95 Fun Facts About Conspiracy Theories

Hoax theories claim NASA staged the Moon landings, but which human spaceflight program really achieved them?

Apollo veteran Buzz Aldrin, then 72, punched a hoax believer who ambushed him at a Beverly Hills hotel in 2002 and called him a liar; prosecutors declined to charge the astronaut.

During Britain's 2020 lockdown, arsonists burned phone masts over fears of which technology, falsely blamed for spreading COVID-19?

5G fears saw phone masts set alight across Britain in April 2020 after viral posts tied the signals to the virus; networks counted 20 suspected arson attacks over the Easter weekend, one on a mast serving a Birmingham emergency hospital.

Which ancient idea of Earth's shape has made a social-media comeback since the 2010s?

Flat Earth believers test the idea themselves in the 2018 documentary Behind the Curve: their own experiments keep returning the results a globe would give, and they set those results aside.

Which secretive US Air Force base in Nevada anchors UFO folklore?

Area 51 was built in the 1950s to test the U-2 spy plane, whose flights at unheard-of heights set off a wave of UFO reports; the CIA did not publicly acknowledge the base until 2013.

Which 18th-century Bavarian secret society is often falsely linked to a global-domination plot?

The Illuminati were founded on 1 May 1776 by law professor Adam Weishaupt and banned by Bavaria's government within a decade; the legend of their secret rule has outlived the real order by more than two centuries.

A famous hoax theory claims which musician died in 1966 and was replaced by a look-alike?

Paul McCartney's 'death' went global in October 1969, after a caller fed supposed clues to Detroit DJ Russ Gibb live on air; McCartney later spoofed the rumour by titling a 1993 live album Paul Is Live.

Which major US airport draws theories about secret bunkers and symbolic murals?

Denver's airport is fronted by a 32-foot blue mustang with glowing red eyes, nicknamed Blucifer, which killed its sculptor when a section fell on him; the airport has since embraced the lore, even installing a talking gargoyle.

Alaska's HAARP research programme is often falsely accused of controlling what global phenomenon?

The weather forms far below the ionosphere that HAARP studies, as its scientists keep pointing out; since the University of Alaska took the site over in 2015 it has held open houses where anyone can tour it.

What term describes belief in a secret elite plotting a totalitarian global government?

The New World Order theory holds that a secretive elite is steering the world toward a totalitarian one-world government; it surged in the 1990s after George H. W. Bush used the phrase in 1990 and 1991 speeches.

The 1934 'Surgeon's Photograph', later exposed as a toy submarine with a sculpted head, claimed to show which creature?

The Loch Ness Monster's most famous portrait was staged by a big-game hunter out for revenge on the newspaper that had mocked his fake monster footprints; the plot only came out sixty years later, when a conspirator confessed.

Which CIA program, begun in 1953, dosed unwitting subjects with LSD in mind-control experiments?

Project MKUltra's files were ordered destroyed by CIA director Richard Helms in 1973, but some 20,000 documents survived because they had been misfiled in a financial records building, and they surfaced in 1977.

The 1947 incident near Roswell, New Mexico, is famously associated with theories of what kind of crash?

Roswell lore holds that an alien spacecraft crashed in 1947; the debris was from a Project Mogul balloon train built to detect Soviet nuclear tests, and the Army's 'weather balloon' line covered that secret program.

What false 2016 conspiracy theory linked a Washington restaurant to a child-trafficking ring run by Democrats?

Pizzagate emerged during the 2016 election, falsely claiming Washington's Comet Ping Pong pizzeria hid a child-trafficking ring tied to Democrats; in December 2016 a believer fired a rifle inside the restaurant.

Which off-the-record conference, held annually since 1954, is cited by theorists as globalist plotting?

The Bilderberg Meeting takes its name from the Dutch hotel that hosted the first one, called by Polish exile Józef Retinger and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands to counter growing anti-Americanism in western Europe.

Shared false memories that differ from documented history, like a misremembered book title, are called the what effect?

The Mandela Effect, named by Fiona Broome after many people falsely recalled Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 1980s, describes shared false memories; 'Berenstein' for the Berenstain Bears is the classic example.

Which theory says Charlemagne and roughly 300 years of the Early Middle Ages are made up?

The phantom time hypothesis, floated by Heribert Illig in 1991, says Otto III and Pope Sylvester II invented the years 614 to 911, Charlemagne included, so that their own reigns would fall on the round year 1000.

Which singer, who officially died in 1977, has been reported alive for decades by believers in a faked death?

Elvis Presley sightings went mainstream a decade after his death, when a Michigan woman said she had spotted him at a Burger King in Kalamazoo; believers also point to the spelling of his middle name on his Graceland gravestone.

Which airliner's disappearance in March 2014, with 239 people aboard, set off years of conspiracy theories?

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing and vanished; the first hard evidence came sixteen months later, when part of a wing washed ashore on Réunion, on the far side of the Indian Ocean.

Which 2017-born theory says a Satan-worshipping cabal controls the US and fights Trump?

QAnon began in October 2017, when an anonymous 4chan poster signing as 'Q' claimed top-secret Q clearance and inside knowledge of the Trump administration; followers pored over the cryptic posts, which they called 'Q drops'.

Which director is falsely rumored to have secretly filmed a staged moon landing for NASA?

Stanley Kubrick had just made 2001: A Space Odyssey, whose Moon scenes and effects fed the rumour that he shot the landing footage; a 2002 French mockumentary, Dark Side of the Moon, played the idea for laughs and may have fuelled it.

Which public health measure, first tried in Grand Rapids in 1945, do theorists call mind control?

Water fluoridation was denounced in the 1950s as a communist plot against American health; Dr. Strangelove later mocked the fear through a deranged general who rants that it will sap his 'precious bodily fluids'.

During the 1980s Satanic Panic, which fantasy game was accused of luring teenagers into devil worship and suicide?

Dungeons & Dragons was blamed after a student's 1979 disappearance was wrongly tied to the game, and a 1982 TV film with a young Tom Hanks dramatised the scare; the publicity only pushed sales up.

What term describes the belief that unelected officials secretly steer government policy?

Deep state is a translation of the Turkish 'derin devlet', a 1990s term for a hidden alliance of military and security officials in Turkey; American politics borrowed the phrase years later.

The lab leak theory of COVID-19's origin centres on a virology institute in which Chinese city?

Wuhan is home to both the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where coronaviruses are studied, and the Huanan market where the first known cluster appeared; that shared address is the heart of the suspicion.

Which US President was the target of the 'birther' conspiracy theory?

Barack Obama, the first Black US president, was born in Hawaii; in 2011 Donald Trump became the theory's leading proponent and claimed credit for pressuring the government to publish the birth certificate.

Which 'American Stonehenge', inscribed in eight languages, was bombed in 2022?

The Georgia Guidestones were commissioned in 1979 by a man who gave his name only as R. C. Christian; their first line, urging humanity to stay under 500 million, drew years of vandalism and charges that the slabs were satanic.

What term describes the belief that the US government was secretly involved in the September 11 attacks?

The 'inside job' claim spread online through Loose Change, a 2005 film made on a laptop for about $2,000 that went on to draw millions of views.

Which US Air Force study logged more than 12,000 UFO sightings between 1952 and 1969?

Project Blue Book logged 12,618 sightings and left 701 unexplained; it was shut down after the Condon Report judged that further UFO study was unlikely to yield major scientific discoveries.

Disappearances in what western Atlantic region have fuelled paranormal and alien-abduction theories?

The Bermuda Triangle got its name from a 1964 magazine article; Lloyd's of London and the US Coast Guard have since found that no more ships are lost there than in any other busy stretch of ocean.

Which rapper, declared dead in 1996, is the subject of long-running faked-death theories?

Tupac Shakur died six days after a Las Vegas drive-by shooting, yet new music kept coming: an album under his alias Makaveli appeared later that year, and more posthumous albums followed.

A 1980s KGB disinformation campaign claimed that which virus had been engineered at a US Army laboratory?

HIV was the target: the story began as an anonymous 1983 letter planted in a small pro-Soviet Indian newspaper and spread worldwide, and in 1992 Moscow's foreign intelligence chief admitted the KGB had been behind it.

Which organ from the 1963 presidential autopsy was found missing from the National Archives in 1966?

The brain vanished from the National Archives; theorists say it was taken to hide a shot from the front, while one historian suggests the family removed it to keep the president's illnesses and medications private.

Chemtrail believers say the long white trails behind high-flying jets are sprayed chemicals, but what are the trails really made of?

Ice crystals form when water vapour in hot engine exhaust freezes in the cold air at altitude; in a 2016 survey, 76 of 77 atmospheric scientists said they had seen no evidence of a secret spraying programme.

The antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was first published in 1903 in which country?

Russia's Znamya newspaper printed the Protocols in 1903; whole passages had been lifted from Maurice Joly's 1864 satire on Napoleon III, a plagiarism The Times of London exposed in 1921.

Which industrialist's weekly newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, promoted The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to American readers from 1920?

Henry Ford's paper ran antisemitic articles for 91 straight issues, later bound as The International Jew; a libel suit by lawyer Aaron Sapiro forced a public apology, and Ford shut the paper down at the end of 1927.

Operation Northwoods, a 1962 Pentagon plan the president rejected, proposed staging fake attacks to justify war with which country?

Cuba was to be blamed for hijackings and bombings staged by the US military itself; the Joint Chiefs signed off on the plan, civilian leaders rejected it, and it stayed secret until 1997.

The satirical 'Birds Aren't Real' movement claims US birds were replaced by what?

Government surveillance drones are what the movement says replaced America's birds; Peter McIndoe improvised the joke at a Memphis protest in January 2017, as a parody of conspiracy thinking.

The 'Philadelphia Experiment' hoax claims which US Navy ship was rendered invisible in 1943?

The USS Eldridge, a destroyer escort, is the ship the Philadelphia Experiment hoax says vanished in 1943; the tale came from letters Carl Allen sent UFO writer Morris Jessup in 1956, and the Navy says no such experiment occurred.

Who wrote the 1968 ancient-astronaut bestseller Chariots of the Gods?

Erich von Daniken wrote the book at night while managing a Swiss hotel, and was later jailed for fraud and embezzlement, writing another book in prison; decades on, his ideas inspired the History Channel's Ancient Aliens.

Which German city has been the butt of a joke conspiracy that it doesn't exist since a 1994 Usenet post?

Bielefeld's non-existence began as a 1994 Usenet joke by student Achim Held; in 2019 the city offered one million euros to anyone who could prove it wasn't there, and nobody collected.

The FBI's file on the 'Majestic 12' papers, said to prove a secret 1947 UFO committee, calls them what?

'Completely bogus' was the FBI's verdict, recorded in 1988 after Air Force investigators judged the memo a fake; the papers had first reached ufologist Jaime Shandera in 1984 as an anonymous roll of film.

Prosecutors in 2020 blamed which natural cause for the 1959 Dyatlov Pass hikers' deaths?

An avalanche was why the hikers fled their tent half-dressed into the cold, prosecutors concluded; a 2021 Swiss study showed how a small slab of snow could break loose hours after they cut into the slope to pitch camp.

Which Alabama town gave its name to the 40-year US study that left Black men's syphilis untreated until 1972?

Tuskegee's study ran from 1932 until a whistleblower's leak put it on front pages in 1972; penicillin had been the standard cure since the 1940s, yet the men were never offered it.

Who was revealed in 2005 to have been Watergate's anonymous source 'Deep Throat'?

Mark Felt was the FBI's number two, passed over for the top job when J. Edgar Hoover died weeks before the break-in; he kept his secret for three decades, then unmasked himself in Vanity Fair at 91.

The 4 August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin 'attack', now known to be false, was used to escalate which war?

Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on 7 August 1964, giving Lyndon Johnson broad authority to escalate the Vietnam War; declassified NSA records later showed the 4 August attack never happened.

The earliest known use of 'conspiracy theory' in its modern sense was an 1863 letter to which newspaper?

Charles Astor Bristed's letter to The New York Times, published on 11 January 1863, used 'conspiracy theory' about claims that British aristocrats were deliberately weakening the US during the Civil War.

In which country are conspiracy theorists derisively nicknamed 'cookers'?

Australia's 'cooker', slang for someone 'cooked in the head', became the stock insult for conspiracy theorists during the pandemic-era protests against lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

Who filmed the famous 26-second home movie of the Dallas motorcade shooting in 1963?

Abraham Zapruder, a Dallas dressmaker, sold the film to Life magazine for $150,000 within days; in 1999 arbitrators made the government pay his heirs $16 million to keep the original.

Which Dallas nightclub owner shot Lee Harvey Oswald on live television in November 1963?

Jack Ruby was sentenced to death, but an appeals court threw out the conviction in 1966; he died of cancer in January 1967 before a new trial could begin, so his story was never tested in court again.

Which Chief Justice chaired the 1963–64 commission that found Oswald acted alone?

Earl Warren at first said no, believing a sitting Chief Justice should not take on such outside work; Lyndon Johnson changed his mind by warning that the killing in Dallas might lead to war.

Which 1964 commission staffer is credited with the JFK 'single-bullet theory'?

Arlen Specter, an assistant counsel to the Warren Commission, devised the single-bullet theory; Exhibit CE 399 is said to account for seven wounds in two men, which is why critics dubbed it the 'magic bullet'.

Who was the only person ever put on trial over the 1963 Dallas assassination?

Clay Shaw, a New Orleans businessman, was prosecuted by district attorney Jim Garrison; the jury acquitted him in under an hour in 1969, and the case later became the spine of the 1991 film JFK.

Who was shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles in June 1968?

Robert F. Kennedy was shot on 5 June 1968 after winning the California primary; Sirhan Sirhan, then 24, was convicted, yet a second-gunman theory built on bullet counts and audio analysis endures.

A 1999 Memphis civil jury found cafe owner Loyd Jowers liable in whose assassination?

Martin Luther King Jr.'s family brought the wrongful-death suit against Loyd Jowers; the jury found him part of a conspiracy, but a 2000 Justice Department review found no persuasive evidence of one.

Which Teamsters boss vanished in July 1975, was declared legally dead in 1982, and is presumed a Mafia victim?

Jimmy Hoffa was last seen outside a restaurant near Detroit; acting on tip-offs, investigators have since dug up a Michigan horse farm and drilled beneath a suburban driveway without finding a trace of him.

A 1998 book claims the liner that sank in 1912 was really which Titanic sister ship?

RMS Olympic had been damaged in a 1911 collision with the warship HMS Hawke; Robin Gardiner's book claims her owners disguised her as Titanic and sank her for the insurance, a theory maritime historians reject.

Which nobleman is the leading alternative candidate for having written Shakespeare's plays?

The Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, became the favourite after a 1920 book by schoolteacher J. Thomas Looney; the snag is that he died in 1604, before about a dozen of the plays are thought to have been written.

William Morgan vanished in 1826 after promising a book exposing which fraternity's secrets, sparking a new American political party?

The Freemasons were blamed for Morgan's disappearance from Batavia, New York; the Anti-Masonic Party that followed held the first presidential nominating convention in 1831 and carried Vermont the next year.

Where did bankers secretly meet in November 1910 to draft what became the Federal Reserve?

Jekyll Island was reached under cover of a duck hunt: Senator Nelson Aldrich had the bankers board his private rail car one at a time and use first names only, and none admitted the meeting until the 1930s.

Who became the first woman executed by the US federal government, as a Lincoln plotter?

Mary Surratt ran the Washington boarding house where the plotters met; five of her nine judges asked for clemency, but Andrew Johnson let the hanging go ahead and later claimed he never saw their plea.

Retired Marine general Smedley Butler told Congress in 1934 that wealthy businessmen wanted him to lead a coup against which president?

Franklin D. Roosevelt was the target of the so-called Business Plot; Butler said he was promised an army of 500,000 men, and a House committee reported it could verify his main claims, yet no one was prosecuted.

Burglars who raided an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, in 1971 exposed which secret programme against activists?

COINTELPRO came to light after eight burglars struck on the night of the Ali–Frazier title fight and mailed the stolen files to reporters; they kept their identities secret until 2014.

Which Idaho senator chaired the 1975 committee that exposed CIA and FBI abuses?

Frank Church's committee exposed CIA assassination plots and the NSA's secret monitoring of Americans' cables; its work led the Senate to create a permanent intelligence committee and to the 1978 surveillance law, FISA.

The Army's Stargate Project, closed in 1995, chiefly tested which claimed psychic skill?

Remote viewing meant psychics trying to 'see' distant targets with the mind, such as where hostages were held; the unit closed after a CIA-commissioned review judged its results too vague to act on.

Barney and Betty Hill claimed a 1961 alien abduction while driving through the White Mountains of which state?

New Hampshire put up an official roadside marker near the spot in 2011; the Hills retold the abduction under hypnosis in 1964, more than two years after the drive.

Sceptics say the 'UFO' that pulsed every five seconds as US airmen searched Rendlesham Forest in 1980 was really what?

A lighthouse at Orford Ness, about five miles off, flashed at exactly that rate; the deputy base commander's own tape of the search records a light blinking every five seconds in its direction.

Which winged humanoid was reported around Point Pleasant, West Virginia in 1966–67?

Mothman was first reported in November 1966 under the headline 'Couples See Man-Sized Bird'; John Keel's 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies tied the sightings to the December 1967 Silver Bridge collapse.

The 1967 Patterson–Gimlin film, shot beside a creek in northern California, is the most famous footage said to show which creature?

Bigfoot glances back over its shoulder at the camera in the film's best-known moment; a man named Bob Heironimus later claimed he was the one in the suit, which co-filmer Bob Gimlin has always denied.

Hoaxer Pierre Plantard founded which 'order' in 1956, later central to The Da Vinci Code?

Plantard registered the Priory of Sion in 1956 and later claimed it guarded a Merovingian bloodline; The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (1982) fused that with a Jesus bloodline, and Dan Brown borrowed the lot.

Which Yale senior society, founded in 1832, is a magnet for elite-cabal theories?

Skull and Bones had a member on each side of the 2004 presidential ballot, George W. Bush and John Kerry; asked what that meant, Kerry replied, 'Not much, because it's a secret.'

A conspiracy broadcaster secretly filmed the 'Cremation of Care' rite in 2000 where?

The broadcaster sneaked into Bohemian Grove in Sonoma County, California, in July 2000 and filmed the ceremony at the Owl Shrine beside the lake; he called it a 'ritual sacrifice', which other reporting does not support.

Which broadcaster was ordered in 2022 to pay nearly $1.5 billion for calling the Sandy Hook school shooting a hoax?

Alex Jones lost defamation cases in Connecticut and Texas, where bereaved families described years of harassment and threats from people who believed him; he filed for bankruptcy within weeks of the awards.

Texas's governor ordered the State Guard to monitor which US military exercise, amid fears of a federal takeover?

Jade Helm 15 was a summer 2015 Special Operations drill across several states; theorists called it cover for martial law, and former Republican legislator Todd Smith told Greg Abbott he was 'pandering to idiots'.

French writer Renaud Camus gave which white-nationalist conspiracy theory its name with a 2011 book?

Great Replacement translates the title of Camus's book, Le Grand Remplacement; the gunman who attacked two mosques in Christchurch in 2019 borrowed the same title for his manifesto.

Fox News paid $787.5 million in 2023 to settle a defamation suit by which company?

Dominion Voting Systems settled with Fox for $787.5 million in April 2023 just as opening statements were due in Delaware; Fox acknowledged the court's ruling that it had broadcast false statements about the company.

The 'Great Reset' conspiracy theory grew out of a 2020 recovery plan from which body?

World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab launched 'The Great Reset' in 2020 as a post-pandemic recovery plan; it was to be the theme of the forum's 2021 annual meeting, which the pandemic then cancelled.

Which British doctor's fraudulent 1998 Lancet paper linked the MMR vaccine to autism?

Andrew Wakefield's 1998 paper was retracted by The Lancet in February 2010 after the General Medical Council found him dishonest; it struck him off that May, and journalist Brian Deer had exposed his undisclosed financial interests.

Who told NBC's Today show in 1998 that a 'vast right-wing conspiracy' was out to get the president?

Hillary Clinton said it to Matt Lauer on 27 January 1998, days after the Lewinsky story broke; the phrase had already been used in a 1995 White House memo on how scandal stories reached the mainstream press.

'Stop the Steal' was coined in 2016 by which Republican operative?

Roger Stone launched 'Stop the Steal' in 2016 as a website and committee warning of a rigged election; Women for America First co-founder Amy Kremer revived the name as a Facebook group during the 2020 count.

Jeffrey Epstein, of 'didn't kill himself' meme fame, died in 2019 at which New York jail?

Epstein was found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan on 10 August 2019; the two guards on duty were charged with falsifying records, and the jail itself was closed in 2021.

Operation Paget examined conspiracy claims about whose 1997 death?

Operation Paget, led by former Met chief Lord Stevens, concluded in December 2006 that Princess Diana's Paris crash was a tragic accident; a 2008 inquest jury blamed the gross negligence of her driver and the pursuing paparazzi.

A theory born on a Brazilian blog claims which Canadian singer died in 2003 and was replaced by a double named Melissa?

Avril Lavigne's 'replacement' was invented by a 2011 blog, Avril Está Morta, whose own opening line admits the hoax: it says the blog was created to show how conspiracy theories can look true.

ZetaTalk founder Nancy Lieder first made which doomsday planet prediction in 1995?

The Nibiru cataclysm was first due in May 2003, by Lieder's reckoning; when nothing happened, believers moved the date and later tied it to the 2012 doomsday scare, prompting repeated NASA rebuttals.

The 1908 Tunguska explosion, a favourite of UFO theorists, flattened forest where?

Siberia's blast flattened more than 2,000 square kilometres of forest yet left no crater, and no scientific expedition reached the remote site until 1927, nineteen years later.

Which 1970s thriller depicts NASA faking a crewed Mars landing?

Capricorn One grew out of Peter Hyams's years covering the Moon missions for CBS, when it struck him that an event of enormous importance had almost no witnesses; O. J. Simpson plays one of the astronauts.

Which word completes the title of Richard Hofstadter's 1964 essay, 'The ____ Style in American Politics'?

Paranoid was the only word, Hofstadter wrote, that evoked the 'heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy' he had in mind; the essay ran in Harper's Magazine in November 1964, during Barry Goldwater's campaign.

In the 1997 film Conspiracy Theory, Mel Gibson's conspiracy-obsessed character has what job?

Taxi driver Jerry Fletcher shares his theories with anyone who will listen and prints them in a newsletter; he also buys a copy of The Catcher in the Rye whenever he sees one, without ever reading it.

Who was convicted and executed for setting the February 1933 Reichstag fire?

Marinus van der Lubbe, a young Dutchman arrested inside the burning building, was guillotined in January 1934; Germany granted him a posthumous pardon in 2008, and historians have long disputed whether he acted alone.

The Gleiwitz incident of 31 August 1939 was a staged attack on what kind of facility?

SS men in Polish uniforms seized the German radio station at Gleiwitz and broadcast an anti-German message as a pretext for invading Poland the next day; the operation was led by Alfred Naujocks.

Critics say the 1999 apartment bombings, and a suspicious FSB 'drill' in Ryazan, were a pretext for war in which breakaway republic?

Chechnya was being bombed within a day of the Ryazan find: residents had spotted sacks wired to a detonator in their basement, officials praised their vigilance, and then the FSB called it a training exercise using sugar.

Rudolf Hess flew solo to which country in May 1941, inspiring decades of theories?

Hess parachuted into Scotland on 10 May 1941, hoping to open peace talks through the Duke of Hamilton; decades of claims that the man later held in Spandau was a double were laid to rest by a DNA test in 2019.

Stalin told the Potsdam Conference that Hitler was alive in Spain or which other country?

Stalin, asked at Potsdam in July 1945 how Hitler had died, said he was living in Spain or Argentina; French researchers who examined the teeth held in Moscow reported in 2018 that they match Hitler's dental X-rays.

Which tech billionaire was falsely accused of using COVID vaccines to implant microchips?

Bill Gates had spoken of future 'digital certificates' showing who had been tested or vaccinated, never of chips; the rumour grew out of that remark and spread widely on Facebook.

The 'mud flood' theory credits grand old buildings worldwide to which lost empire, named after an old map label for Central Asia?

Tartaria comes from 'Tartary', the vague label European mapmakers once gave to much of inner Asia; the lost-empire idea began with Anatoly Fomenko's pseudo-historical 'new chronology' and spread online from about 2016.

Which three letters typed in Wingdings produced a skull, Star of David and thumbs-up?

Typing NYC in Wingdings, shipped with Windows 3.1 in 1992, gave a skull, Star of David and thumbs-up, read by some as an antisemitic message; Microsoft's later Webdings font deliberately renders NYC as eye, heart and skyline.