Template:Are You Sure/October 12

Aleister Crowley during K2 expedition (1902).

• ... that Aleister Crowley wrote to the British Naval Intelligence Division during the Second World War, offering his services, but they declined; and that Crowley associated with a variety of figures in Britain's intelligence community at the time, including Dennis Wheatley, Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming, and Maxwell Knight; and that Crowley claimed to have been behind the "V for Victory" sign first used by the BBC, although this has never been proven?

• ... that astronomer, lens-maker, and scientist Geminiano Montanari (1 June 1633 – 13 October 1687) taught astronomy at the observatory of Panzano, near Modena, where one of his duties was to compile an astrological almanac; and that he did so in 1665, but perpetrated a deliberate hoax by writing the almanac entirely at random, to show that predictions made by chance were as likely to be fulfilled as those made by astrology?