Conspiracy! Trivia Quiz

In 1478 in the Republic of Florence in Italy the Medici family was most powerful. The heads of the family was Lorenzo (the Magnificent) and his brother Giuliano. The Pazzi Family, backed by Pope Sixtus, formed a conspiracy to assassinate the Medici brothers for no other reason than envy and jealousy.

The assassination was to take place during mass in the cathedral. One of the Medici brothers was mortally wounded. The conspirators escaped and tried in vain to rally the citizenry to their cause, but having failed to poll their fellow Florentines, they were captured and were killed.

The Gunpowder Plot was a conspiracy by Catholics to blow up the British Parliament while Protestant King James I and his family were in attendance. The year was 1605. Queen Elizabeth I was dead, but during her long reign she reestablished the Church of England and banned Catholicism, as did her next in line,
James I.

Guy Fawkes, one of the conspirators in the plot, was discovered in the basement of the Parliament building with 36 barrels of gunpowder. To this day, Guy Fawkes Night is celebrated each November 5th.

Alfred Dreyfus was a French artillery officer. He was also a Jew. In 1894 Dreyfus was convicted of espionage based on very flimsy evidence. He was sentenced to life and taken to Devil's Island.

Two years later, a senior French officer discovered exculpatory evidence that pointed to someone other than Dreyfus. That officer was told to withhold the evidence and was transferred to North Africa. Dreyfus was re-tried and convicted yet again, but the French president suspended his sentence.

Finally, in 1906 Dreyfus was fully exonerated. This was a clear case of a conspiracy among high-ranking antisemitic French military officers, and it caused a lot of political upheaval in France. A French newspaper published an "open letter" entitled "J' Accuse..." by famed author Emile Zola defending Dreyfus and accusing the French army of antisemitism. The French army even went so far as to forge and falsify documents at Dreyfus' second trial. When Alfred Dreyfus was finally exonerated, he returned to duty and fought in WWI.

The Business Plot was a 1933 conspiracy by a group of wealthy business leaders to overthrow the government of Franklin D. Roosevelt and replace it with a fascist style government. They saw the New Deal programs Roosevelt was trying to initiate as a threat to their businesses. The Plot included installing Major General Smedley Butler as president.

Butler was a national hero and 2-time Medal of Honor winner. The conspirators proposed that Butler lead a 500,000 man march of veterans on Washington. He decided to go along with the plot, but he also went public. Butler testified before a congressional committee in great detail, but the committee concluded that while a conspiratorial plot existed, no overt act had been made by the conspirators.

The failure to follow through with further investigation and testimony has perplexed historians. Where the conspirators to powerful? Did Roosevelt quash the matter as politically dangerous? It also raises questions about justice when powerful people escape consequences for their actions.

The actual original conspiracy to import heroin into the U.S. from Turkey through France began in the 1930s. According to the New York City Police Department, the kingpin of the heroin smuggling conspiracy was a Corsican named Jean Jehan, but because Jehan had served in the French resistance during WWII, the French police refused to arrest him.

Consequently, the smuggling continued into the 1960s and 70s. Hundreds of pounds of pure heroin were smuggled into the U.S. during this period. Police investigators made the connection between members of the Corsican mafia and the mafia in New York.

When he was released from prison in 1967, Charles Manson had already spent most of his life in penal institutions. He had learned to play the guitar in prison and longed to be a musician. He went to San Francisco, and, as an older man, recruited a number of young impressionable people, mostly young women, to go to Los Angeles with him to start his music career.

Manson and his "family" settled at the Spahn Ranch outside L.A. At this point Manson was in complete control of his followers. Manson had a number of Hollywood contacts. Didi Lansbury, daughter of Angela, while not a member of the family, used her mother's credit cards to buy supplies for them. When Manson realized that his contacts were not going to help him with his music career, he turned to violence. Manson began to lecture his followers on the future of humanity and an impending race war that he termed "Helter Skelter". He also encouraged them to take LSD, a hallucinogenic drug. It was under these circumstances that Manson was able to convince his "family" to commit seven murders during 1970-1971.

In 1973, L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology, conspired with others to infiltrate the agencies of the U.S. Government and steal records or documents that shed an unfavorable light on himself or the Church. He called the plan Operation Snow White. It was a wide-ranging conspiracy involving over 30 countries and 5000 infiltrators. The FBI took down the operation in 1977.

In spite of being the mastermind behind Operation Snow White, Hubbard avoided a conviction and jail-time. His co-conspirators, including his wife, spent various terms behind bars.

The Iran-Contra Affair (1980s) was a conspiracy that involved individuals at the highest levels of the U.S. government. In short, the conspiracy involved the illegal sale of arms to Iran and the diversion of the profits from those sales to aid the Contra (anti-Sandinista) forces in Nicaragua. Iran was under an arms embargo, and the Boland Amendment prohibited further U.S. aid to the Contras. The illegal arms sales were meant to make the Iranians put pressure on Hezbollah to release American hostages.

When the conspiracy became public and the U.S. Congress became involved, someone had to take responsibility. To protect higher ranking members, the two main conspirators, LCOL Oliver North, USMC and retired Navy VADM John Poindexter, both members of the National Security Council, either resigned or were fired. Both men were tried and convicted, but their convictions were overturned.

The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) corruption conspiracy was a massive 3-year FBI investigation. The investigation resulted in a 161-page, 41 count indictment charging crimes including bribery, mail, and wire fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy to commit the alleged crimes against 14 defendants (eventually 30). It lasted for 25 years between the 1990s and 2015.

The case quickly became the biggest corruption scandal in modern sports history. It eventually led to 31 guilty pleas and multiple trial convictions. It recovered hundreds of millions of dollars. It led FIFA to introduce major reforms. The World Cup is the most-watched sporting event in the world, larger even than the Olympics. It generates billions of dollars in revenue from corporate sponsors, broadcasting rights and merchandising.

The Silk Road was an internet platform on the Darknet operated and controlled by Ross William Ulbricht, aka Dread Pirate Roberts. Silk Road was used by drug traffickers, money launderers, hitmen, child pornographers, and terrorists to conduct their illicit business. For currency, Silk Road used bitcoin.

Silk Road was launched in 2011 and taken down by the FBI in 2013. What made this site so popular with criminals was its perceived anonymity. Ulbricht and others also conspired to murder potential witnesses. Ulbricht was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In 2025 President Donald Trump kept a campaign promise to Ulbricht's supporters, and in return for their votes granted Ulbricht a full and unconditional pardon.