In this day and age, with so many misleading stories and news, even real, authentic evidence can seem like fiction. But reality quite often turns out to be worse than fiction. The r/AskReddit community has published facts that could pass for a conspiracy theory. However, they all turned out to be true. 
1. 
In 1994, Stella Liebeck accused McDonalds of harming her health. In one of the chain's restaurants, an American woman accidentally spilled coffee on her lap and received third-degree burns. The woman was hospitalized and underwent skin graft surgery.
The jury found McDonald's to be 80 percent responsible for the incident and Liebeck to be 20 percent at fault. The court ordered Liebeck to pay compensation for medical expenses in the amount of $160,000, as well as compensation for emotional damages in the amount of $480,000.
2. 
Ernest Hemingway complained to his loved ones that the FBI was watching him, but they did not believe him. It is believed that this fear motivated him to commit suicide. Decades later, a dossier was released that proved the writer was right: his phones were tapped and agents were tracking his every move.
3. 
In the 1960s and 1970s, doctors sterilized thousands of Native American women, as well as black and poor women, without their consent. The US government fought poverty in this way. The method was supposed to improve the financial situation of women and the quality of life of their families.
4. 
In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, after her death, became the unwitting source of biomaterial that has since been used to advance medical science.
During the African-American woman's stay at Johns Hopkins Hospital, the doctor sent the patient's tumor cells for analysis. It turned out that they have unique abilities: they multiply twice as fast as cells from normal tissues, and their growth suppression program was turned off - they became immortal. HeLa cells have been used in the development of many drugs, including the polio vaccine.
The Lacks family never received compensation for using the cells without the donor's consent.
5. 
The idea of a "carbon footprint" is propaganda created by the British oil and gas company BP in order to deflect responsibility for the climate crisis. To do this, they hired the same advertisers who for decades convinced people that tobacco does not cause cancer.
6. 
Diamond company De Beers holds approximately a 50-year supply of gemstones on its balance sheet solely to create artificial scarcity and maintain high market values.
7. 
In the spring of 1968, President Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not seek re-election as President of the United States. Concerned that the men in his family tended to die early, and after barely surviving a heart attack in the 1950s, Johnson commissioned a top-secret actuarial study to determine his likely life expectancy.
After carefully reviewing his family history and medical records, experts concluded that Johnson was unlikely to live past age 65. The politician realized that if he ran and won in 1968, then at the end of his term he would be 64 years old and would not have time to live for himself. This forced him to refuse to participate in the elections.
Johnson died at 64.
8. 
There is a psychological reaction called the kickback effect. We defend our mistakes even more fiercely and believe in them when we are faced with evidence and facts that we are wrong.
9. 
Members of the Church of Scientology secretly infiltrated US government agencies to destroy documents and prevent investigations into them.
10. 
After World War II, Americans conducted some pretty wild experiments, including trying to see if they could teach dolphins to talk. Scientists believed that this could only be achieved through complete immersion, so they built a house, filled it with water and settled the woman researcher with a dolphin.
The dolphin was a young male and ended up becoming obsessed with his teacher. The project was closed and no further attempts were made to resume it.
eleven. 
In the middle of the last century, bosses of the sugar industry paid for scientific research to hide the harm of sweets on human health and shift the blame to cholesterol. 
Purdue Pharma, the company that single-handedly caused the opioid crisis, is now not only making money from its drug, but also from its antidote.
13. 
In the United States, between 1932 and 1972, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention deliberately failed to inform hundreds of black Americans that they had syphilis. The goal was to study the effects of syphilis in blacks.
14. 
Manufacturers deliberately began making products so that they would break and stop working. Now we have to change things more often, and companies increase profits.
15. 
The Pentagon has never been able to account for more than half its budget.
16. 
Since the times of the Roman Empire, people have known that asbestos is harmful to health. It's the same with lead. There are no old lead miners.
17. 
According to statistics, nuclear energy is safer than solar, wind, coal and gas.
18. 
US intelligence service Operation Northwoods. In 1962, the US Department of Defense proposed carrying out terrorist attacks against the American military and civilian population, and shifting the blame for them to the Cuban government and starting a war. These plans were not approved by President John Kennedy.
19. 
In 1968, on the eve of the Olympic Games in Mexico, the country was gripped by mass protests. The people demanded democratic elections and that the government spend money on the social sphere, and not on stadiums.
Ten days before the opening of the Olympics, 10 thousand students gathered for a peaceful rally in the Square of Three Cultures. In neighboring buildings, the authorities secretly placed snipers who began shooting at the troops keeping order in the square. They responded by opening fire on the crowd.
Mexicans learned about the plot that provoked the massacre of protesters only years later. The exact number of victims is unknown.
20. 
In the early 1920s, incandescent lamp manufacturers, including Osram, Philips and General Electric, united to form the Phoebus cartel. This was a conspiracy to produce short-lived light bulbs with a maximum lifespan of 1,000 hours.
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