Tonypandy is the name of a town in South Wales where, according to accounts, the Government used troops to shoot down Welsh miners who were striking for their rights. It is true that there was a riot of sorts, but Winston Churchill, Home Secretary at the time, was aghast at the thought of troops shooting at miners, so he sent in the constabulary instead. The results were that the only blood spilled came from a few bloody noses. But in the press and in Parliament, the affair was blown up to tremendous proportions for political reasons. Perhaps the most famous in our own area of pseudo-science and skepticism is the discovery of flying saucers in Roswell in 1947.
Cold fusion is another.
Both still keep rolling along.