Have you seen pictures of the FBI stealing gold from U.S. citizens? Want to know why Elon Musk is dating robots? Let's uncover his master plan! Each conspiracy will give you more shivers than the last.
Lost Civil War Gold
Legend tells of how in 1863, during the American Civil War, the Unionists sent a wagon of gold from West Virginia to be minted in Philadelphia. To avoid Confederate troops, the shipment was routed through the wilds, only to end up lost or stolen.
According to the tale, the lost shipment held either 26 or 52 gold bars, each weighing 50 lbs. That’d be around $25 or $50 million today! Whilst only a fable, its story has inspired treasure hunters for generations, including Dennis Parada and his son, Kem, founders of the treasure-hunting organization Finders Keepers. After years of scrambling through woodlands and toiling through spoil, the father and son found something. In a wooded Pennsylvanian valley, over 100 miles from Pittsburgh, lies Dents Run. Whilst scanning the area with their detector, the pair heard a bleep, the machine had registered a chunk of metal. Could it have been the legendary gold?
Thrilled by the potential discovery and the juicy finder’s fee, in January 2018, the Paradas contacted the FBI with their evidence, as the local department he had permission from to excavate the treasure had later refused his access to the land. Weeks later, a small army of agents scrambled onto the site to survey it and then they began to dig. In the end they found nothing. Not even a speck of gold dust. The Paradas were gutted, but then,
they grew suspicious. The agents had promised the Paradas they could watch the dig, but when the day came, they were only occasionally allowed near the excavation site and always accompanied by an agent.
The Paradas became convinced: the FBI had found the gold, and stolen it. With that, Finders Keepers filed a lawsuit and took the government to court.
Digging for gold: Pa. treasure hunters take action on FBI’s local search by WTAJ News Of course, the agency denied all allegations and insisted they’d found nothing at the site. But things only got weirder. Local witnesses reported hearing the heavy clatter of drills and tools in the middle of the night, like the agents were digging in secret. One local, Eric McCarthy, told of how he saw three trucks roll by. One was sagging low to the ground, as if it was stuffed with something heavy.The Paradas demanded that the FBI release documents and the 17 videotapes they’d filmed of the dig. They did but with caveats. The documents revealed that the agency had indeed found a massive metal chunk beneath the earth, something with the density of gold, and it weighed around 9 tons. That’s heavier than two hippos sat on a grand piano! So what about the tapes?! Well, instead of providing all 17, the FBI only procured four, and none of them showed the discovery of anything. Maybe the bureau deliberately destroyed the rest of the footage so they could keep the treasure for themselves. Some people think that even more documents exist, ones the FBI still refuse to release. At the time of making this article, the case remains unsolved. No one knows what really happened to the gold, or if there was ever any gold at all.
Dead Internet Theory
One of America’s Got Talent’s judges is actor Sofia Vergara who, while presenting the show in March 2024, took a typically glamorous selfie in front of the audience. She posted the pic on her Insta, and all seemed well. Except that eagle-eyed viewers noticed something odd about the snap.
Look in the background, there’s something wrong with the audience’s faces. It’s probably not anything supernatural. But netizens began to wonder: could this image have been made with AI? It’s becoming increasingly common for celebs to use AI or facetune to touch up a photo. Remember Kate Middleton’s slightly off pic? Over 14% of Beyoncé’s Instagram content has been found to be AI-edited, and for Khloe Kardashian, it’s a mighty 25%. Vergara’s never publicly commented on it, which makes me wonder, why did she do it? Well, experts have pointed out that smartphone cameras often use AI enhancements to blur backgrounds, which can result in creepy, distorted faces like the ones in that crowd. Still, there’s a deeper conspiracy here. Some claim it’s proof of the dead internet theory, the idea that the internet consists mainly of bot activity and automatically generated content to minimize organic human activity. Since so many celebrities are being caught faking their photos, it’s not unrealistic to expect that in perhaps just a few years almost all celebrity content will be AI-generated. It makes sense on so many levels, its low effort and AI can optimize the content better on many levels. These photos are just the tip of this ai-iceberg.
Elon Musk Conspiracies
Back in August 2024, posts on Facebook, Instagram, and X circulated images of oligarch extraordinaire Elon Musk sitting with his robotic girlfriend at a restaurant.
People believed these images were real, and accused Musk of plotting to replace his fellow man with mechanical beings. Whilst true that his other company Tesla is creating humanoid robots called Optimus, Musk doesn’t seem to need to date them just yet as he does have at least 14 kids we know of, and the image of him with the robot is fake and was
posted on a parody account. I know it’s a cliché to say it’s becoming difficult to know who to trust, but as we develop parasocial relationships with public figures, celebrities become photoshopped deities, worshipped as their image drifts further away from reality. This brings me to our next Musk theory: his potential grand plan. As you know, Musk’s DOGE has stirred controversy with mass layoffs and brutal budget cuts. It’s left many wondering: What is this all for? Plenty are skeptical. Some, like Hollywood actor Mark Ruffalo, point instead to Musk’s bizarre ambition to blast off and form a colony on Mars by 2029.
Mark claimed Elon told him all of this the first time they met. To fund his company, SpaceX, he needs money. And where better than taking it from the American taxpayer? Mark claims that Musk is funneling government money into space travel as Mars colonization wouldn’t be possible without cleaning out government coffers. However, there’s currently no evidence to support this other than Mark’s interaction, if you believe it. That’s not the end of the Musk theories, however. Did you see that footage of him balancing a spoon and fork on the tip of his finger, clearly thinking it made him look cool? It’s pretty impressive, dude’s got that cutlery rizz. But what’s really behind this mastery? Musk has been fairly open about taking a certain substance beginning with K to manage depression. Health care experts stress that it should only be used in small doses and by patients who haven’t responded to other treatments, and, while Musk denies abusing it, rumors have spread that he dabbles far more than he should. Could that be boosting his coordination and concentration, giving him this special power? Probably not. In reality, the substance can impair motor skills rather than enhance them. More likely, this is just Musk being Musk as many are claiming it’s just more evidence of his Aspergers syndrome.
Snow White Program: When Scientologists Infilitrated The US Government
From one megalomaniac to another, let’s move onto L. Ron Hubbard! In 1950, this American sci-fi author developed Scientology, the now-infamous religion. Over the years, the church has been embroiled in all sorts of scandals, from practicing medicine without a license to kidnapping. But did you know the secretive organization has even infiltrated the US government?
Since its very beginning, Scientology has sought recognition as a religion in order to be tax-exempt. However, the church was involved in lots of money-making ventures, like selling religious services, books, and merchandise, all for the benefit of Mr Hubbard. So, in 1967, the IRS classified it as a business, much to the church’s anger.
Jump ahead to 1973, and Hubbard wanted to clean up his image. Did he stop kidnapping people? No. Instead, he drafted up a secret document labelled “Secret.” Smart, L. Ron. The document detailed Operation Snow White, a conspiracy aimed to get back at government agencies, like the IRS, by erasing reports that made Scientology, and Hubbard, look bad, what the church considered fairy tales. Though the operation was carried out by Scientologists in over 30 countries, it mostly targeted government offices in the good old USA. Led by Hubbard’s wife, Mary Sue Hubbard, 5,000 undercover Scientologists took up work at 136 government agencies, including the Department of Justice and the IRS, so they could steal and illegally copy documents. In 1974, they even planted a bugging device in an IRS conference room right before a meeting about Scientology and recorded it from a car parked outside!
All of this was justified by Hubbard’s Fair Game policy, a church doctrine which states that church enemies can be deceived, sued, and even injured by any means, amongst a host of other nefarious things. However, the plan began to unravel in 1976, when two Scientologists, Gerald Wolfe and Michael Meisner, were caught snooping around the United States Courthouse, prompting a suspicious librarian to alert the FBI.
This led to a wide sweeping investigation, and one year later, the conspiracy had its pants pulled down and exposed for all to see. Mary Sue Hubbard and 10 other scientologists, yes, just 10 out of 5,000, pleaded guilty and were sentenced to prison. Mr Hubbard, though named as an unindicted co-conspirator, escaped punishment due to a lack of evidence directly linking him to the crimes. Lack of evidence? Was the whole courthouse asleep? As if the lack of prison time wasn’t enough, years later, in 1993, the government forgave all this. Seriously, Scientology was finally officially recognized as religion under US law, and the
IRS issued 30 tax exemption letters covering about 150 Scientology organizations. This all sounds pretty suspicious. Have the scientologists managed to sneak into even grander government positions? Maybe they even got to the very top?
Tuskegee Syphilis Scandal
Back in 1932, flyers started appearing around Tuskegee, Alabama, encouraging Black men to get tested for what was enigmatically called bad blood. Some thought it was referring to rheumatism or poorly stomachs, but whatever ‘bad blood’ was the flyers offered free hot food, medical checks, and burial insurance if you signed up to get tested for it. So, 600 men took part in the scheme, and for over 40 years they received regular testing and treatment in return for these benefits.
The only thing is, the men were being lied to. The study wasn’t testing for bad blood at all, it was really a
secret experiment conducted by the US Public Health Service to see what damage syphilis, a deadly venereal disease, did to the body when left untreated. Of the 600 men tested, 399 had syphilis, while 201 didn’t. When the Tuskegee Syphilis study began in the 1930s, there was no widely available cure for the illness. But by 1943, penicillin became a widely available treatment. Yet, not one of the participants was ever even offered it. Indeed, they weren’t even told they had it! All they knew was they had so-called bad blood.
Half of those with the illness were given an outdated arsenic-mercury treatment, and the other half were given no more than placebos and mineral supplements and left to suffer needlessly. Those without the illness were treated as a control group. Eventually, the disease claimed at least seven lives. Fortunately, public health inspector Peter Buxton figured out what was going on and leaked the truth to the press in November 1972. One year later, a class-action lawsuit resulted in a $10 million settlement for the survivors and their families. In 1973, the Tuskegee Health Benefit Program was set up to provide healthcare to the men and their families. But it wasn’t until 1997, over 60 years after the study began, that President Bill Clinton issued an official apology.
Even so, the scandal fueled grave distrust in the US healthcare system among African Americans, a distrust that’s sadly still felt today.
Havana Syndrome
Jump ahead to 2016, and weird things were happening to CIA officers at the US Embassy in Cuba’s capital of Havana. They reported strange symptoms, fatigue, nausea, and intense pressure in their heads, for seemingly no reason. However, brain scans revealed tissue damage and volume loss, much like the kind seen in people who’ve suffered from concussion.
At first, this was kept under wraps, but word got out, and the mysterious condition was quickly dubbed “Havana syndrome.” By April 2024, more than 1,000 cases had been reported worldwide, and perplexingly, every single one of them was US intelligence and military personnel.
All the illnesses followed the same pattern, before feeling sick, people described hearing a buzzing or the grinding of metal, followed by incredible pain. Some sceptics tried to brush it off as “mass hysteria,” thinking it was all in the victims’ heads. But in 2021, growing evidence pointed to something much more sinister, targeted microwave energy! And, no, not the kind that heats up leftovers, this kind can be used as a weapon. Professor James Lin had investigated it back in the ‘70s at the University of Illinois, conducting tests on himself by sitting in a soundproof room with a microwave antenna aimed at his head. The high-power microwaves created pressure waves in his brain, which he interpreted as sound, but it was sound only he could hear. Turn up the power too high, and his brain would’ve been scrambled.
Some US officials were convinced that these attacks were orchestrated by foreign agents, with some publicly calling them “directed energy attacks.” But who? Well, a 2024 investigation by The Insider, Der Spiegel, and CBS’s 60 Minutes suggested it was the military intelligence unit 29155, who
hail from Russia. Could Putin be the one with his finger on the trigger?
The Kremlin denied these accusations, but evidence shows that members of this secret unit were in fact present in cities where incidents were reported. This mystery may be ongoing, but one things for certain, Havana syndrome’s giving the US a headache.
Bohemian Grove
If you wander through the dense redwood trees around Monte Rio, California, you might catch a glimpse of the Bohemian Grove. This vast 2,700-acre site holds the super-private, men-only Bohemian Club, first founded back in 1872. Every July, the grove holds a two-week retreat, hosting some of the world’s most influential men, from world leaders to celebrities.
But what exactly goes on at these retreats? Some have accused the club of being a nefarious cult where world-shaping decisions are made. From the few old photos we have, it does look pretty suspicious. The club has dismissed these conspiracies, saying it’s a refuge from decision-making and other pressures. But business talk does happen. In 1942, a meeting about the Manhattan Project at the grove paved the way for the atomic bomb! And if that’s true, what else could be?Far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has even accused the Bohemians of being a bunch of Satan-worshippers! In 2000, he snuck into the grove as part of a Channel 4 documentary made with British journalist Jon Ronson. Sure enough, they witnessed a ritual called The Cremation of Care.
Bohemian Grove Cremation of Care Ceremony Enhanced Video by Secrets Unveiled After watching it, Jones claimed that members take part in a mock sacrifice in front of a giant 15-foot owl statue. Damn, so was Jones right the whole time?! Despite the ritual being real, the club insists this is just a symbolic ceremony to “burn away” their worries.
As for Jon Ronson, he later interviewed former Bohemian Harry Shearer, best known as the voice of Mr Burns and Waylon Smithers in The Simpsons. Shearer had an altogether different story, saying that the grove is just one big bro-ey party, only with way more theatre productions. The only conspiracy is taking the conspiracy seriously.
The Oak Ridge Experiments
In 1968, Steve Smith, a teenager from Ontario, Canada, stole a car and then got caught taking something he definitely shouldn’t have. He was subsequently arrested and sent to Oak Ridge Psychiatric Unit in Ontario. From the outside this seemed like a legitimate hospital where patients were being genuinely treated. But once inside, Smith was labelled a psychopath and placed alongside dangerous criminals with serious mental health issues.
Even worse was the hospital’s lead psychiatrist, Dr Elliot Barker. He believed he could cure psychopathy through extreme treatments like forcing patients to ingest mind-altering substances and extended solitary confinement. Barker was influenced by experiments used in the
US government’s MK-Ultra program. While his experiments didn’t involve the over-the-top brainwashing devices we see in movies, they were still incredibly cruel and lacked any scientific backing. Yet, with the hush-hush nature of the hospital, they were allowed to carry on without public knowledge.One of his favorite treatments was known as the Capsule. This is where patients would be locked together, often naked, in a confinement cell for up to two weeks. They were fed liquid food through holes in the wall and forced to use an open toilet. As if that doesn’t sound bad enough, there were no medical staff in the hospital. Instead, patients were “treated” and diagnosed by other psychopathic patients. This meant that people like Smith were left to the mercy of those who could prescribe them hallucinogenic substances.
The situation was even worse for women at a nearby ward in St. Thomas, where, similarly, women with no mental illnesses were forced to live among very ill patients. Men cleared by Barker, who were often violent criminals, were
sent to “care” for these women. Unsurprisingly, these men continued to commit terrible acts against them too. Despite rumors circling for years about the place, nothing was done until 2000. That year, former patients of Oak Ridge sued Barker, another psychiatrist, and the Ontario government, arguing that their so-called “treatment” was nothing short of torment. The case dragged on for years, but finally, in 2020, a judge ruled in favor of the victims. Now, Oak Ridge only leaves behind a legacy of suffering.
The US Government Poisoned Alcohol During Prohibition
Because of stuff like this, there’s a lot of distrust towards our governments these days, surely politicians were much more noble back in the olden times, right? Well, journey back to 1920s America and prepare to be proven wrong.
This was the Prohibition era, when the temperance movement made it illegal to make, sell and transport alcohol. Instead of turning everyone into wholesome teetotallers though, alcoholism rates actually soared by up to 300%! Crime syndicates jumped on the opportunity and flooded speakeasies with bootlegged booze. So, the government did what any wise, responsible administration would do: they
poisoned the alcohol! At least, sort of.
While the US government never directly poisoned the drink, by 1927, they’d mandated that toxic additives, like mercury, carbolic acid, and methanol, should be added to all industrial alcohol, which was still made for legal products like cleaning, paints, and other stuff. The government knew this would be stolen by bootleggers and then turned into drink, with the plan being that all the poison would put people off their liquor. But high demand paired with an unregulated black market meant that sales of now-toxic hooch continued to fly off the shelves.
This all came at a terrible cost, immediately hordes of people became sick and some even lost their lives. On New Year’s Day 1927, 41 people died at New York’s Bellevue Hospital from methanol poisoning. Despite the known risks though, people kept drinking, and the government’s actions were widely condemned at the time.
Over the years however, these underhand tactics have been mostly forgotten by the general public. Well, not anymore. It certainly gives a whole new meaning to a “stiff drink”!
"A Frank Statement" to Cigarette Smokers
On the topic of biting the dust, we all know smoking causes lung cancer, that’s a fact. But for decades, tobacco companies hid this truth from the public and let them smoke their lives away. Before cigarettes, lung cancer was rare, but by the turn of the 20th century, tobacco companies’ massive ad campaigns had driven a global epidemic.
As early as 1912, German-American scientist Isaac Adler suspected cigarette smoke was the culprit, but his findings were conveniently ignored. Then in 1953, US scientists proved
cigarette smoke could generate tumors by painting the tar onto the backs of shaved mice. One of the researchers involved, Evarts Graham, believed this was undeniable proof that smoking caused cancer.The public were shocked and tobacco sales plummeted. Desperate, America’s six largest tobacco companies joined forces to quash these findings. They hired PR guru John Hill, founder of Hill and Knowlton, to help them win back the heart and lungs of their consumers. In 1954, on behalf of the tobacco companies, Hill and Knowlton released an ad titled “A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers.” Here, they shamelessly claimed “There is no proof that cigarette smoking is one of the causes” of cancer.
This ran in 448 media publications across the US, reaching around 43 million people. It reassured readers that the tobacco companies were establishing the Industry Research Committee, where they’d hire the best scientists to get to the “truth.”
For decades, they repeated the same lies, saying there was “no substantial evidence” and insisting the debate was “still open.” In reality, tobacco companies knew smoking was deadly and addictive. One research director even said in private: ‘Boy! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our company was first to produce a cancer-free cigarette.’Despite everything, as late as 1994, the CEOs of seven major tobacco companies testified to US Congress, and had the cajónes to say they didn’t believe nicotine to be addictive. But the tobacco companies’ nefarious conspiracy was finally extinguished in 1998 with something called the Master Settlement Agreement. 52 state and territory attorneys sued the four largest tobacco companies in the US, forcing them to fork out billions in health care costs from smoking-related illnesses.
The settlement raised the cost of cigarettes, limited advertising and sponsorship, ended the Tobacco Industry Research Committee, and finally exposed the truth about cigarettes. The impact was clear; from 1998 to 2019, cigarette use in the US dropped by over 50%!
But the tobacco industries aren’t beaten yet. Today they’re peddling products like e-cigarettes, claiming they’re safer, but after all this, can we really trust them?
Lariam: Malaria Drug Inducing Psychosis On Soldiers
On Reddit, there's a disturbing post from Vict0r117, who claims to have been a soldier serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. According to Vic, his unit was given a weekly dose of Lariam, an anti-malarial drug. But the side effects were crazy, literally! After taking the drug, soldiers became "irritable, aggressive, and angry" with brawls breaking out over the smallest matters.
They suffered from creepy nightmares and some even started deliriously sleepwalking. It was so chaotic that the day they took their dose became known as psycho-Tuesday! These side effects were dismissed as combat fatigue, but Vic says that it was actually all part of a secret experiment to test Lariam’s effects at different levels of toxicity.
Lariam, also known as mefloquine, was developed in the USA in the 1970s and issued to British troops in 1993. Jump to 2015 and nearly 1,000 British men and women say they’ve
needed psychiatric treatment after taking it. It’s not surprising, Lariam’s been linked to long term mental illnesses like hallucinations, violent outbursts, depression, and psychosis. One ex-army chief, Lord Richard Dannatt, admitted in 2016 that he wouldn’t touch the stuff after seeing what it did to his son and even apologized to soldiers who were made to take it. Luckily for Vic, he’d started spitting his out before he could suffer any long-term effects. And in March 2024, over 450 veterans sued the UK’s Ministry of Defense for their suffering at the hands of Lariam, so its time may be up.
How The Sugar Industry Shifted The Blame To Fat
Fatty food is bad for us, sure, everyone knows that. The New England Journal of Medicine assured us saturated fat causes heart disease way back in 1967! However, there’s more to this than meets the eye.
In 2016, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, stumbled upon documents from the Sugar Research Foundation, or SRF. Back in the ‘60s, the SRF was facing mounting evidence that sugar was harmful, which was obviously bad for business. So, they came up with an ingenious plan: if Americans could be convinced to eat less fat, they’d replace it with sugar. The newly discovered documents suggest that the SRF paid three Harvard scientists over $65,000 in today’s money to publish a report on sugar and fat’s effects on heart disease, with the results being handpicked by the SRF. Surprise-surprise,
the paper claimed that fat was the culprit, and that’s pretty much remained the general consensus.
Only in the 2000s did dieticians start to realize how bad sugar really is. But not everyone had the wool pulled over their eyes. British scientist John Yudkin pointed out back in 1972 that humans have been eating saturated fat ever since we appeared on the planet. Sugar, however, has only been part of Western diets for around 300 years, a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms.
Nevertheless, Yudkin’s work was maligned, ignored, and eventually forgotten. Big industry hasn’t stopped these dastardly tactics either. In 2015, Coca-Cola funded millions of dollars in research to downplay links between sugary drinks and obesity. And in 2016, candy manufacturers even backed studies claiming that kids who eat sweets are slimmer than those who don’t! Who knew sugar could leave such a bitter taste.
The Pentagon's Anti-Vax Campaign
The United States of America is the world’s most powerful country, a beacon of Western values, and defender of freedom and justice. At least, that’s how it likes to appear. Let’s go way back to the ancient days of 2020, and shatter that illusion.
As you might remember, COVID-19 had left the world in lockdown, desperately waiting for that precious vaccine. People flocked to social media to stay connected, and this was just as true in the Philippines. So, when China released their Sinovac vaccine to the Philippines in 2021, you’d expect celebrations, right? Wrong! Filipinos scrolling through the internet sphere would’ve been bombarded with posts decrying the vaccine and questioning its safety, often completed with #ChinaAngVirus, Tagalog for China is the virus.As you’d expect, anti-vax sentiment flared, leaving the Philippines with one of Southeast Asia’s lowest vaccination rates. By mid-2021, only 2.1 million of its 114 million citizens were fully vaxxed. The funny thing was, these critical posts originated from 300 Twitter, or X, accounts that weren’t run by concerned citizens at all, but by none other than the US military.
Yes, Reuters uncovered that during 2020 and 2021, the
US secretly ran an anti-vax and anti-Chinese propaganda campaign throughout the country. And it wasn’t just the Philippines, Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East and Central Asia were targeted with false claims that Chinese vaccines contained pork gelatin, making them potentially “haram,” or forbidden under Islamic law.
But why would the US do this?! Well, under President Trump, the dirty campaign was retaliation against Chinese intelligence. They’d created fake social media accounts promoting a conspiracy that COVID originated at Fort Detrick in Maryland, something the US decided to mirror in their own conspiratorial campaign. It might’ve all ended in mid-2021, but America’s spread of disinformation helped spread COVID, fueling anti-vaccine fears that cost thousands of lives, and that’s inexcusable. So much for America being a beacon of freedom and justice?
Boris Bus Conspiracy
Across the pond, Britain’s not doing much better. You may’ve heard of Boris Johnson, this British politician and former Prime Minister is one of the most polarizing figures in recent memory. But he could also be responsible for a nefarious ruse a lot of people don’t know about.
In the country’s 2016 referendum, the UK had to vote on whether to leave or remain in the EU. Boris campaigned rigidly to Leave, and made an infamous claim that was printed onto a bus, that if Leave won, the £350 million a week that the UK sent the EU would go to the NHS instead.
It was a complete lie, and one Boris took heavy criticism for after the UK did indeed vote to leave the EU. But that’s not the ruse we're talking about.Jump ahead to 2019 and Boris was now campaigning to become the UK’s Prime Minister. In an interview with talkRadio, Ross Kempsell asked him what he did to relax. The soon to be Prime Minister gave a bumbling speech about his passion for making model buses:
Boris Johnson: "I make models of buses" by TalkTV It's kind of weird, but everyone’s got their hobbies, right? Well, BoJo’s rambling answer may’ve been strategic. At the time, if you Googled “Boris bus,” you’d mostly get the image of him and that infamous Brexit bus. Something he didn’t want in the spotlight. But after the interview, searches were more likely to bring up his supposed hobby instead.
What’s more, Kempsell, Boris’s interviewer, was later given a seat in the House of Lords by none other than Boris himself, making him Baron Kempsell of Lechworth. This title gives him the right to claim £323 tax-free a day for the rest of his life. He’s since set up his own businesses, and guess who one of his clients is? That’s right, Bojo! Could the whole interview have been a ploy by Boris and Kempsall to play down unflattering news and aid Boris’s election campaign? It’s not been confirmed for sure, but it certainly looks like a case of you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.
Gorillas Used To Be Considered Mythical Creatures
Everyone loves gorillas, right? But did you know that these big burly animals are actually fantastical cryptids, more suited to myth than real life? Well, if you were from the days before the twentieth century, you’d agree with that statement.
Back then, tales of mysterious ape men lurking in the jungles of equatorial Africa were abound! One of the first accounts we have comes from the 5th century BC, when Hanno the Navigator, a Carthaginian explorer, wrote of an island populated by hairy beast-people his interpreters called Gorillie. Sound familiar?
And if we jump forward a few thousand years to 1625, English adventurer Andrew Battel wrote of a beast he saw in Africa called the pongo, describing it as a giant man covered in long hair. Even with these detailed descriptions though, people dismissed the stories as conspiratorial nonsense.
An end to this apish mystery came about in 1847, when American scientist Thomas Savage discovered the skull of a large ape while in Africa. Curious, he asked local hunters about the animal, who described big monkey-like creatures that lived in groups led by a single dominant male. Based on these accounts, Savage wrote to his friend Jeffrey Wyman, who classified the creature under the name gorilla, after Hannon’s creatures.
The gorilla conspiracy was further dispelled by an increasing number of people seeing them in the flesh. In 1860, French-American explorer Paul Du Chaillu claimed to have seen gorillas whilst travelling through Gabon. He described them as violent, bloodthirsty monsters and hunted the animals, bringing their bodies to London where he sold them to the Natural History Museum.
Unsurprisingly, Du Chaillu’s sensationalist accounts were dismissed by naturalists who questioned his status as a gorilla “expert,” but the bodies he brought back helped to finally prove gorillas are in fact real. Of course, we know today that these savage “monsters” are really gentle giants. Who knew it was such a thrilla when it came to gorillas! I hope you were amazed at these conspiracies that turned out to be true. Thanks for reading!
