2014 Sydney hostage crisis
The 2014 Sydney hostage crisis, also known as the Sydney siege and Lindt Cafe siege, occurred on 15–16 December 2014 when a lone gunman, Man Haron Monis, held hostage ten customers and eight employees of a Lindt chocolate café located at Martin Place in Sydney, Australia. Police treated the event as a terrorist attack at the time, but Monis' motives were subsequently debated. However, the findings of the Coroner in 2017 deemed the event to be a terrorist attack.
Battle between HMAS Sydney and German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran
Over the next few years, several books about the battle were published. Frame's book was updated and republished in 1998. Wesley Olson's "Bitter Victory: the death of HMAS Sydney", published in 2000, was a re-examination of the evidence, including comparisons with similar naval engagements and sinkings, which supported the accepted view of the battle. Glenys McDonald's 2005 work "Seeking the Sydney: a quest for truth" did not attempt an analysis of records and interrogation transcripts, but instead used accounts from people who claimed to have observed the battle or been involved in the search, rescue, or interrogation to compile an oral history of the engagement and its aftermath. Her research led her to believe that the battle had occurred much closer inshore than claimed by the Germans. The 2005 book "Somewhere below: the Sydney scandal exposed" by John Samuels, took an extreme view on the alternative engagement theory by claiming that "Sydney" was sunk by a Japanese submarine with little or no involvement by "Kormoran", and that there was a wide-ranging cover-up of the proof. Samuels cites no reliable sources and ignores or dismisses evidence supporting the accepted view as part of the cover-up; one review states that the book only brings suffering to the relatives of those killed, and is on par with the Roswell UFO incident as a conspiracy theory. Also in 2005, Brett Manning used the alternate theories of the battle as the basis for the spy novel "Enduring Deception", in which an American agent must cover-up the cruiser's encounter with a Japanese submarine so the Pearl Harbor attack occurs without warning, drawing the United States into the war. There were also many deliberate hoaxes, some contributing to the controversies; the most damaging were claims that the wrecks had been located, hindering serious attempts to mount a search while military assets were used to check the sites. One not only involved a claim to have located the wreck off Dirk Hartog Island, but it also referred to the location of a grave there.