Stranger than fiction.

Germany secretly offered to help Mexico reconquer Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico if the U.S. entered World War I — British codebreakers intercepted the message, and it directly helped pull America into the war.

Ordinary East Berlin residents dug hand-carved tunnels dozens of feet underground, sometimes for months, to smuggle friends and strangers to freedom — and West German students and even NBC News helped fund and film some of the most daring ones.

A forged letter suggesting Soviet Russia was secretly directing British communists helped topple a British government days before an election — and it took over 70 years for the forgery to be officially confirmed.