13. It has been alleged the Boston Tea Party was a cover to secretly steal a large cache of smuggled opium
A political protest led by the Sons of Liberty – a radical secret organization in North America dedicated to the advancement of colonial rights – the Boston Tea Party took place on December 16, 1773. Occurring in response to the Tea Act of the same year, which permitted the British East India Company to import tea from China by only paying taxes imposed by the Townshend Acts, a group of demonstrators – some disguised as Native Americans – boarded three ships awaiting in Boston Harbor to land their goods. Dumping 342 chests of tea into the water, the drastic step taken by the nationalists carried a cost in excess of ninety thousand pounds (almost two million dollars today).
Resulting in a repressive crackdown by Parliament, including the Intolerable Acts in 1774, the incident arguably placed the American colonies on an unavoidable path to armed conflict and insurrection against their colonial overlords. However, in the years since the event, a conspiracy theory has evolved adding a different dimension to the incident, suggesting a more suspect and nefarious purpose. Instead of merely dumping the Chinese tea, the activists took the unnecessary step of breaking each crate, with some arguing this action was to search for hidden opium which was subsequently sold for a huge profit and used to finance the impending revolution.