Conspiracy stories have existed throughout history. In modern times especially, the world has been privy to several conspiracy stories some shocking and some too fantastic to be true. The world loves a good conspiracy as it provides a sense of awe and excitement especially when it involves some famous personality or the other. Here are 6 shocking conspiracies that made headline news in modern history.
1 The USS Maddox Incident
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Known as the US Maddox incident, The US military had fired 300 shells at Vietnamese torpedo boats that weren’t there. The incident took place during the war with Vietnam. It was August 2nd 1964 when the US destroyer Maddox was on an intelligence patrol in the Gulf of Tonkin and was reported to have been pursued by three North Vietnamese Navy torpedo boats. When the Maddox fired warning shots, the torpedo boats attacked with gunfire and torpedoes. The Maddox retaliated resulted in the North Vietnamese boats being damaged, four North Vietnamese sailors killed and six wounded. Although a US aircraft was damaged there were no US casualties except for a single Bullet hole in the Maddox from a Machine gun round.
However in 2005 a declassified report of the Internal National security agency reported that there was no enemy boats in the vicinity and the US Maddox was shooting at phantoms. President Lyndon B Johnson commented that “For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there.”. A navy Pilot James Stockdale who was supposedly a witness to the incident said that there were no Vietnamese PT boats but just black weather and American fire power.
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