Random Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out To Be True (19 items)

(#18) Apple E-Book Price-Fixing

In July 2013, Apple agreed to settle a class action lawsuit for over $450 million, alleging that the computing monolith had conspired with five publishing companies to drive up e-book prices, in an effort to thwart Amazon. A Federal judge in New York agreed that the plot constituted a conspiracy to drive Amazon out of business and hurt competitive practices.

However, even after the decision, Amazon still controlled close to two-thirds of the e-book market, often fixing prices themselves, selling e-books at a loss to get customers to buy other products.
(#10) MK-ULTRA

The infamous MK-ULTRA experiment ran for 20 years starting in 1953, and involved citizens unknowingly being dosed with mind-altering LSD and other drugs by CIA doctors to study effective ways to carry out mind control.

While the goal was to advance US intelligence and special operations capabilities, it failed to achieve the desired results and violated ethical medical codes and basic human rights laws. It wasn't until 1976 that President Ford enacted an Executive Order to prohibit experimental drug use on human subjects without their informed consent.
(#16) Steroids in Baseball

Dozens of baseball players and their clinicians were involved in a conspiracy to take steroids, obtain fraudulent prescriptions, and hide the effects of the drugs they were taking. Major League Baseball, at least to some extent, knew what was going on and looked the other way, as long as the players involved kept making money for the game and the league.

It finally fell apart when a 20 month Congressional investigation led to a long list of players who had taken illegal substances. In 2003, under enormous fan and government pressure, baseball instituted a new drug testing policy.
(#9) The GM Trolley Car Conspiracy

The so-called “General Motors streetcar conspiracy” involved a pair of transportation companies buying up and dismantling electric trolley car lines in dozens of American cities. These two companies, which later merged into one trust, were heavily financed by car and truck producers, tire manufacturers, oil companies, and the monolithic Standard Oil.

While the government also had a role in destroying the burgeoning electric train industry, as well as the deep debt the trolley companies were in, many speculate that there was some kind of conspiracy to knock out GM’s competition and monopolize the transportation industry.
(#3) Lenin Returns to Russia

With the tide of World War I starting to turn against the German Empire, drastic steps needed to be taken to get Russia out of the war and move its troops to the Western Front. In early 1917, German authorities allowed exiled communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin to cross Germany from Switzerland to Sweden in a sealed railway car. German authorities hoped that the return of the anti-war Lenin to Russia would help overthrow the government and undermine the Russian war effort.

Berlin was right, and thanks to the communist revolutionaries led by Lenin, Russia was out of the war less than a year later.
(#8) Cigarettes Cause Cancer

Tobacco companies knew as early as the 1950s that smoking was directly linked to lung cancer. Even before then, in the 1920s, a few maverick researchers were publishing studies that theorized that the effects of smoking weren’t beneficial, as the tobacco manufacturers claimed.
But it took until 1998’s Master Settlement Agreement between the US Government and the leading tobacco companies for these links to be acknowledged, and restitution made to victims.