7 conspiracy theories that turned out to be true

Conspiracy theories are generally so far-fetched that it's easy for people to point out the lack of solid evidence to back the claims up.

So many extreme and unfounded theories take off - from Andrew Tate calling the world a "matrix" simulation, to some claining Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin had a clone following his frightening accident on the field.

However, some odd theories that have made their way onto the internet have proven the doubters wrong, and turned out to be true.

Here are seven once far-fetched conspiracy theories that were real-life reality.

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Canada created a machine to detect if someone is homosexual

In the 1960s, the Canadian government was worried about homosexuality to the point they created that it developed a spitefully named "fruit machine."

The government hired Carleton University professor Frank Robert Wake to create the machine to figure out which federal employees were gay.

The machine measured pupil dilation as a response to same-sex erotic images.

Over 400 men from the military, civil service and more lost their jobs as a result.

President Woodrow Wilson's wife ran the US after he became ill

After former President Woodrow Wilson suffered a debilitating stroke towards the end of his presidency, his wife, Edith Wilson, took over making executive decisions.

The government didn't want to let citizens know about the president's condition so soon, and they didn't for months.

Although Edith claims she was only a "steward," historians note that she was effectively a president for just shy of a year and a half.The Dalai Lama has a six-figure salary following a US government connection

According to the US intelligence accounts, the spiritual Tibetan Buddhist leader earned an annual subsidy of $180,000 starting in the 1960s for the CIA's funding of the Tibetan exile movement.

$1.7 m a year was invested in the operation amid the Cold War and Communist governments like China.

Tobacco giants know that cigarettes are harmful to health

For several decades, tobacco companies hid evidence that smoking was dangerous.

At the start of the 1950s, research revealed the link between lung cancer and smoking. However, four decades later, in the 1990s, Philip Morris, the US' largest cigarette maker, admitted that smoking can causes cancer.

US Government tested mind control abilities

The CIA used LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs on Americans in a top-secret experiment on behavior modification.

The program, called MKUltra, ran for 20 years between 1953-1973, and the CIA started using volunteers to test how far they could manipulate minds.

However, those in charge of the program started to dose people with the psychoactive drug without them knowing.

Many people that were subject to the torture became permanently mentally disabled.

The government spied on John Lennon

Former Beetle member was considered a threat to society with songs like "Give Peace a Chance."

This resonated poorly with former President Richard Nixon's administration.

NPR reported that the FBI put Beetles singer and guitarist was put under surveillance in 1971, with the Immigration and Naturalization Service trying to deport him the following year.

Lennon is not the only celebrity to be a target of the FBI.

Aretha Franklin, the singer-songwriter and "Queen of Soul," was tracked down after fake concerns surrounding "radicalism," "pro-communism," and black extremism.

The government tainted alcohol with poison during the Prohibition era

Alcohol manufacturers had mixed alcohol with dangerous chemicals for a while before Prohibition.

But in 1926, in an attempt to stop bootleggers from creating moonshine, the government asked the alcohol manufacturers to add even stronger harmful chemicals to discourage the process, Snopes stated.

Still, bootleggers and customers weren't discouraged by this. By Prohibition's end in 1933, over 10,000 Americans were killed by the bad booze.

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