities of diamonds
in London warehouses and only releasing a tiny amount into the market each year to create
an illusion of scarcity.
But De Beers soon realised that only wealthy individuals were buying their diamonds because
the prices were so high.
So they needed a way to encourage the working and middle classes to buy diamonds.
So in 1938 they came up with one of the greatest scams of the modern day, they invented the
diamond engagement ring.
De Beers utilised the newly emerging medium of motion pictures to plant the idea in the
heads of young men worldwide that the only stone acceptable for an engagement ring is
a diamond.
They paid Hollywood movie studios to include scenes in their movies of young men proposing
to their loved ones with a diamond engagement ring.
They also launched a massive advertising campaign with the slogan "a diamond is forever".
The campaign was an enormous success.
Before their campaign only 10% of engagement rings sold worldwide had diamonds on them,
after the campaign 80% had diamonds.
In a short few years the De Beers company had artificially inflated the global price
of diamonds and brainwashed the entire world into thinking that these worthless hunks of
carbon are the only way to propose to a woman.
To this day their mass manipulation is still deeply rooted in society.
3.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident was a major event in 1964 that was one of the biggest contributing
factors to the start of the Vietnam War.
However conspiracy theorists say the event never actually happened.
The story goes that the US destroyer ship USS Maddox engaged three North Vietnamese
Navy torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin near Vietnam, as part of a US intelligence patrol.
The Maddox fired an incredible 300 shells.
That much is true.
However in 2005 a study by the NSA revealed that there weren't actually any Vietnamese
naval vessels present during the incident whatsoever.
USS Maddox was firing at nothing.
In 1965, President Johnson actually said "For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales
out there."
4.
Next up is the conspiracy theory that between 1932 and 1972 the US Public Health Service
were deliberately not treating syphilis patients as part of a clinical study to see what would
happen to syphilis patients if left untreated.
Unfortunately, this turned out to be very true.
399 rural African American men were chosen by the US Public Health Service who were suffering
from syphilis, the health service never even informed these men that they had a sexually
transmitted disease, and they never offered them treatment of any kind, despite the treatment
for syphilis being widely available.
The victims were simply told they had "bad blood" and their symptoms were inevitable.
By the early 1970s, 128 of the 399 men had died of syphilis, 40 of their wives had contracted
the disease and 19 of their children had been born with congenital syphilis.
5.
Next up is the theory that the joint chiefs of staff of the US military created plans
to create fake acts of terrorism against US citizen on US soil in a Cuban false flag attack
to persuade the American public to support the war against Cuba.
It's completely true and the official documents can be found online.
The plan which was drawn up by the US military involved shooting down innocent Americans
on the streets.
Planes full of innocent people being hijacked and shot down, and other extremely violent
bouts of terrorism taking place against the American public in Washington D.C., Miami,
and elsewhere across the US.
The plan was approved and ready to go into action, but thankfully President Kennedy rejected
it.
6.
Perhaps one of the most well believed conspiracy theories is that your government is spying
on you.
We've all had that paranoid feeling at some point in our lives, that someone, somewhere
is watching us.
Maybe it was George Orwell's 1984 that started it all off or just a general distrust of the
government, but whatever started the theories, the scary truth is, your government is watching
you, and it's not just in America that it's happening.
In recent years there have also been disturbing reports of other countries spying on their
own citizens, such as France, Germany, China, Russia, Syria, New Zealand, Canada and the
United Kingdom.
Of course the most well known of these spying scandals was when former NSA employee, Edward
Snowden released sensitive government information, revealing the frightening extent of the NSA's
spying activities on American citizens, under it's surveillance program, codenamed PRISM.
Thanks to these revelations, we now know that the scope of the NSA's eavesdropping is even
larger that what conspiracy theorists originally believed.
But of course, all this spying is necessary to protect us from the likes of terrorists,
is it not?
Well not exactly, a report by the Washington Post found that 90% of the sensitive data
being collected by the NSA's surveillance programmes is from Internet users with absolutely
no connection to terrorist activities.
Making their spying activities downright illegal.
7.
For a long time it's been theorised that professional wrestling is fake and the outcomes of the
matches are determined beforehand.
It's always been a popular theory, until recently, when it was confirmed to be true.
in 2013 a mysterious reddit user called Dolphins1925 who claims he has a contact inside the World
Wrestling Entertainment company, started posting the results of pay-per-view wrestling matches
online, before they actually took place.
He posted the results of 38 matches, all of which he got correct.
Which proved once and for all that pro wrestling, well at least in the case of WWE matches,
are as many suspected, setup.
8.
Between 1920 and 1933 in the US was the alcohol prohibition.
For a whole 13 years alcoholic beverages in any form were banned.
As you would expect, this proved very hard to enforce.
A lot of people were secretly making their own alcohol in their homes.
The FBI were finding it increasingly more difficult to stop people drinking.
Then suddenly, people started dying from drinking alcoholic beverages, many theories popped
up that claimed the FBI was intentionally poisoning liquor to deter people from drinking
it.
It's frightening to believe, but the theories were absolutely correct.
The FBI's idea was that by adding potentially fatal impurities to liquor it would demonise
alcohol in the eyes of the general public and stop people from wanting to drink.
Of course they didn't tell the public about their nefarious plan, they let the consequences
of the poisoned liquors do all the talking for them.
The FBI added substances such as kerosene, chloroform and acetone to bottles of liquor,
and people started mysteriously dying of what many believed was simply alcohol poisoning.
9.
It's long been believed by conspiracy theorists the world over that the world is run by a
group of rich men in powerful positions and that they meet up every year to discuss secret
plans, one such theory is that the world's elite meet up once a year in the middle of
the woods and worship a giant owl effigy.
Well turns out it's true, it's called the Bohemian Grove.
It's a 2,700-acre campground located in the woods of Monte Rio, California.
Once a year Bohemian Grove is host to a two week event involving some of the most powerful
men in the world.
During the event they get drunk, put on strange plays in the woods and burn an effigy in front
of a giant owl statue.
However little is known about the event and what exactly is discussed by the rich and
powerful is kept top secret.
Women aren't allowed to attend.
Famous Bohemian Grove members have included: Dick Cheney, both George Bushes, Ronald Reagan,
Richard Nixon, John Major, David Rockefeller, former C.I.A.
director William Casey, the former CEO of IBM, Thomas J. Watson and many more.
10.
And finally.
Conspiracy Theorists believed that the CIA invented a heart attack gun that can be used
to assassinate people without a trace.
Turns out this is terrifyingly true.
The weapon does exist, it was developed in the late 1960s.
The gun was designed to be completely untraceable.
It fires a tiny bullet about 3 millimetres wide that is made entirely of ice.
This ice bullet has a lethal shellfish toxin frozen inside it.
Upon entering the target the bullet would leave only a tiny red dot on the skin, and
the bullet itself would quickly melt, leaving no trace at all.
The shellfish toxin causes a heart attack regardless of the target's physical fitness.
The toxin itself denatures quickly, meaning an autopsy is unlikely to find any traces
of it.
It is a perfectly, untraceable James Bond style weapon.
However it's existence was confirmed in 1975 when Senator Frank Church was forced to reveal
the gun to a subcommittee whom were investigating the CIA's illegal activities.
Because assassinating someone on the streets who doesn't pose a significant threat to the
state is illegal, even for the CIA.
Even though its existence is now undeniable theorists believe it is still being used by
the CIA to this day.
Andrew Breitbart may very well have been a victim, he was a media mogul whom published
derogatory stories about Barack Obama.
He promised that he would shortly publish proof that Barack Obama's presidency was illegitimate.
But he never got to do so, because shortly afterwards on the 1st March 2012 he suspiciously
collapsed dead from a heart attack whilst walking in a Los Angeles neighbourhood, despite
being of relatively good health.
Another possible victim of the heart attack gun was Mark Pittman, a financial journalist
who sued the American Federal Reserve for mishandling taxpayer's money.
However before the case could come to a conclusion Pittman died of a heart attack in very similar
circumstances as Andrew Breitbart.