Where were you when the world's first conspiracy theory came out?
Quote:Today in History - September 23: The tiny 'clue' in world's first conspiracy theory
On September 23, 1969, leading British newspapers reported that legendary musician Paul McCartney was dead as a bizarre conspiracy theory hit its peak.
Rumours about the demise of the beloved member of The Beatles group began circulating when a student newspaper in the mid-western US published a report just a few days before.
It claimed he'd been killed in 1966 and replaced by a look-a-like.
The student paper, which ran the headline "Paul is dead", said McCartney had been tragically killed in a car crash on his way home from a studio where he'd been recording the Sgt. Pepper album.
The other members of The Beatles sought to shield their beloved fans from the shattering news by replacing McCartney with the winner of a Paul McCartney look-a-like competition, called William Campbell.
The story spread like wildfire: major US radio stations began reporting the death of McCartney before it spread across the Atlantic, and leading tabloid papers in the UK picked it up.
It soon became the world's first conspiracy theory.
One example picked up by proponents was from the band's famous Abbey Road album cover. It shows McCartney as the only Beatle walking barefoot and out of step with the others. In some cultures, the dead are buried without wearing shoes.
https://amp.9news.com.au/article/e53d5e3...6d1ea33598
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
