One of the many reasons people come up with conspiracy theories is that they don't happen

to like something that happened in the world, so they invent a narrative in which someone

forced it to happen for malicious reasons.

Such is the case with the Avro Arrow, the finest fighter interceptor produced in the 1950s,

beloved by many Canadians, and then unceremoniously and horrifyingly cancelled.

That's coming up today on Skeptoid.

Decoder Ring is Slates podcast about cracking cultural mysteries.

In each episode, host Willa Pascon takes a cultural question, object, or habit, examines

its history, and tries to figure out what it means and why it matters.

The latest season is full of juicy topics like, remember the viral phenomenon in Optical

Mindblower known as the Dress.

What can we learn from the rise and fall of one of the most well-known personal injury

law firms in America?

Listen to these episodes and more on Decoder Ring, wherever you get your podcasts.

For listening to Skeptoid, I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.

The Avro Arrow Conspiracies

In March of 1958, the world's most advanced interceptor aircraft took to the skies on

its maiden test flight.

Canada's Avro F-105 Arrow was big, sleek, beautiful, and blinding white.

It was the first aircraft to use fly-by-wire technology.

It could fly Mach 2 as fast as the world record and had every potential to go faster.

It had the most advanced avionics ever developed, and it had been built to fulfill the world's

...