Citation Needed

This  list of confidence tricks and scams  should not be considered complete, but covers the most common examples.  Confidence tricks  and scams are difficult to classify, because they change often and often contain elements of more than one type. Throughout this list, the perpetrator of the confidence trick is called the "con artist" or simply "artist", and the intended victim is the "mark". Part...

USS  Indianapolis  (CL/CA-35)  was a  Portland -class   heavy cruiser  of the  United States Navy , named for the city of  Indianapolis, Indiana . Launched in 1931, the vessel served as the  flagship  for the commander of  Scouting Force 1  for eight years, then as flagship for  Admiral   Raymond Spruance  in 1943 and 1944 while he commanded the  Fifth Fleet  in battles across the  Central Pacific...

Franklin Delano Roosevelt  ( / ˈ r oʊ z ə v əl t / , [1]   /- v ɛ l t / ; [2]  January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945), often referred to by the initials  FDR , was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd  president of the United States  from 1933 until his death in 1945. A member of the  Democratic Party , he won a record four  presidential elections  and became a central fig...

he  Battle of the Crater  was a battle of the  American Civil War , part of the  Siege of Petersburg . It took place on July 30, 1864, between the  Confederate   Army of Northern Virginia , commanded by  General   Robert E. Lee , and the  Union   Army of the Potomac , commanded by  Maj. Gen.   George G. Meade  (under the direct supervision of the general-in-chief,  Lt. Gen.   Ulysses S. Grant ). -...

Coney Island  is a residential and commercial  neighborhood  and entertainment area in the southwestern part of the  borough  of  Brooklyn  in  New York City . The neighborhood is bounded by  Sea Gate  to its west,  Brighton Beach  and  Manhattan Beach  to its east,  Lower New York Bay  to the south, and  Gravesend  to the north. Coney Island was formerly the westernmost of the  Outer Barrier  isl...

On this week's episode, we discuss several failed publicity stunts, like the one in "Crush, Texas." Crush, Texas  was a temporary "city" established as the site of a one-day  publicity stunt  in the U.S. state of  Texas  in 1896. William George Crush, general passenger agent of the  Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad  (popularly known as the "Katy", from its "Em-Kay-Tee" initials), conceived the idea...

Enron Corporation  was an  American   energy ,  commodities , and services company based in  Houston ,  Texas . It was founded in 1985 as a merger between  Houston Natural Gas  and  InterNorth , both relatively small regional companies. Before its bankruptcy on December 3, 2001, Enron employed approximately 29,000 staff and was a major  electricity ,  natural gas , communications and  pulp and pap...

There is no way to summarize this episode. --- Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you'd like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here .  Be sure to check our website for more details.  

The  Voyager program  is an American scientific program that employs two  robotic   probes ,  Voyager 1  and  Voyager 2 , to study the outer  Solar System . [1]  The probes were launched in 1977 to take advantage of a favorable alignment of  Jupiter ,  Saturn ,  Uranus  and  Neptune . Although their original mission was to study only the planetary systems of Jupiter and Saturn,  Voyager 2  continu...

There are many  conspiracy theories  that attribute the planning and execution of the  September 11 attacks  against the  United States  to parties other than, or in addition to,  al-Qaeda [1]  including that there was  advance knowledge of the attacks  among high-level government officials. Government investigations and independent reviews have rejected these theories. [2] [3]  Proponents of thes...

Vlad III Dracula , known as  Vlad the Impaler  ( Romanian :  Vlad Țepeș ,  Bulgarian :  Влад Цепеш ,  pronunciation:  [ ˈ v l a d   ˈ ts e p e ʃ ]  ) or  Vlad Dracula  ( / ˈ d r æ k j ə l ə / ( Romanian :  Vlad Drăculea ,  pronunciation:  [ ˈ d r ə k u l e̯a ]  ,  Bulgarian :  Влад Дракула ); 1428/31 – 1476/77), was  Voivode of  Wallachia  three times between 1448 and his death. He is often consid...

The  Bhopal disaster , also referred to as the  Bhopal gas tragedy , was a  gas leak  incident on the night of 2–3 December 1984 at the  Union Carbide India Limited  (UCIL)  pesticide  plant in  Bhopal , Madhya Pradesh, India. It is considered to be  the world's worst   industrial disaster . [1] [2]  Over 500,000 people were exposed to  methyl isocyanate (MIC)  gas. The highly toxic substance made...

Washington Irving Bishop , also known as  Wellington  (4 March 1855 – 13 May 1889) was an  American  stage  mentalist . He started his career as an assistant under the  muscle reader   J. Randall Brown , but was most well known for his performance of the  blindfold drive . [1]

Gunslinger   / ˈ ɡ ʌ n s l ɪ ŋ ər /  and  gunfighter  are words used historically to refer to men in the  American Old West  who had gained a reputation of being dangerous with a gun and had participated in gunfights and shootouts.  Gunman  was a more common term used for these individuals in the 19th century. Today, the term "gunslinger" is more or less used to denote someone who is  quick on the...

Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera  ( / ˈ ɡ ʊ z m æ n / ; [6]   Spanish:  [xoaˈkin aɾtʃiˈβaldo ɣusˈman loˈeɾa] ; born 4 April 1957), [7]  known as " El Chapo " ("Shorty",  pronounced  [el ˈtʃapo] ) because of his 168 cm (5 ft 6 in) stature, is a Mexican drug lord and former leader of the  Sinaloa Cartel , an international crime syndicate. He is considered to have been the most powerful drug trafficke...

The  Oneida Community  was a  perfectionist  religious communal society founded by  John Humphrey Noyes  in 1848 in  Oneida, New York . The community believed that  Jesus  had already returned in AD 70, making it possible for them to bring about  Jesus's millennial kingdom  themselves, and be free of sin and perfect in this world, not just in  Heaven  (a belief called  perfectionism ). The Oneida...

The  trolley problem  is a  thought experiment  in  ethics . The general form of the problem is this: You see a runaway  trolley  moving toward five tied-up (or otherwise incapacitated) people lying on the tracks. You are standing next to a lever that controls a  switch . If you pull the lever, the trolley will be redirected onto a side track, and the five people on the main track will be saved. H...

Aleister Crowley  ( / ˈ æ l eɪ s t ər   ˈ k r oʊ l i / ; born  Edward Alexander Crowley ; 12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947) was an English  occultist ,  ceremonial magician , poet, painter, novelist, and mountaineer. He founded the religion of  Thelema , identifying himself as the prophet entrusted with guiding humanity into the  Æon of Horus  in the early 20th century. A prolific writer, he publ...

Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition  of 1897 was an effort to reach the  North Pole  in which all three expedition members perished.  S. A. Andrée , the first Swedish  balloonist , proposed a voyage by hydrogen balloon from  Svalbard  to either Russia or Canada, which was to pass, with luck, straight over the North Pole on the way. The scheme was received with patriotic enthusiasm in Sweden, a nort...

Mary Toft  (née  Denyer ; c. 1701–1763), also spelled  Tofts , was an English woman from  Godalming , Surrey, who in 1726 became the subject of considerable controversy when she tricked doctors into believing that she had given birth to  rabbits .   Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you'd like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here...

The  Mountain Meadows massacre  was a series of attacks on the  Baker–Fancher  emigrant  wagon train  at  Mountain Meadows  in southern  Utah . The attacks began on September 7 and culminated on September 11, 1857, resulting in the mass slaughter of most in the emigrant party by members of the  Utah Territorial Militia  from the  Iron County  district, together with some  Southern Paiute   Native...

Project MKUltra , also called the  CIA mind control program , is the code name given to a program of experiments on human subjects that were designed and undertaken by the United States  Central Intelligence Agency —and which were, at times, illegal. [1] [2] [3]  Experiments on humans were intended to identify and develop drugs and procedures to be used in interrogations in order to weaken the ind...

The Finland conspiracy states that Finland is not a real country. Not only is it not a real country but there is actually no landmass there at all, and the space between Sweden and Russia is actually empty ocean. (Source: Reddit. So you know it's legit.)   Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you'd like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon pa...

The  demon core  was a 6.2-kilogram (14 lb)  subcritical mass  of  plutonium  measuring 89 millimetres (3.5 in) in diameter, which was involved in two  criticality accidents , on August 21, 1945 and May 21, 1946. The core was intended for use in a third World War II nuclear bomb, but remained in use for testing after Japan's surrender. It was designed with a small safety margin to ensure a success...

Lafayette Ronald Hubbard  ( / ˈ h ʌ b ər d /   HUB-ərd ;  [1]  March 13, 1911 – January 24, 1986) was an American author of  science fiction  and  fantasy  stories, and the founder of the  Church of Scientology . In 1950, Hubbard authored  Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health  and established a series of organizations to promote  Dianetics . In 1952, Hubbard lost the rights to Dianetics...