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  The US executed Japanese soldiers for waterboarding in WWII John McCain recently reminded the nation of this fact: " ... following World War II war crime trials were convened. The Japanese were tried and convicted and hung for war crimes committed against American POWs. Among those charges for which they were convicted was waterboarding." John McCain on Thursday, November 29th, 2007 in a ....
  Updated: 2009/04/24 PM 8:45:42
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  The moon landing photos have crosshairs that appear to go behind objects, proving they're fake Some people claim that there are issues with the crosshairs (fiducials) that were etched onto the Reseau plate of the cameras used to photograph the moon landing. In some of the photos, the crosshairs do indeed appear to pass behind objects, rather than in front of them where they should be, as if the photos were altered. The ....
  Updated: 2009/03/07 AM 5:15:02  0  4
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  Extremist religious beliefs are the main motivating factor in terrorist suicide attacks The world leader in suicide terrorism from 1980 to 2004 is the secular Sri Lankan marxist group, Tamil Tigers. Pape's Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (2005) controverts many widely held beliefs about suicide terrorism.[3] Based on an analysis of every known case of suicide terrorism from 1980 to 2005 (315 attacks as part of ....
  Updated: 2009/01/06 AM 6:08:43
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  Yo-Yos were once used as weapons A popular belief is that the yo-yo was a weapon for over 400 years in the Philippines.[1] However, the idea was debunked by the former president of the Filipino American National Historical Society[2] and by the chairman of the American Yo-Yo Association’s History and Collecting Committee.[3] Nonetheless, the allegation was used in a Diet ....
  Updated: 2008/12/29 AM 9:15:05
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  Chinese Ships Discovered the New World Seventy Years Earlier than Columbus The Author of the 1421 Theory Rowan Gavin Paton Menzies (born 1937) is a retired British submarine commander and amateur historian best known as the author of the controversial book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World, which asserts that ships from the Chinese fleet of admiral Zheng He traveled to the Americas prior to Christopher ....
  Updated: 2008/09/02 PM 11:41:05
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  Saint Patrick used the shamrock to illustrate the holy trinity The story was first recorded 1200 years after his death. "There is no historical evidence that St Patrick had any connection with shamrock; nothing can be traced in historical documents to confirm the legend that he preached to the Irish people using a trefoil (three leaflets on one stalk) as a parable for the Holy Trinity (Three Persons ....
  Updated: 2008/03/29 AM 9:35:08
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  Saint Patrick banished the snakes from Ireland Glaciers, Not St. Patrick, Kept Snakes out of Ireland Pious legend credits Patrick with banishing snakes from the island by ringing his bell from the top of Croagh Patrick, but post-glacial Ireland never had snakes;[1][2][3] one suggestion is that snakes referred to the serpent symbolism of the Druids of that time and place, as shown for ....
  Updated: 2008/03/29 AM 9:05:39  1  0
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  The Christian holiday of Easter is named after a pagan fertility goddess The modern English term Easter developed from the Old English word Eastre, which itself developed prior to AD 899. The name refers to the Eostur-monath, a month of the Germanic calendar which has been referenced in ancient literature to have been named for the goddess Eastre in Germanic paganism.[1] In his De temporum ratione, ....
  Updated: 2008/03/23 PM 9:50:57
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  Abraham Lincoln said 'Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption will follow' The 'corporate corruption' prophecy attributed to Lincoln "We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood... It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near ....
  Updated: 2009/03/03 PM 3:41:10  1  2
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  Julius Caesar said 'Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war' The 'Drums of War' misquote The following quotation warning of the dangers of patriotism attributed to Caesar, or sometimes to Shakespeare's play, began appearing on the internet and elsewhere in 2001: “ Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic ....
  Updated: 2008/03/21 PM 10:34:38
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  In 1962 the Pentagon planned to stage acts of terrorism on US soil and blame it on Cuba Operation Northwoods was a 1962 plan by the U.S. Department of Defense to stage acts of simulated or real terrorism on US soil and against U.S. interests and then put the blame of these acts on Cuba in order to generate U.S. public support for military action against the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. As part of the U.S. government's ....
  Updated: 2008/03/03 PM 4:50:01
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  The 'Gulf of Tonkin' incident which started the Viet Nam war was fake There was no second attack Oil on canvas by Commander E.J. Fitzgerald, January 1965. It depicts the engagement between USS Maddox (DD-731) and three North Vietnamese motor torpedo boats on 2 August 1964. "It was not an ....
  Updated: 2008/02/18 PM 1:46:15
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  The 'Boston Tea Party' was an early American anti-tax protest The Boston Tea Party Was Actually an Anti-Monopoly Protest On the website of the modern East India Company, it states: "... the infamous Boston Tea Party in 1773 was a direct result of the drawback of the government in London of duties on tea which enabled the East India Company to dump excess stocks on the American colonies, and ....
  Updated: 2008/02/14 PM 1:10:47  1  1
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  Powerful interests on Wall Street plotted a fascist overthrow of Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 The Business Plot, the Plot Against FDR, or the White House Putsch, was a political conspiracy involving several wealthy businessmen to overthrow the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. Details of the matter came to light when retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler testified before a Congressional committee that a group ....
  Updated: 2008/02/14 AM 11:10:52
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  U.S. frontiersmen scalped Indians & Benjamin Franklin pushed to make it a legal trade Franklin Supported the Legislation Only as a Political Maneuver "The common conception is of Indians as scalp takers, but it was the colonists who adopted the tactic as a means of Indian control, and it even became a profitable enterprise. In the Bay Colony in 1703, a scalp brought 12 pounds sterling, a price inflated to 100 pounds by ....
  Updated: 2008/02/14 AM 12:52:34
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  'Jesus' was the name that Christ was known by during his lifetime Maybe He Went By 'Yeshua' (Joshua) But Definitely Not 'Jesus' According to most historians, Jesus probably spoke Aramaic and Hebrew.[1] The name "Jesus" is an English transliteration of the Latin which in turn comes from the Greek name Iesous (Ιησους). The name has also been translated into English ....
  Updated: 2008/02/13 PM 9:29:52  1  0
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  The CIA conducted mind-control experiments on unwitting civilians in the 1950s and 1960s Project MKULTRA, or MK-ULTRA, was the code name for a CIA mind-control research program, run by the Office of Scientific Intelligence, that began in the early 1950s and continued at least through the late 1960s.[1][2][3]. There is much published evidence that the project involved the surreptitious use of many types of drugs, as well as other  ....
  Updated: 2008/02/11 AM 3:04:45
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  George W. Bush's grandfather (Prescott Bush) illegally traded with the Nazis during WWII Banking With Hitler Harriman Bank was the main Wall Street connection for several German companies and the varied U.S. financial interests of Fritz Thyssen. Thyssen had been an early financial backer of the Nazi party until 1938, but by 1939 had fled Germany and was bitterly denouncing Hitler. He was later jailed by the Nazis for his ....
  Updated: 2008/02/11 AM 2:44:01  1  1
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  Julius Caeser was bald A Roman Account On the Life of the Caesars[1], in Latin De vita Caesarum, or as it is often known in English, The Twelve Caesars, is a set of twelve biographies of Julius Caesar and the first 11 emperors of the Roman Empire. On the Life of the Caesars, which was written in 121 during the reign of the emperor Hadrian, was the most popular work of ....
  Updated: 2008/02/11 AM 1:30:22
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  Einstein was a poor math student who flunked out of school Young Albert Einstein Excelled in Math and Science "Legend has it that Einstein was a poor student who flunked out of school, but this was not the case. He excelled at math and science, though he often got only mediocre grades in other classes."[1] From Walter Isaacson’s biography of Einstein: One widely held belief about ....
  Updated: 2008/02/11 AM 12:22:08
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  Caligula named his favorite horse as Roman Consul Caligula Was Only Rumored to Have Contemplated the Appointment While a political career for Incitatus (Caligula's horse) was supposedly contemplated, it was never reported to have actually happened: "To prevent Incitatus, his favourite horse, from growing restive he always picketed the neighbour-hood with troops on the day before the ....
  Updated: 2008/02/08 PM 3:43:45
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  The Norse called Newfoundland 'Vinland' because of the wild grapes they found there Climate Has Never Supported Wild Grapes Proxy reconstructions show that the Medieval Warm Period (when the Vikings are said to have discovered North America) was not as warm as today's climate (which does not support wild grape growth in that area).[1][2][3] The NOAA's paleoclimate website has this to say: What records that do exist show ....
  Updated: 2008/02/09 PM 2:57:46  0  1
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  The sinking of the the Lusitania caused U.S. intervention in WWI The Lusitania Was Not the Catalyst For Intervention Despite what many schoolbooks say, the sinking of the Lusitania was not the reason the U.S. declared war on Germany.  The Lusitania was sunk in May 1915, and the U.S. declared war on Germany in March 1917. It's plausible to say that the sinking of the Lusitania marked the start of a ....
  Updated: 2008/02/11 PM 7:44:10
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  Shakespeare's works were ghostwritten
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  The FBI pressured Martin Luther King, Jr. to kill himself The Suicide Letter Martin Luther King, Jr. was a frequent target of investigation. The FBI found no evidence of any crime, but attempted to use tapes of King involved in sexual activity for blackmail. In his 1991 memoirs, Washington Post journalist Carl Rowan points out that the FBI had sent, along with copies of these tapes, at least one ....
  Updated: 2008/02/13 PM 11:01:01
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  Martin Luther King, Jr. plagiarized in college First Discovery of King's Plagiarism During the late 1980s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s papers were donated by his wife Coretta Scott King to the Stanford University's King Papers Project.  As the papers were being organized and worked on, the staff of the project made a discovery that dismayed them — King's doctoral ....
  Updated: 2008/02/13 PM 11:19:39
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  Martin Luther King, Jr. was a communist sympathizer Public Statements Though Martin Luther King's public language was guarded, so as to avoid being linked to communism by his political enemies, in private he sometimes spoke of his support for democratic socialism: “You can't talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro without talking about billions of dollars. You can't talk ....
  Updated: 2008/02/13 PM 11:20:19
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  An 1886 Supreme Court decision ruled corporations are persons The Definition Was Only Found in the Headnotes In 1886, John Chandler Bancroft Davis (1822-1907), added commentary in the headnotes to the case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company that defined a corporation as a legal person.  Davis was the former president of the Newburgh & New York Railroad, and Reporter of ....
  Updated: 2008/02/11 PM 10:55:02  1  0
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  Socrates was put to death for hurting powerful egos and teaching about 'false gods' Socrates' Trial in Context Although "corrupting the youth" and teaching about "false gods" were part of the charges that Socrates of Ancient Greece was famously put on trial for, most people do not understand the context of these accusations and why the Athenian assembly was willing to put Socrates to death.  Most people ....
  Updated: 2008/12/09 PM 7:32:02
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  Republican officials delayed the release of US hostages in Iran to prevent Carter's re-election in 1980 The October Surprise conspiracy was an alleged plot that claimed representatives of the 1980 Ronald Reagan campaign had conspired with Islamic Republic of Iran to delay the release of 52 Americans held hostage in Tehran until after the 1980 U.S. Presidential election. In exchange for their cooperation, the United States would supply weapons to ....
  Updated: 2008/02/08 PM 1:33:59
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  Hitler was a vegetarian Was Hitler a vegetarian? In addition to being a teetotaler and a non-smoker,  many scholars believe that Adolf Hitler practiced some form of vegetarianism.  [1][2][3] The vegetarianism of Adolf Hitler is thought to have been based on Richard Wagner's which connected the future of Germany with vegetarianism.   Hitler believed ....
  Updated: 2008/01/18 AM 11:55:28
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  Hitler only had one testicle Did Hitler only have one testicle? One website quips,  "Among conspiracy buffs, this is what is known as (ahem) the lone-nut theory."   During World War II British Tommies would sing (to the tune of the "Colonel Bogey March"): Hitler has only got one ball, Göring has two, but very ....
  Updated: 2008/01/18 PM 12:08:09
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  The saying O.K. began as a term for 'zero killed' The "Zero Killed" Rumor It has been suggested that in World War II the term "zero killed" was used when a unit suffered no casualties in combat, and that this was then shortened to 0K. This proposed etymology is grossly anachronistic, since by this time the term had been widely used for a full century. The same theory has ....
  Updated: 2008/02/22 PM 12:39:27
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  Hubris meant 'excessive pride' in Ancient Greece Hubris or hybris (Greek ὕβρις), according to its modern usage, is exaggerated self pride or self-confidence (overbearing pride), often resulting in fatal retribution. In Ancient Greece, "hubris" referred to actions taken in order to shame the victim, thereby making oneself seem superior. Hubris was a crime in ....
  Updated: 2008/02/11 PM 7:47:17
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  Reagan compared the Mujahidin (later Al-queda) to the Founding Fathers No Original Source Can Be Found Many sources claim that Ronald Reagan said that the Mujahidin in Afghanistan (that later evolved into Al-queda) were the "moral equivalent to the Founding Fathers".  "In 1985, President Ronald Reagan received a group of bearded men. These bearded men I was writing about in those days in The ....
  Updated: 2008/02/22 PM 12:46:25
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  The U.S. Government gave Syphilis to African Americans in Alabama in 1932 The U.S. Government Denied Treatment and Studied How Syphilis Killed  a Group of African American Males In one of the most notorious medical studies in American history, known as the "Tuskegee Experiment", the U.S. government studied the effects of Syphilis on poor, mostly illiterate African American sharecroppers while denying ....
  Updated: 2008/02/11 PM 9:26:01
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  Benito Mussolini said Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism No Original Source Can Be Found Some critics equate too much corporate power and influence with fascism. Often they cite a quote claimed to be from Mussolini: "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." Several variations of the alleged quote exist. However the veracity ....
  Updated: 2008/06/23 AM 11:13:51
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  George Bush Sr. secretly worked with the CIA during the Bay of Pigs There is much evidence that George Bush Sr. worked with the CIA in some capacity during in the early 60s when he was running his private oil drilling company "Zapata Offshore Oil". FBI and CIA memos Two FBI memoranda have been offered to show connections between the CIA and George H. W. Bush during his time at Zapata. The first memo ....
  Updated: 2008/02/08 PM 3:56:09  1  0
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  Thomas Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration of Independence condemned slavery Original Draft of the Declaration of Independence Although Thomas Jefferson kept slaves himself, he apparently thought it an abhorrent practice and attempted to condemn it in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence.  While it was a hypocritical position for him to take, it reveals the inner conflict he had about his own ....
  Updated: 2008/02/11 PM 8:27:08  1  1
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  Every inteligence agency in the world believed Saddam had WMDs Statement by John McCain Senator John McCain propagated this myth after it was clear no WMDs would be found in Iraq.  To be fair, many intelligence agencies certainly did not trust Saddam's declarations that he had destroyed all of his WMDs.  However, to say they all believed he definitely had WMDs in his possession was quite an ....
  Updated: 2008/02/06 AM 11:19:28


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