Category: Fact Checking

Barcelona’s Basílica de la Sagrada Família, with its towering, twirling spires, has long defined the Spanish city’s skyline. Antoni Gaudí, the Catalan architect whose characteristic designs appear in gardens, sculptures and other architecture across Barcelona, began work on the enormous landmark in 1883.

Visitors to the basilica in the 21st century have seen it loom over urban Barcelona’s characteristic square apartment blocks. In December 2025, however, an image circulated online that showed a very different view of the landmark. 

According to one X user, a sepia-toned image showed the early days of the basilica in 1906, when the structure was surrounded by rubble, earth and livestock. The user who posted the picture wrote (archived), “Barcelona, 1906. The Sagrada Família basilica in the background, 24 years into its construction.”

That same image, claiming to show Sagrada Família in 1906, also circulated on Facebook (archived), Threads (archived), Bluesky (archived) and Reddit (archived) dating back to at least 2021. Some versions were black-and-white, while others appeared colorized.

The image appeared to be an authentic photo, meaning not created or edited using artificial intelligence. According to a 2004 doctoral thesis on the work of César Comas Llabería, a physician who opened the first X-ray clinic in Spain and reportedly took the photo in question, it showed Sagrada Família around 1905, 23 years after construction began.

Francesca Portolés Brasó, the author of the thesis that featured Llabería’s photograph, wrote that she came across the photo in a collection of the doctor’s work that his family had preserved after his death.

We reached out to Brasó to ask for more information about the photo and whether Llabería’s family still held the collection of his work. We also reached out to the foundation that builds and restores Sagrada Família to ask for information about the photo and whether it authentically depicted the basilica at that time. We await replies to our queries. 

Because we coud not reach Brasó or see the original photo for ourselves, we have left this claim unrated. We’ll update this story if we receive further information.

Brasó took special note of the photograph while combing through the collection, writing (Page 66):

It was impossible not to stop and contemplate through the stereoscopic viewer the Sagrada Familia under construction, with a group of black goats in the foreground, or the image of César Comas staring at us inside his laboratory, with a backdrop full of glass jars, to give just two examples. 

She also noted in the thesis that she intended to publish Llabería’s work as an archive called “Arxiu Dr. Comas.” (“Arxiu” is Catalan for “archive.”)

We could not find an online version of “Arxiu Dr. Comas” at the time of this writing.

Sagrada Família was originally designed by the architect Francisco de Paula del Villar in 1882. Del Villar envisioned a basilica in the style of the time, incorporating neo-Gothic traits. Gaudí took over the project in 1883 and took it in a very different direction, using the style known as Catalan Modernism. Gaudí would continue work on the basilica until his death in 1926 and, 100 years later, his masterpiece finally neared completion.

DeepL.com provided translations from Spanish into English.

In January 2026, a rumor resurfaced across social media claiming to quote Serbian American inventor Nikola Tesla’s last words before his death in January 1943. The posts attributed to Tesla a final message to his mother, lamenting that his years of serving mankind brought him “nothing but insults and humiliation.”

One X post (archived) claimed Tesla’s last message to his mother was: “All these years that I had spent in the service of mankind brought me nothing but insults and humiliation.”

(X user @NightSkyNow)

One Facebook post shared a longer variation of the same quote, reading: “I wish I could be beside you now mother, to bring you the glass of water. All these years I have spent in the service of mankind brought me nothing but insults and humiliation.”

The claim also has spread across platforms such as X, Threads, Quora, iFunny, 9GAG and Tumblr. Tesla’s alleged last words have also gained traction on YouTube, with videos showcasing his purported letters to his mother:

However, no demonstrable evidence substantiates the authenticity of Tesla’s alleged last words. The claim lacks support from historical records, archival documentation or reputable sources. Furthermore, a leading expert on Tesla’s life confirmed that he never made such a statement. 

No proof letter existed before 2015

The claim originated from a letter that Tesla allegedly wrote to his mother. However, Google search results in English and Serbian showed that the quote did not appear online before Jan. 1, 2015:

(Google search)

An article on a Croatian blog from January 2015 claimed to feature “the first English translation of Nikola Tesla’s last letter.” The alleged letter was also featured in an English-language article (archived) published in March 2015 by a Serbian news outlet Telegraf.rs. 

The letter was divided in five parts, allegedly written over five consecutive days, from Nov. 18 to Nov. 22. The viral quote is found in the Nov. 18 section of the letter (emphasis ours):

My dear mother, I feel sad and dreary when I think of you. I don’t know how, but I feel that you are not well. I wish I could be beside you now mother, to bring you a glass of water. All these years that I had spent in the service of mankind brought me nothing but insults and humiliation. This morning I woke up early, just before the dawn, because I had heard something that I have been hearing through my dreams for quite some time now. I heard this voice that sang some beautiful chant, lament or even prayer in Moorish. When I came to my senses I realized that this voice came from everywhere and it was impossible to determine whether it was from within. I am afraid of loosing my mind. I cannot confide this to Doctor Lionel because I don’t trust him anymore. I heard that he visited Mr. Edison two weeks ago…

However, the Telegraf.rs article included a disclaimer: “IMPORTANT: The authenticity of this letter has never been confirmed…”

Telegraf.rs attributed the letter’s source to “TV Best,” but no verifiable information about this source exists online. Another 2015 article further suggested the source might have been a now-defunct website, tvbest.rs.

In March 2015, Telegraf.rs published a correction in Serbian, stating, “The letter circulating on the Internet is not Tesla’s last letter to his mother,” referencing an article from the Serbian fact-checking website FakeNews.rs.

We have reached out to Telegraf.rs for a comment and will update this article if we receive a response.

Inconsistencies in letters

In October 2024, a Serbian fact-checking organization FakeNews Tragač, a signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network, published an article titled “Tesla’s ‘farewell letter to his mother’ is actually a jumble of illogicalities.” 

The organization pointed out “the content of the letter consists of numerous illogicalities that directly refute its meaning and credibility,” concluding that the letter was not authentic. For instance, the letter was dated in November, yet referenced events from April, creating chronological inconsistencies. Moreover, the letter suggested Tesla was in America at the time, but historical records indicate he was in Paris during the period in question.

Additionally, the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade confirmed to FakeNews Tragač that the alleged letter had “nothing to do with Tesla.” 

Milica Kesler, an archivist at Nikola Tesla Museum, told us via email that, “What is known about the hour of Tesla’s death is from the testimony of his nephew Sava Kosanović, Charlotte Muzar and Kenneth Swezey. Nikola Tesla died alone in his hotel room at the New Yorker Hotel. So there were no witnesses who could testify to what Tesla’s last words were.”

Kesler also added that “notes with mathematical calculations were found on his bedside table, so it is assumed that this was the last thing he did,” highlighting that “Tesla’s mother Djuka passed away in 1892, i.e. 50 years earlier.”

“Various arbitrariness and romantic stories are circulating on the Internet, but unfortunately, most of them are not very accurate,” she concluded.

FakeNews Tragač reported that the alleged letter first appeared in 2006 on the website Kozarac.ba, dedicated to a town in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The 2006 article indicated Preporod, an “Islamic information newspaper,” as a source. 

Kozarac.ba Facebook page managers told us that they “shared that text from the Preporod website a while ago, hoping to learn more about it through the comments,” adding that they “don’t have any further confirmation on this matter.” They also noted that “we had read that text on other websites even before our post, and our post is definitely not the oldest one (it might now be the oldest because there are no other links).”

Finally, Marc Seifer, an expert on the life and times of Nikola Tesla and author of “Wizard: the Life and Times of Nikola Tesla,” told us via email that “Tesla did not say this.” He also added that “this passage has been discussed with a number of Tesla experts and all of us are sure that Tesla never said it.”

In December 2024 we investigated the claim that Tesla once said, “You may live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension.”

Did ex-NATO general say, ‘If Trump moves on Greenland, Europeans must be ready to fight the US’?

Jan. 9, 2026

“I would advocate upping the ante on Greenland, by deploying a small trigger force to Greenland, …

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In late 2025, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins made repeated claims about costs for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — colloquially known as food stamp assistance — increasing drastically under former President Joe Biden’s administration. 

On Oct. 31, 2025, she presented a graph that went “back to October of 2023,” which purportedly showed “an almost 30% increase in the cost of the SNAP program over the four years that President Biden and the USDA was overseeing it” (see 24:40). 

Just a few days later, she claimed in an appearance on Fox News that SNAP increased “almost 40%” in “just a couple of years under the Biden administration.” She did not specify whether she meant enrollment, average monthly benefits or total spending.

In December 2025, she repeated the 40% figure in reference to an increase in “food stamp funding” while “Joe Biden was working to buy an election.” 

Rollins’ inconsistent claims led Snopes to dig into the numbers — with substantial help from experts at The Hamilton Project (the economic policy initiative of the Brookings Institution think tank) as well as the nonpartisan Pew Research Center — to see if what she said was true. 

It wasn’t. 

Total federal spending on SNAP actually decreased under the Biden administration; adjusted for inflation, costs increased slightly, but nowhere near 30% or 40%. Substantial increases to SNAP spending did, however, happen under the first Trump administration as part of an emergency relief package during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

When we first covered Rollins’ claim about SNAP benefit increases, we asked the USDA to verify its secretary’s allegations. The USDA sent via email a link to its SNAP datasets, which Snopes used to disprove Rollins.  

Here’s the evidence: 

Can the data be manipulated to fit Rollins’ narrative? 

As we previously reported, in an April 2020 news release (archived) the USDA said it increased “overall monthly SNAP benefits” on an emergency basis by 40% after Trump signed a law in 2020 allowing larger allotments for most SNAP households temporarily (see Page 11).  

That jump shows up in USDA year-to-year data from 2020 — the end of Trump’s first term — to 2021, the start of Biden’s term, when total spending during that time period increased by 43%, from about $79 billion to $113 billion (see “National Level Annual Summary”). Adjusted for inflation — using Pew Research data that was independently verified by Snopes — that’s a 38% increase. 

But it’s inaccurate to say Biden had anything to do with that increase. Furthermore, a closer look at USDA’s month-to-month data — which matches more closely with Biden and Trump’s terms — indicates that at no point did SNAP costs rise close to 40% while Biden was president. 

The real math doesn’t add up 

Biden’s presidency began on Jan. 20, 2021, and ended Jan. 20, 2025. From February 2021 to January 2025, total benefit costs decreased by 12%. If adjusted for inflation, total costs increased by 6%, as first calculated by The Hamilton Project at Brookings Institution. Snopes independently verified the Hamilton Project’s calculations using SNAP Data Tables, downloadable via the USDA website. We used the dataset labeled “National and/or State Level Monthly and/or Annual Data.” 

Comparing the start and end of Biden’s term doesn’t get close to that 40% number, either: Total spending was 17% lower in calendar year 2024 than in calendar year 2021.

In contrast, Trump’s first term began on Jan. 20, 2017 and ended on Jan. 20, 2021. The Hamilton Project and Snopes, using USDA data, found benefit costs rose by 64% from February 2017 to January 2021. 

In year-to-year terms, the largest increase in total SNAP costs during the Biden administration was from 2021 to 2022 — and the costs increased only by 3%, or 11% adjusted for inflation. 

Average monthly benefits didn’t increase, either. From February 2021 to January 2025, the average monthly benefit went from $412.45 per household to $350.67 per household. Total participation went from a little more than 42 million people to nearly 43 million during that time period, representing a slight increase. 

Analysts at the Brookings Institution project reproduced the graph Rollins presented and determined it did not show participation or costs increased by 30% from October 2023 to October 2024, as she claimed. In reality, the graph showed a 4% increase in participation and a 8% increase in total costs. 

A recreation of Rollins’ graph, which did not indicate that SNAP costs increased 30% under Biden. (The Hamilton Project at Brookings Institute)

Snopes also created a data visualization showing month-to-month SNAP percent change increases throughout Biden’s entire term, adjusted for inflation, which demonstrated that at no point did Biden increase spending by 40%. 

 

Why did costs increase under Trump and decrease under Biden? 

Biden did sign legislation to increase SNAP benefits during his administration, even though total costs don’t show it. Under him, Congress authorized a 15% increase in monthly SNAP benefits in March 2021 until September 2021 via the American Rescue Plan. 

That year, the USDA recalculated the Thrifty Food Plan, which determines the maximum benefit for a SNAP recipient. This happened because the 2018 farm bill, which passed during Trump’s first term, required a reevaluation of the formula for calculating benefits within five years. Ultimately, USDA increased the maximum allotment to 21%. 

But Trump’s emergency SNAP benefits in 2020 were “so generous,” total SNAP costs and average monthly benefits still decreased under Biden’s administration, said Lauren Bauer, associate director for The Hamilton Project and SNAP researcher. 

Trump’s emergency benefits allowed everyone eligible for SNAP to receive the maximum possible benefit. In other words, according to the USDA, an average five-person household in early 2020 received $528 a month in SNAP benefits — but the maximum benefit for five-person households with no income was $768. The emergency benefits allowed the average household to receive $768 per month instead. 

Bauer said that encouraged more families to apply for the program, especially those on the higher end of the eligibility spectrum. 

“Going through the hassle of applying for SNAP only to get $16 is maybe not worth it, but doing it for $500? Totally worth it,” Bauer said in a phone call. 

In addition, several states sued the Trump administration because the emergency allotments did not help the poorest people on SNAP. In April 2021, the USDA announced a settlement with Pennsylvania that provided $95 per person at minimum in emergency assistance to all SNAP households, further increasing spending on SNAP. 

Once those emergency allotments ended — nationwide in March 2023, but earlier in 18 states — people left the program, said Bauer, an expert witness on the Pennsylvania case. 

In sum … 

The math doesn’t support Rollins’ claims. In reality, SNAP spending decreased during Biden’s administration by about 12% — adjusted for inflation, it increased by 6%. Monthly benefits didn’t increase under Biden, either. In contrast, SNAP spending increased by about 64% under Trump, largely as a result of emergency COVID-19 SNAP allotments that went into effect in 2020 and expired a few years later, depending on the state. 

Snopes reporter Anna Rascouët-Paz contributed to this report. 

Sources

The Jan. 7, 2026, killing of Renee Nicole Good in her car by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis sparked a wave of online claims about what the law allows when officers confront moving vehicles after federal authorities said the agent fatally shot Good, who was in her car, in an act of self-defense. 

In the days that followed the shooting, one widely shared piece of text appeared to cite Minnesota Statutes Section 609.066 as justification for the killing. According to the posts, that law asserts that if a driver accelerates toward an officer standing in front of a car, that automatically creates an “immediate, life-threatening danger” and the officer “doesn’t need to wait until impact” before using deadly force.

One X post (archived) making the claim that the officer acted legally under Minnesota law read:

🚨Minnesota Statutes § 609.066
If a driver accelerates toward an officer standing in front of the vehicle, this creates an immediate, life-threatening danger.

The officer doesn’t need to wait until impact; they can act based on the apparent intent and proximity.

(X user @jersey_puzzykat)

The purported law spread across social media platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, X and Facebook, with some users posting the text in comment threads under news coverage about the shooting.

Some versions paired the same text with an additional claim that it was “signed into law by Governor Tim Walz on July 23, 2020,” after “a special legislative session.”

(X user @mickitiki)

However, the alleged paragraph was not a direct quote from Minnesota Statutes Section 609.066. The real statute sets a case-by-case standard requiring an objectively reasonable belief, based on the totality of the circumstances, that deadly force is necessary. It doesn’t directly address the scenario of a car driving toward an officer — in other words, the text shared in social media posts appeared to be an internet user’s interpretation of the law in the context of Good’s killing. 

Moreover, while Walz did, on July 23, 2020, sign a police reform package that amended Minnesota’s existing use-of-force laws, those changes did not add the wording being shared online. 

Finally, the law mentioned in the post was a state law — it wouldn’t govern a federal agent such as the ICE officer who shot Good.

How the rumor spread

The claim circulated in two main versions. The first was as a legal-sounding passage presented as either a quote or a summary of Minnesota Statutes Section 609.066 and the second version claimed the “bill was signed into law by Governor Tim Walz on July 23, 2020.”

The earliest instance of the text we found dates to Jan. 7, 2026, when the X account @ScummyMummy511 posted it along with an image seeming to show Good’s car about to hit the officer.

(X user @ScummyMummy511)

As we previously reported, the user admitted the image featured in the post was generated using artificial intelligence. While federal officials described the shooting as self-defense and said Good used her vehicle to strike or threaten an ICE agent, multiple independent analyses of the available video found the SUV’s front wheels turned to the right as it began moving forward and the shots were fired as the vehicle moved past the agent.

We contacted both users to ask for the source of their information and whether they meant the posts as commentary rather than a literal reflection of Minnesota law, and we’ll update this article if they respond. It’s worth noting that the @ScummyMummy511 X user’s account had a label reading “Parody account”; it was unclear whether they meant the text in the post satirically.

What Minnesota Statutes Section 609.066 actually says

The wording that spread across social media posts does not appear in Minnesota law. 

Section 609.066 of the Minnesota Statutes, titled “Authorized use of deadly force by peace officers,” defines “deadly force” as force used to cause, or that creates a substantial risk of causing, death or great bodily harm, and it treats the intentional discharge of a firearm “at a vehicle in which another person is believed to be” as deadly force.

However, the statute doesn’t literally say that a vehicle moving toward an officer automatically makes deadly force lawful, like the paragraph shared on social media suggests. Rather, it states the use of deadly force is justified only if an objectively reasonable officer would believe it is necessary to protect against death or great bodily harm, emphasizing the “totality of the circumstances.” 

Subdivision 2 of Minnesota Statutes Section 609.066, titled “Use of deadly force,” states in full:

(a) Notwithstanding the provisions of section 609.06 or 609.065, the use of deadly force by a peace officer in the line of duty is justified only if an objectively reasonable officer would believe, based on the totality of the circumstances known to the officer at the time and without the benefit of hindsight, that such force is necessary:

(1) to protect the peace officer or another from death or great bodily harm, provided that the threat:

(i) can be articulated with specificity;

(ii) is reasonably likely to occur absent action by the law enforcement officer; and

(iii) must be addressed through the use of deadly force without unreasonable delay; or

(2) to effect the arrest or capture, or prevent the escape, of a person whom the peace officer knows or has reasonable grounds to believe has committed or attempted to commit a felony and the officer reasonably believes that the person will cause death or great bodily harm to another person under the threat criteria in clause (1), items (i) to (iii), unless immediately apprehended.

(b) A peace officer shall not use deadly force against a person based on the danger the person poses to self if an objectively reasonable officer would believe, based on the totality of the circumstances known to the officer at the time and without the benefit of hindsight, that the person does not pose a threat of death or great bodily harm to the peace officer or to another under the threat criteria in paragraph (a), clause (1), items (i) to (iii).

Moreover, Minnesota Statutes Section 609.066 governs the use of deadly force by Minnesota peace officers. Minnesota’s Peace Officer Standards & Training Board notes it regulates Minnesota peace officers, but “does not license or regulate standards for federal officers” such as U.S. Marshals, FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration agents, Border Patrol “or others employed by the federal government.” In other words, the quoted law wouldn’t be the rule governing an ICE agent such as the federal officer who killed Good.

Finally, Walz did sign a real police reform package on July 23, 2020 — the Minnesota Police Accountability Act. Among other changes, the law amended Minnesota Statute Section 609.066, Subdivision 2 (“Use of deadly force”), first passed in 1978, tightening the standard to emphasize that deadly force is justified only when an “objectively reasonable” officer would believe it is necessary, based on the totality of the circumstances and without the benefit of hindsight, and adding specific threat criteria. Those revisions took effect March 1, 2021. 

A screenshot showing how the text changed is embedded below:

(www.revisor.mn.gov)

Therefore, the reform didn’t insert the phrasing shared in the posts. It revised Section 609.066 to stress an objectively reasonable standard based on the totality of the circumstances and added specific threat criteria — a framework that could apply some vehicle-related cases, although the law doesn’t directly mention that scenario.

For further reading, Snopes has investigated many rumors involving Good’s death, including a claim that video showed a federal officer defacing a memorial to her.

Sources

Claim:

A video circulating in late December 2025 authentically shows New York City residents throwing snowballs at ICE agents.

Rating:

A rumor that circulated online at the end of 2025 and in January 2026 claimed a video showed a gathering of New York City residents throwing snowballs at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

For example, on Jan. 16, an X user posted the footage (archived) with the caption, “Meanwhile ICE Agents in New York City.”

Thousands of users shared the same post, including users who appeared to believe the video truly depicted ICE agents and New York City. Other users shared the clip with similar captions, many stating that it occurred in New York City, on Bluesky (archived), Facebook, Instagram (archived), Threads (archived), TikTok (archived), X (archived) and YouTube (archived). One Facebook user labeled (archived) the people throwing snowballs as “far left protesters” who were demonstrating against U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration’s immigration enforcement policies.

In short, the video did not show New Yorkers pelting ICE agents with snowballs. The clip depicted supporters of Russian anti-Kremlin activist Alexei Navalny, who died in prison in February 2024, throwing snowballs at police officers during a 2021 protest in Moscow. Therefore, we determined that the video had been miscaptioned.

On Jan. 23, 2021, British newspaper The Guardian posted the footage on its Guardian News YouTube channel with the title: “Russia protests: police pelted with snowballs in Moscow.” The text description read: “Tens of thousands of Alexei Navalny supporters have protested across Russia in one of the largest demonstrations against Vladimir Putin’s rule in the past decade.”

There were no signs the clip was generated using artificial intelligence software.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zQpAxTq9CY[/embed]

The Guardian video cited Russia’s independent news media outlet Mediazona as the clip’s source. Mediazona also posted the footage on X on Jan. 23, 2021 (archived). The caption, translated from Russian using DeepL, read: “Police officers were pelted with snowballs near the circus on Trubnaya Street, and they clearly lost their composure.” At the end of the video, a man could be heard saying inaudible words in a Russian-sounding accent.

Using Google Maps, it was possible to geolocate the video to Tsvetnoy Boulevard near Trubnaya Square.

Mediazona tracked the Navalny protests throughout the day in a live blog (archived). At 5:16 p.m. local time, the outlet reported: “Security forces began arresting protesters at Trubnaya Square, using batons, a Mediazona correspondent reports. The crowd responded with a hail of snowballs and pushed a group of riot police away from the memorial pillar.”

For further reading about rumors involving New York City, we previously investigated a video allegedly showing Muslims participating in a Fajr (dawn) prayer at 5 a.m. in the middle of a one-way street in Brooklyn.

Sources

1,500 kilometres southeast of Moscow, sprawling over the rugged steppes of Kazakhstan, lies Baikonur Cosmodrome, the world’s first gateway to space. It is from this hallowed ground that Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, and Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, blasted off on their historic missions – and a long time primary gateway to the International Space Station. Unsurprisingly given the site’s storied past and the often fraught nature of space travel, a great many superstitions have grown up around Baikonur over the decades. For example, prior to a launch cosmonauts traditionally watch the 1970 Soviet film White Sun of the Desert as a good luck ritual. They also urinate on the back-right tyre of the bus that carries them to the launch pad – as Yuri Gagarin is rumoured to have done in 1961. And if you’re curious here, female astronauts these days usually will simply bring a container of their pee with them to pour out on the tire. But one tradition is rather less cheerful and quirky: at Baikonur, rockets are never launched on October 24. This ominous taboo dates back to a largely forgotten 1960 incident in which an explosion on the launch pad led to the horrific deaths of nearly 200 people. This is the story of the Nedelin Catastrophe, Baikonur’s “Black Day”.

The launch of Sputnik I on October 4, 1957 shocked the world and signalled a frightening new phase in the escalating Cold War. For the R-7 Semyorka rocket that carried Sputnik into orbit was also the world’s first intercontinental ballistic missile or ICBM, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead from the heart of the Soviet Union to anywhere in the continental United States within 30 minutes. But while the R-7 was a potent symbol of Soviet technical prowess, like all first-generation ICBMs it was fundamentally flawed as a strategic weapon. The rocket was fuelled by kerosene and liquid oxygen, the latter of which could not be stored for long periods without boiling off. This meant that the missile had to be stored empty and fuelled just before launch – a process that could take up to 20 hours – making it extremely vulnerable to a surprise attack. The first American ICBM, the SM-65 Atlas, suffered from the same basic problem. Thus, by the time the R-7 became fully-operational in 1962, its replacement, the R-16, was already in service.

Designed by engineers Mikhail Yangel and Valentin Glushko of the OKB-586 Design Bureau in Dnipro, Ukraine, the 30-metre-long, 140-ton R-16 differed from the R-7 in a number of significant ways. When the R-7 was being developed, engineers had not yet figured out how to ignite rocket stages in flight, and thus gave the rocket an unusual “parallel staging” design, with four booster engines strapped around a central sustainer engine. All four engines were ignited at launch, with the boosters being jettisoned once they had expended their fuel – forming a distinctive shape known as the “Korolev Cross” after the R-7’s primary designer, Sergei Korolev. The R-16, by contrast, was of a more traditional configuration, its two stages being stacked atop one another. More relevant to its performance as a weapon, however, was the R-16’s propulsion system, which ran on a combination of Unsymmetrical Dimethyl Hydrazine and a mixture of Nitrogen Tetroxide mixed with Red Fuming Nitric Acid – a highly toxic and corrosive concoction nicknamed “Devil’s Venom.” These propellants were hypergolic – meaning they ignited on contact with each other and thus required no external ignition source – and, unlike liquid oxygen, could be stored at room temperature. In normal operation, R-16s were stored horizontally in hangars until the missile battery retrieved an alert. The missiles were then wheeled out, raised onto the launch pad, and fuelled. While this process could take up to three hours, once fuelled, the missile could be kept on alert for several days, ready to launch within 20 minutes of an order being received. But even this capability was limited, for eventually the highly-corrosive Devil’s Venom would begin to corrode the propellant lines, requiring the missiles to be de-fuelled and shipped back to the factory for refurbishment. Nonetheless, the R-16 was a vast improvement over the R-7, and arguably the Soviet Union’s first truly effective ICBM.

Achieving this effectiveness involved a long and painstaking development process – a process the head of the commander of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces, Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin, had little patience for. Though in October 1960 the R-16 program was actually several months ahead of its government-mandated schedule, Nedelin, eager to please his superiors, became obsessed with achieving a successful test launch before November 7, 1960 – the 43rd anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. In order to meet this deadline, Nedelin accelerated the launch timetable and ordered the technicians preparing the rocket to cut corners and ignore safety protocols. Thus, despite ongoing problems with the guidance system, on October 21 the missile was moved from its assembly building to the launch pad at Baikonur’s site 41, where ground crews began loading the volatile propellants. Though safety protocols called for all non-essential personnel to clear the area during fuelling, around 150 technicians remained on-site to complete other preparations. Marshal Nedelin even reportedly set up a chair at the base of the launch pad in order to personally supervise operations. To his growing frustration, technical problems continued to crop up, including propellant leaks and electrical glitches. On October 23, a major electrical fault prevented the propellant pumps from functioning properly. At the same time, explosive membranes separating the propellant tanks from the propellant lines had accidentally been triggered, flooding the lines with corrosive Devil’s Venom. This placed increased pressure on the Nedelin to launch the rocket as soon as possible, otherwise it would have to be completely rebuilt.

Ordinarily, the propellant would have been drained from the tanks before repairs could be performed, but as this would have further delayed the launch, Nedelin ordered the technicians to work directly on the still-fuelled rocket. Repairs on the propellant pumps dragged on until the next day, prompting Nedelin to return to the launch pad to investigate.

Then, catastrophe.

The subsequent investigation revealed that at some point during the launch preparations, a technician had placed a piece of equipment called the Programming Current Distributor or PTR on the wrong setting. This device determined the sequence in which various missile functions – such as engine ignition – would be activated, and the improper setting cause the batteries connected to the second-stage propellant valves to be powered on. Then, at 6:45 PM on October 24, another technician reset the PTR. This caused the rocket to believe it was already in flight and fire its second stage engines. The flames from the engines ripped through the first-stage propellant tanks, unleashing a massive fireball that engulfed the launch pad. A witness later recalled the horrific scene:

“At the moment of the explosion I was about 30 meters from the base of the rocket. A thick stream of fire unexpectedly burst forth, covering everyone around. Part of the military contingent and testers instinctively tried to flee from the danger zone, people ran to the side of the other pad, toward the bunker…but on this route was a strip of new-laid tar, which immediately melted. Many got stuck in the hot sticky mass and became victims of the fire…The most terrible fate befell those located on the upper levels of the gantry: the people were wrapped in fire and burst into flame like candles blazing in mid-air. The temperature at the center of the fire was about 3,000 degrees. Those who had run away tried while moving to tear off their burning clothing, their coats and overalls. Alas, many did not succeed in doing this.”

At the time of the explosion, there were approximately 250 personnel working on or around the launch pad. Those working on the pad itself were likely killed instantly, while those further away suffered slower, more agonizing fates at the hands of the flames, corrosive propellants, or toxic gases. Many who tried to flee the fireball found themselves trapped against the barbed-wire perimeter fence, where their final moments were captured by automatic cameras meant to record the test launch. 16 of the immediate survivors would later die of their injuries in hospital.

The explosion was so massive it could reportedly be seen as far as 50 kilometres away, while the fire on the launch pad burned for two hours before it was finally brought under control. Due to Soviet state secrecy surrounding the incident, the total number of victims is not known for certain, with official estimates ranging anywhere from 92 to 200. Among the dead were Marshall Nedelin himself, as well as several high-ranking officers including Lev Grishin, deputy chairman of the State Committee for Defense Technology; and Colonel Aleksandr Nosov, chief of the Baikonur Launch Command. Chief designer Mikhail Yangel, who at the time of the explosion was taking a smoke break behind a control bunker, miraculously survived.

The Soviet government quickly moved to cover up the incident, swearing all witnesses to complete secrecy. The death of Marshal Nedelin – well known to the Soviet people from his exploits during WWII – was officially attributed to a plane crash. Immediately upon learning of the disaster, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev dispatched Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet Leonid Brezhnev to Baikonur to lead the official investigation. Brezhnev’s final report concluded that:“The direct cause of the accident was the shortcomings in the design of the control system, which allowed unscheduled operation of the of the EPK V-08 valve controlling the ignition of the main engine of the second stage during pre-launch processing. This problem was not discovered during all previous tests. The fire on the vehicle LD1-3T could’ve been avoided if the reconfiguration of the current distributor into a zero position was conducted before the activation of the onboard power supply.”

Surprisingly, no one was officially held responsible for the disaster, for, as Brezhnev reportedly explained,“All guilty had been punished already.”

All human remains that could be identified were returned to their families – who were also sworn to secrecy – while those that could not were swept into a single coffin and buried in Baikonur’s Lenisnk Park. A small memorial to the victims was later erected nearby – still visited by officials before every launch. Shrouded in state secrecy, the Nedelin Catastrophe quickly passed into legend, joining the ranks of other shadowy rumours and conspiracy theories swirling around the Soviet space program. And while an American Corona spy satellite captured images of the giant scorch marks on pad 41, analysts were unable to determine what had happened, and the incident lay forgotten for nearly three decades. It was not until 1989, following premier Mikhail Gorbachev’s “perestroika” reforms, that the state magazine Ogonyok finally revealed the full story of the Nedelin Catastrophe. Yet despite its obscurity, the Nedelin Disaster had an outsized impact on global events. By delaying the development of the R-16 missile, the accident likely influenced Nikita Khrushchev’s decision to station intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Cuba, triggering the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

The R-16 program resumed in early 1961, with the first successful test launch taking place on February 2. The missile finally entered service in June 1963, with a total of 202 being deployed before the type was retired in 1976. Three years to the day after the Nedelin Catastrophe, a similar disaster struck Baikonur during the test launch of an R-9 Desna intermediate-range ballistic missile. While the 11-man launch crew was leaving the launch silo, an oxygen leak and electrical short triggered an explosion, killing seven and destroying the silo. Ever since, October 24 has been considered a “Black Day” for Baikonur, and no launches are attempted on that date.

Though barely remembered today, the Nedelin Catastrophe remains the deadliest single accident in spaceflight history, a tragic and humbling embodiment of the old astronaut’s motto per aspera ad astra – “a hard road leads to the stars.”

Speaking of space related shenanigans, why not check out our rather interesting video on the so-called Astronaut Strike Incident, in which NASA got a very expensive lesson in people management and what not to do.

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Grosse Île lies 50km east of Quebec City, one of 21 islands in the middle of the St. Lawrence River. Though its name means “Big Island” in French, Grosse Île is barely two kilometres square, home to a small collection of buildings from its days as a quarantine station for Irish immigrants arriving in Canada. Designated a National Historic Site in 1974, today the island is open to tourists and hosts a museum, guided walking tours, and other activities. Yet this seemingly idyllic little island holds a dark secret. During the Second World War, a team of Canadian scientists used Grosse Île as a secret laboratory to study and weaponize some of the deadliest diseases known to mankind – biological weapons which, if used, could have unleashed a bacteriological apocalypse.

When one thinks of Weapons of Mass Destruction, one is unlikely to think of Canada. Yet in the buildup to the Second World War, Canada was among the first western nations to push for the development of chemical and biological warfare. And the unlikely champion of this initiative was a man more associated with saving millions of lives than ending them: Sir Frederick Banting. In 1923 Banting was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine for the discovery of insulin, used in the treatment of diabetes. Warily observing the rise of Nazism and Europe’s steady march towards war, in the late 1930s Banting became gravely concerned about Germany’s potential use of chemical and germ warfare in the coming conflict. Germany had pioneered chemical warfare during the First World War – first deploying chlorine gas against Canadian and French troops at the Battle of Ypres in April 1915 – and its microbiologists were among the finest in the world. Around 1.3 million casualties – including 90,000 deaths – were inflicted by poison gas during the conflict; newer, more potent gases developed since then had the potential to kill millions more – and biological weapons even more than that. So obsessed was Banting with halting the Nazi war machine that in 1939 he wrote in his diary: “We need to kill 2 or 4 million young Germans without mercy- without feeling. It is our duty to eliminate them.”

The Nazis and him apparently would have gotten along swimmingly if he’d been German instead of Canadian….

In any event, soon after Germany’s invasion of Poland in September 1939, Banting met with senior Government officials and convinced them to back a more intensive chemical and biological weapons program. Limited research on bacteriological warfare agents was already underway in Canadian universities since 1937, but these programs were severely underfunded. Turning to the private sector, Banting managed to secure a half a million dollars – an unprecedented amount in those days – from Samuel Bronfman, head of Seagrams Distillery; and John David Eaton, owner of Eaton’s department stores. With this infusion of cash bioweapons research in Canada kicked into high gear, and a special body known was the M-1000 Committee was formed to direct it. But Banting would not live to see the fruits of his initiative, dying in a plane crash in Newfoundland in February 1941 while flying to meet with British biological weapons experts.

In December 1941 the project took on a new urgency as Japan entered the war on the side of the Axis. Japan was even more advanced in its use of biological warfare, having established the infamous Unit 731 in occupied Manchuria to test biological weapons on live Chinese POWs and civilians – the test subjects often being dissected alive without anaesthesia. The Japanese also deployed anthrax, cholera, and bubonic plague against Chinese villages, killing over 400,000 civilians.

The M-1000 committee considered dozens of potential bacteriological warfare agents for development, including bubonic plague, typhus, tularemia, psittacosis, rocky mountain spotted fever, botulism, salmonella, glanders, and African horse sickness. But early on two clear frontrunners emerged: Rinderpest, a disease mainly affecting cattle, and Anthrax. Anthrax was particularly well-suited to biological warfare as it formed hard, resilient spores which could resist extremely high temperatures. This allowed Anthrax spores to be packed into air-dropped bombs and dispersed using explosives. As an added bonus, Anthrax was treatable using Penicillin, which unlike the Germans the Allies would soon have in great supply.

But the same properties which made anthrax so easy to weaponize also made it extremely persistent – a fact British scientists would soon learn the hard way. In 1942 the war was going badly for the Allies. The British Army was shut out of mainland Europe, U-boats were sinking hundreds of thousands of tons of shipping off the coast of the United States, the Eighth Army was being pushed out of North Africa, and German forces were advancing ever deeper into the Soviet Union. About the only weapons the Allies had to strike back against the Axis were the bombers of the Royal Air Force, and to maximize their destructive power the British began planning a massive biological warfare campaign against Nazi Germany. Code-named Operation Vegetarian, the plan called for RAF bombers to drop millions of Anthrax-infected feed cakes across Germany. These would be eaten by cattle and other livestock, contaminating their meat and causing widespread disease and famine. The resulting disruption of civilian life was expected to cause Nazi Germany to collapse within months.

To test this weapon, scientists at the biological warfare centre at Porton Down acquired the remote island of Gruinard in Northern Scotland. A flock of sheep was transported to the island and various designs of anthrax bombs and anthrax-cake dispensers were exploded among them. The effects were chilling: within three days every single sheep was dead. The contaminated corpses were buried by piling them under a cliff and dynamiting the cliff on top of them, but a single corpse managed to float away and washed ashore on the mainland. This touched off an anthrax outbreak that killed over 100 livestock and pets. Thankfully, the Porton Down scientists were able to contain the outbreak before it spread to the human population, though due to wartime secrecy it would be decades before the locals discovered just what had killed their animals. But Gruniard Island was found to be hopelessly contaminated, and after disinfecting the soil as best they could with fire and formaldehyde, the scientists suspended all further experiments and sealed off the island indefinitely.

The Gruinard Island incident convinced the government that it was too dangerous to manufacture and test biological weapons on British soil. For an alternative site, they turned to their colony across the Atlantic. It would not be the first or last time Britain looked to Canada to help test dangerous weapons. Following a series of experiments at Porton Down where British soldiers were exposed to mustard gas, Britain ordered all further testing moved to Suffield, a Canadian military base in Alberta. Here in May 1942, 712 volunteer Canadian soldiers were marched out onto the proving grounds wearing only gas masks and regular combat gear and ordered to stand at attention while aircraft flying at 1000 feet sprayed them with mustard gas. Once the gas had fully penetrated their clothing, they were marched back to base and the effects studied. Mustard gas is a vesicant or blister agent, which when absorbed by the skin inflicts severe, extremely painful chemical burns that can take months to heal. Participants were paid $1 for volunteering and $20 for each burn that appeared, though given the horrific effects it is debatable whether these rewards were worth it. Similar experiments were later carried out on troops in Inisfall, Australia and Karachi, British India, making Britain and her Empire the only belligerent nation other than Japan to test chemical weapons on human subjects during WWII. Incredibly, in 1950 Canada would offer to allow Britain to test its first atomic bomb in the Canadian north near the town of Churchill – an offer Britain declined in favour of Australia.

Meanwhile, in the months following Sir Frederick Banting’s death, biological weapons research in Canada began to languish. Then, in October 1941 U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson sent a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt urging the creation of a U.S. bioweapons program. Due to the more advanced state of the Canadian program, an agreement was reached whereby the U.S. would bankroll Canadian development of bioweapons until their own development centre at Fort Detrick, Maryland was up and running. This coincided almost perfectly with the British request for an alternate weapons development centre, and with $200,000 of US Government funds in hand, project directors E.G.D Murray and Otto Maass began searching for a suitable site for a secret bioweapons lab.

They quickly found one in the former quarantine station at Grosse Île, a place with an already dark and tragic past. Grosse Île Station was established in 1832, replacing the older Pointe-Lévy station. And just in time, too, for in the late 1840s Canada was inundated with hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants fleeing the great potato famine. Many of these immigrants arrived aboard so-called “Coffin Ships” – lumber freighters offering cheap transatlantic passage – and the crowded, unsanitary conditions in their holds lead to frequent outbreaks of disease like typhus and cholera. In 1847 alone more than 100,000 people arrived in Quebec, with up to 40 ships lining up for 3km along the river waiting to unload their cargoes. This massive influx quickly overwhelmed the island’s limited facilities. Its hospitals were soon filled to bursting, forcing many of the sick to fend for themselves in the mud outside. Eventually 22 150ft-long “fever sheds” were built on the mainland to accommodate the overflow, but this lead to diseases spreading to the rest of the city. When the local population rioted, threatening to push the sheds into the river, the military were forced to cordon off the area. It would not be until 1854 that improved sanitation and a reduction in immigration finally brought an end to the epidemics. Between 1832 and 1932, around 500,000 immigrants entered Canada via Grosse Île, making it – along with Pier 21 in Halifax – the Canadian analogue of Ellis Island in New York. Of these new arrivals, around 5,000 died of disease, their bodies buried in mass graves on the island itself and on nearby Point Charles.

The island was an ideal site for bacteriological research for several reasons. First, it was remote and relatively inaccessible, the closest population centre being the small village of Montmagny just across the river. Second, it was entirely self-sufficient, with its own working power plant, boilers, dormitories, churches, and hospitals. But most attractive of all was the decontamination building, which featured a pair of massive steam-powered sterilization chambers. Immigrants arriving on Grosse Île were required to remove their clothes and place them in the ovens before proceeding to the showers, on the other side of which they would collect their newly lice-and-flea-free clothes. These chambers, thought Murray and Maass, would be ideal for growing large quantities of anthrax.

But some weren’t so sure. Charles Mitchell, Canada’s Chief Veterinarian, objected that the island wasn’t isolated enough, being only 6 kilometres from the nearest riverbank. To be sufficiently safe, he argued, the site would have to be at least 80 kilometres offshore. But as no alternative site could be found, Mitchell was overruled, and in 1942 the Grosse Île laboratory commenced operation under the cover name War Disease Control Station. The island, under the command of Major Richard Duthy and guarded by a garrison of 100 soldiers, was divided into two main areas. The west of the island was occupied by Project R, studying rinderpest, and the east end by Project N, studying anthrax. Anthrax was grown in flat trays in the two decontamination ovens, which for safety reasons were kept locked shut with the scientists inside. Many scientists found working in the ovens in full protective gear unbearable, leading many to adopt the curious practice of working naked except for a gas mask. This practice also had the added benefit of making their bodies easier to decontaminate. But even measures such as these soon proved grossly inadequate. In an early report on Grosse Île’s operations Major Duthy complained that the island was infested with flies, which could easily land on lab equipment and carry deadly spores to the mainland. Then, in August 1943 several scientists came down with mysterious illnesses and had to be isolated at a hospital in Quebec City. Tests later confirmed they were infected with anthrax. The incident raised alarm bells among the project directors, many of whom called for the island laboratory to be shut down. But they were ultimately overruled for political reasons, as many in the project wanted to prove that Canadian scientists were every bit as good as their American counterparts.
And there were other dangers to worry about. In the fall of 1943 German U-boats began penetrating deeper and deeper into the St. Lawrence estuary, raising fears that they would discover the Grosse Île station. Isolation also began to take its toll. Due to the top-secret nature of the project the island garrison were unable to bring their families along; bored and restless, they acted abysmally while on leave in neighbouring Montmagny. This lead to concerns about the island’s secrets leaking out, though by this time the residents of Montmagny already suspected something was amiss and began avoiding the island’s staff like, well, the plague.

Yet despite these difficulties anthrax production forged ahead, and by the end of 1943 Grosse Île was producing 120kg of anthrax spores every week – enough to fill 1,500 standard aerial bombs. In August 1944 these bombs were extensively tested at the Suffield proving grounds, despite the fact that, unlike Gruinard island, Suffield had no natural geographic barriers to prevent deadly spores from drifting into populated areas. The extent of the site’s contamination remains classified to this day – a somewhat alarming fact given that anthrax spores can survive in the soil for up to 100 years. In any case, the British were impressed with the results, and ordered 500,000 anthrax bombs from Suffield and Grosse-Île.

But while the scientists perfected their deadly creations, Allied leaders dithered on how or whether to use them. Despite the Gruinard fiasco, planning for Operation Vegetarian continued, though it was only to be carried out in retaliation for a German anthrax attack on Britain. Then, on the eve of Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Europe in 1944, a new plan was proposed to drop anthrax and rinderpest on the German cities of Aix-la Chapelle, Wilhelmshaven, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Berlin. But this too was shelved for fear of reprisals, and reserved only as a retaliatory measure. At the same time, Allied intelligence began to learn of two advanced secret weapons being developed by the Germans: the V-1 flying bomb and V2 ballistic missile. Both had the range to reach London from launch sites in occupied France and the Netherlands, but only had an accuracy of 8 kilometres and a payload of 1 ton. This would make an explosive or chemical warhead all but useless, leaving only one possible payload: a biological weapon. In response, Allied scientists began producing large quantities of botulinum toxin – better known as botox – a poison so potent that one gram can kill one million people. As with anthrax, this choice was predicated on the fact that the Allies had a botox antidote and the Germans did not.
But in the end all these plans came to nothing as attacks using conventional weapons finally forced Nazi Germany to surrender on May 8, 1945. And when the conquering armies inspected Nazi battle preparations, they were shocked by what they found. Despite Allied fears, in reality Germany had no biological weapons program to speak of. And while German scientists had developed the deadly nerve gases Sarin and Tabun, military leaders had opted not to use them for fear of Allied reprisals. Even the vaunted V-weapons carried only high explosive and not biological warheads as many had feared. For all the paranoia which had driven the Allied WMD programs, even the Nazis found the prospect of chemical and biological warfare too terrible to contemplate.

But even if the Allies had opted to use biological weapons, Canada would only have been a small part of the overall effort. Of the 500,000 bombs ordered by Britain, only 5,000 were produced by Grosse Île and Suffield by the war’s end. Still, this alone accounted for 439 litres of spores or 70 billion lethal doses – enough to kill the world population at the time 30 times over. But by 1944 anthrax production at Fort Detrick was in full swing and quickly eclipsed the Canadian facilities, causing the United States to break off its partnership with Canada. Research at Grosse Île continued until 1956, when the station was finally shut down and decommissioned. In 1957 it became a veterinary research centre, while in 1965 it was once again used as a quarantine station – though this time for imported animals.

But the story doesn’t quite end there. On March 24, 1970, George Ignatieff, Ambassador to the United Nations Conference of the Committee on Disarmament delivered a speech in which he claimed: “Canada never has and does not now possess any biological weapons or toxins.”

It was a bold-faced lie, as declassified government documents would reveal just two years later. While the Canadian government’s official story was that chemical and biological weapons research had ended with the Second World War, in reality it had quietly continued for decades afterwards. In 1951 and 1952, extensive tests with Sarin nerve gas were conducted at Suffield, while between 1962 and 1973 Canada participated in Project 112, a U.S. Department of Defence program wherein simulated biological agents were sprayed over American and Canadian cities. Meanwhile, Suffield amassed massive stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons including 637 tons of mustard gas, 30 tons of Sarin and VX nerve gas, 200 tons of phosgene, 2,800 pounds of botulinum toxin, and 200 pounds of ricin – the majority of which was not disposed of until 1989.

1974 brought to light another dangerous legacy of Canada’s biowarfare project. In that year the Federal Government, unaware of the island’s secret wartime role, designated Grosse Île a National Historic Site and began developing it for tourism. In 1988, after thousands of tourists had already visited the island, the story of its use as an anthrax factory finally broke. And while scientists working at the station in 1956 claimed to have thoroughly decontaminated the island with Formaldehyde, no records could be found confirming this. Worse still, some sources indicated that the anthrax growing trays had simply been tossed into the St. Lawrence or even into the bushes, meaning that the entire island might be contaminated with deadly spores. Whoopsie-doodle! Acting quickly, Government closed the site and passed it over to Environment Canada, who thoroughly decontaminated the site before handing it back to Parks Canada. That said, to this day, no person is known to have contracted anthrax from visiting the island.

Many of the details of Grosse Île and Canada’s bioweapons program may never be known, for most of the archival records were accidentally lost in the early 1990s. But what is known remains a dark and disturbing chapter in Canada’s history, one that runs counter to the popular image of that nation. But it is perhaps also a cause for hope, for despite the cruelty and depravity that characterized the deadliest conflict in modern history, most of the belligerent nations were wise enough to know that biological warfare was a horror too far, even for a group like the Nazis.

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Bynum, Russ. “What to Know about the Fatal ICE Shooting in Minneapolis.” AP News, 8 Jan. 2026, apnews.com/article/minnesota-ice-shooting-immigration-842b1d92cb93f2326171f139686e8b0f. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.

Duster, Chandelis. “Nationwide Anti-ICE Protests Call for Accountability after Renee Good’s Death.” NPR, 10 Jan. 2026, www.npr.org/2026/01/10/nx-s1-5673229/ice-protests-minneapolis-portland-renee-good. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.

Faguy, Ana. “Dozens Arrested and One Police Officer Injured in Minneapolis ICE Protests.” BBC, 10 Jan. 2026, www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgpnwnqygro. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.

“ICE Officer Who Shot Renee Good in Minneapolis Has Served Decades in Military and Law Enforcement.” AP News, 9 Jan. 2026, https://apnews.com/article/immigration-minnesota-jonathan-ross-b9ce88da676d74ec6a1ab36aa55fbda1.

Okyere, Elaine. “Video Filmed by ICE Agent Who Shot Minneapolis Woman Emerges.” BBC, 9 Jan. 2026, www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz7yv4524gqo. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.

Sawyer, Liz, Andy Mannix and Sarah Nelson. “ICE agent who fatally shot woman in Minneapolis was dragged by car in earlier incident.” Minnesota Star Tribune, 8 Jan., 2026, https://www.startribune.com/ice-agent-who-fatally-shot-woman-in-minneapolis-is-identified/601560214. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.

Sullivan, Tim, and Giovanna Dell’Orto. “Minneapolis Shooting Reported as Federal Agents Conduct an Immigration Enforcement Surge.” AP News, 7 Jan. 2026, apnews.com/article/minnesota-immigration-enforcement-shooting-crackdown-surge-173e00fa7388054e98c3b5b9417c1e5a. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security. “Today, in an Act of Domestic Terrorism, an Anti-ICE Rioter…” X (Formerly Twitter), 7 Jan. 2026, x.com/DHSgov/status/2009058387418562922?s=20. Accessed 12 Jan. 2026.

Claim:

In 2016, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, then a Republican presidential candidate, said, “We’re liable to wake up one morning and Donald, if he were president, would have nuked Denmark.”

Rating:

In January 2026, a decade-old video (archived) circulated online of then-Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz speaking about Donald Trump at a campaign event in New Hampshire. According the video, the U.S. senator from Texas said, “We’re liable to wake up one morning and Donald, if he were president, would have nuked Denmark.”

The alleged quote also circulated on Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Threads (archived), Bluesky (archived) and Reddit (archived). 

The clip circulated as tensions heightened over the Trump administration’s stated desire to acquire Greenland, an island in the Arctic that is an autonomous territory of Denmark. At the time of this writing, the administration had not ruled out using military power to take the island, and Denmark and its European allies had reportedly increased their military presence in the region.

Social media users who shared the quote correctly attributed it to Cruz. Cruz spoke the words when he answered a journalist’s question during a press event in Goffstown, New Hampshire, on Feb. 3, 2016, according to C-SPAN (archived).

Cruz said of his Trump’s social media posts (at 4:21, emphasis ours):

I don’t know anyone who would be comfortable with someone who behaves this way having his finger on the button. I mean, we’re liable to wake up one morning and Donald, if he were president, would have nuked Denmark. That’s not the temperament of a leader to keep this country safe.

 

Cruz was the first candidate to enter the Republican Party’s primaries for the 2016 presidential election, positioning himself as a conservative alternative to Trump. Cruz dropped out of that race in early May 2016, around three months after making the remark about Trump nuking Denmark.

Trump would go on to win the Republican nomination and the presidential election in 2016. 

Cruz later revised his opinion of Trump, including endorsing him in the Republican primaries leading into the 2024 U.S. presidential election that he would go on to win.

Sources

If you were to ask the average American “who invented the aeroplane?” the answer you would most likely get is the Wright Brothers. Indeed, the two bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio, are generally acknowledged to have carried out the first controlled, powered, heavier-than-air flight in history, piloting their aircraft the Flyer a distance of 36.5 metres at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on December 17, 1903. But if you were to ask the same question in Brazil, you would likely get a very different answer. To many Brazilians the true father of the aeroplane is neither Orville nor Wilbur Wright but rather a fellow countryman named Alberto Santos-Dumont. Though largely forgotten today, in his day Santos-Dumont was one of the most famous men in the world and a leading figure in the field of aviation, pioneering key innovations in airship design and making the first powered heavier-than-air flight in Europe. He was also a legendarily colourful character, whose eccentric, high-flying antics perfectly capturing the optimistic, free-wheeling spirit of the Gilded Age.

Alberto Santos-Dumont was born on July 20, 1873 in Palmira, Brazil, to Henrique Dumont and Francisca de Paula Santos, the wealthy owners of a coffee plantation. Free of the responsibilities of work, young Santos-Dumont enjoyed a charmed, free-range childhood on the family plantation, where he quickly developed a fascination for all things mechanical:

“I lived a free life there, which was indispensable to form my temperament and taste for adventure. Since childhood I had a great love for mechanical things, and like all those who have or think they have a vocation, I cultivated mine with care and passion. I always played at imagining and building little mechanical devices, which entertained me and earned me high regard in the family. My greatest joy was taking care of my father’s mechanical installations. That was my department, which made me very proud.”

These mechanical diversions included improving his father’s coffee bean-sorting machines and driving narrow-gauge steam locomotives at high speed across the plantation. But in 1888 Santos-Dumont discovered the passion which was to consume him for the rest of his life. Upon witnessing an aeronaut make a balloon ascent over São Paulo, the then 15-year-old Santos-Dumont – an avid daydreamer and reader of French science fiction author Jules Verne – became singularly obsessed with the conquest of flight, later writing:

“In the long, sun-bathed Brazilian afternoons, I would lie in the shade of the veranda and gaze into the fair sky of Brazil, where you have only to raise your eyes to fall in love with space and freedom. So, musing on the exploration of the aerial ocean, I too devised airships and flying machines in my imagination.”

Santos-Dumont’s obsession only intensified when he accompanied his father on a seven-month visit to Paris in 1891. At the time, France was the global centre for aeronautics research. The country had a long aeronautical tradition stretching back to 1783, when the Montgolfier Brothers made the first manned hot air balloon ascents, while in 1890 inventor Clément Ader’s [“Klem-ahn Ah-day”] steam-powered Éole [“Eh-all”] aircraft made a short but promising hop into the air. If any nation was to conquer the skies first, it was believed, it would be France. Parisians were also far more accepting of the eccentricities which made Santos-Dumont stand out in his native Brazil. Standing barely five feet tall and weighing 110 pounds, the diminutive Brazilian wore high collars, thick-soled American shoes, and a trademark floppy Panama hat to make himself look taller, and introduced himself with the words:

“I’m Santos, I weigh 41 kilos without my shoes but with my gloves.”

Later, Santos-Dumont’s fame as an aviator would turn him into a fashion icon, helping, among other things, to make high starched collars fashionable in France.

In 1892, Santos-Dumont’s father, his health failing, gifted his son a sizeable share in the family coffee company. Seizing the opportunity, Santos-Dumont moved to Paris and threw himself single-mindedly into his quest of conquering the skies. He lived simply in a modest apartment on Rue Washington, eschewing the city’s rich social life as he pursued an intense private education in science, mathematics, engineering, and all the other subjects he would need to accomplish his goal. At the same time he pursued his passion for tinkering, inventing one of the first wristwatches and building a three-wheeled motorcycle on which he tore down the streets of Paris at the then-bracing speed 32 kilometres per hour. In 1897 Santos-Dumont made his first ascent in a hired balloon, an experience which only confirmed his life’s calling:

“I observed the pilot at his work, and comprehended perfectly all he did. It seemed to me that I had been born for aeronautics.”

By the end of the year Santos-Dumont had built his own balloon and become an experienced aeronaut with 25 ascents under his belt. But mere passive ballooning was not enough; if he was truly to conquer the skies, he would have to crack the secret of building a powered, dirigible airship. Many had tried before, including Frenchman Henri Giffard [“Ghee-far”], who in 1852 made the first powered airship flight. However, like all his contemporaries, Giffard was stymied by the propulsion technology of his time. The steam engine which powered his dirigible was not only dangerous – its open-flame boiler threatening at all times to ignite the hydrogen in the balloon – but also heavy and underpowered, making it impossible for the craft to fly against the wind. The first dirigible to complete a full circuit against the wind was La France in 1884, which was powered not by steam but electricity. However, the batteries needed to accomplish this feat were crude and heavy, making this a less than optimal solution. Practical dirigible flight thus had to await the development of a compact internal combustion engine with a high enough power-to-weight ratio. Santos-Dumont had used just such an engine in one of his early motor tricycles. Weighing only 40 kilos and putting out 3.5 horsepower, it was quickly pressed into service to power Santos-Dumont’s first prototype airship.

Imaginatively named “Airship No.1,” the cigar-shaped craft measured 25 metres long and held 186 cubic metres of Hydrogen. It had a triangular rudder at the front for steering, a sliding-weight system for pitch control, and a basket slung beneath the envelope holding both pilot and the engine driving a paddle-shaped propeller. Santos-Dumont attempted his first test flight on September 18, 1898, launching near the Zoological Gardens in Paris’s Bois de Boulogne [“Bwah deh Boo-lung”] Park. While Santos-Dumont had originally planned to take off into the wind, his aeronaut colleagues advised him instead to take off downwind as with a balloon. Unfortunately, a gust of wind drove Airship No.1 into the trees before it could gain sufficient altitude, lightly damaging the craft and convincing Santos-Dumont of the wisdom of his original plan. He quickly repaired the damage and two days later made another attempt, this time succeeding in making a short controlled circuit. Santos-Dumont would later describe the experience in his signature breathless style:

“My first impression was surprise to feel the airship going straight ahead. It was astonishing to feel the wind in my face…I cannot describe the delight, the wonder and intoxication of this free diagonal movement onward and upward, or onward and downward, combined with brusque changes of direction horizontally when the airship answers to a touch of the rudder.”

Unfortunately, the flight was cut short when lifting gas began leaking from the envelope, causing Airship No.1 to rapidly lose altitude. Santos-Dumont called out to a group of boys flying kites in the park below, who grabbed the trailing mooring lines and brought the airship down to a rough but safe crash-landing. Though the craft was damaged beyond repair, Santos-Dumont was undeterred; he had tasted the thrill of controlled, powered flight and was hungry for more. Over the next six years he would construct a series of increasingly-sophisticated airships, breaking records by staying aloft for up to 23 hours at a time. His later dirigibles were so maneuverable and reliable that Santos-Dumont took to using them as his personal runabouts, leading to some truly outlandish escapades. In 1903 a correspondent for the Paris weekly L’Illustration described one such incident:

“I had just sat down at the terrace of a café on the Avenue fu Bois de Boulogne and was enjoying an iced orangeade. All of a sudden I was shaken with surprise on seeing an airship come right down in front of me. The guide rope coiled around the legs of my chair. The airship was just above my knees, and Monsieur Santos-Dumont got out. Whole crowds of people rushed forward and wildly acclaimed the great Brazilian aviator. He asked me to excuse him for having startled me. He then called for an apéritif, drank it down, got on board his airship again and went gliding off into space.”

On another occasion the eccentric aviator swooped down onto a birthday party in the park, snatched up a 7-year-old boy, and took the ecstatic child for a joyride over Paris. And on Bastille Day, he celebrated his adopted country’s national holiday by flying down the Champs d’Elysees and saluting the French President with 21 shots from his revolver – like an absolute legend. These antics endeared Santos-Dumont to the French people, who closely followed his exploits and affectionately dubbed him “the little Santos.” But Santos-Dumont’s greatest aerial triumphs were yet to come.

On March 24, 1900, oil magnate Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe announced a 100,000 Franc prize for the first aviator to fly from the Aero Club headquarters at Saint Cloud [“Klood”] to the Eiffel Tower and back – a total distance of 10 kilometres – in less than half an hour. Santos-Dumont eagerly accepted the challenge, but quickly realized that none of his existing airships were up to the task. To cover the distance in under a half an hour would require a top speed of at least 9 kilometres an hour, while his fastest craft, Airship No.4, topped out at only 7.5. So Santos-Dumont enlarged the envelope and added a rigid keel and a new 15-horsepower engine to create a new, faster vehicle, named – of course – Airship No.5.

Santos-Dumont his first attempt at the Deutsche de la Meurthe Prize on July 13, 1901. The flight went well at first, with Airship No.5 reaching and circling the Eiffel Tower with ease. But on the return leg, the airship stalled and crashed into a chestnut tree on the estate of the wealthy Rothschild family. Though his pride may have been wounded, Santos-Dumont was at least able to find solace in the estate footman who climbed the tree to deliver him a conciliatory picnic basket. Undeterred, Santos-Dumont repaired Airship No.5 and made his second attempt on August 8. Once again he successfully reached and rounded the Eiffel Tower, but on his return a faulty valve caused the envelope to rapidly lose gas. Santos-Dumont attempted to guide the sinking craft to a crash landing in the Seine river, but at the last moment the envelope snagged on a chimney pot atop the Trocadero Hotel and burst. The whole airship collapsed in a heap of wreckage down the side of the hotel, with Santos-Dumont barely escaping death by leaping onto a window ledge. There he remained stranded for several hours before being rescued by the Paris fire brigade. But though the flight had ended in complete failure, “Little Santos” continued to be hailed as a hero by the people of France.

With Airship No.5 a complete loss, Santos-Dumont and his workmen designed and built a new, more powerful airship in only 22 days. Meanwhile, however, the Aero Club had changed the rules of the Prize, dictating that the 30 minute time limit now be measured from takeoff to landing rather than a flying start and finish. This change was introduced by patriotic club members in an attempt to hold off Santos-Dumont until a fellow Frenchman could claim the prize. Yet despite this handicap, Santos-Dumont was confident he could still meet the challenge, and at 2:45 PM on October 19, 1901, he lifted off from St. Cloud for his third attempt at the Prize. As before the outbound leg went perfectly, with Airship No.6 covering the distance in only 9 minutes. And while Santos-Dumont faced a 7 km/hr headwind on the return leg, with 21 minutes to cover the distance he seemed assured of clinching the Prize. But soon after rounding the Eiffel Tower his engine began to sputter and stall, slowing his progress to a crawl. As a stunned Paris came to a standstill and turned its gaze to the tiny airship floating 300 metres overhead, Santos-Dumont, with no safety harness, climbed out of the basket and up to the keel to fix the stubborn machine. After a few tense minutes the engine resumed its steady chug, and Santos-Dumont drove the airship at full speed towards St. Cloud, crossing the finish line 29 minutes and 30 seconds after takeoff. Unfortunately, it took around a minute for him to actually land the airship, and when the waiting Aero Club delegates finally approached him he was sadly informed that he had missed the prize by 40 seconds. A devastated Santos-Dumont returned to his apartment empty-handed while throngs of his supporters shouted at the delegation to award him the prize. In the end, the Aero Club bowed to public pressure and declared Santos-Dumont the winner of the Deutsch de la Meurthe Prize. In an act of extreme generosity, Santos-Dumont donated 75,000 Francs to the poor of Paris and divided the rest among his own workmen. He did, however, keep an additional 125,000 Franc prize awarded to him by his native Brazil. But his true pride lay not in the monetary awards but in having successfully demonstrated the practicality of powered, dirigible flights.

Though Santos-Dumont would go on to build three more airships, by 1903 he had become disillusioned with the technology. The vagaries of wind and weather made flying an airship, in his words, like “pushing a candle through a brick wall.” Convinced he had pushed airship technology as far as it would go, Santos-Dumont instead turned his energies to the next great challenge: heavier-than-air flight. By this time the Wright Brothers had completed a highly-successful series of gliding experiments and were preparing to test their first powered aircraft at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. News of the Wrights’ achievements sent the French aviation community into a panic, with French aviation pioneer Ferdinand Ferber writing Aero Club President Ernest Archdeacon in April 1903:

“The airplane must not be allowed to reach successful development in America!”

A tireless promoter of aviation in France and around the world, Ferber was considered one of the frontrunners in the race for heavier-than-air flight. In 1902 he constructed an aircraft based on vague descriptions of the Wright Brothers’ designs, which he tested by suspending it beneath a giant spinning crane-like contraption outside the city of Nice. But Ferber had fundamentally misunderstood the Wrights’ key innovation of wing warping for roll control, and his copycat aircraft proved all but uncontrollable. Ferber’s failure was typical of a general flaw shared by French aeronautics pioneers compared to their American counterparts. Whereas the Wrights took a methodical, scientific approach, basing their designs on glider flights and wind tunnel tests, the French, in their haste to get into the air, rushed forward with all manner of hastily-conceived and impractical flying machines. Thus it was all but inevitable that on December 17, 1903, the Wright Brothers beat the French – and the rest of the world – into the air. But the French were not so easily defeated, and to spur the development of heavier-than-air flight in France, in 1905 Aero Club President Ernest Archdeacon announced a 1500 Franc prize for the first pilot to fly an aeroplane over 100 metres. And among the pioneering aviators who took up the challenge was Alberto Santos-Dumont.

In 1906, Santos-Dumont built an aircraft nearly as eccentric as its designer. Dubbed the Quatorze Bis [“Cat-oars Biss”] or “Fourteen B”, the craft appeared to have been built backwards, with the wings, engine, and propellor in the back and the horizontal stabilizer in the front – a design known today as a canard configuration due to its resemblance to a flying duck. Adding to its awkward appearance, it featured boxy, kite-like wings and stabilizers canted upwards at steep angle, while the pilot flew the aircraft while standing up. Stranger still, the aircraft was designed to be test-flown while suspended beneath Santos-Dumont’s Airship No.14 – hence the name.

On July 23, 1926, a crowd gathered outside the Bois de Boulogne park to witness Santos-Dumont’s first flight tests. In true flamboyant style, Santos Dumont in his Mercedes car led a bizarre procession consisting of the 14 Bis aircraft and No.14 airship towed by a donkey, followed by a handcart loaded with 10 cans of gasoline. However, a guard at the park gate refused to let the gasoline through, and threatened to poke holes in the airship if anyone challenged him. Thankfully, Ernest Archdeacon was on hand and siphoned gas from his own car to fuel up both airship and aeroplane. But it was all for naught, for Santos-Dumont discovered the 14 Bis had been damaged in transit and announced to a disappointed crowd that he would not be flying that day.

Over the next month Santos-Dumont and his team conducted a number of pre-flight tests with the 14 Bis suspended beneath the No.14 airship and a zipline-like device, making a number of adjustments until they were at last ready to make a free flight attempt. On September 13, the 14 Bis made a short 13-metre hop before crash-landing on its tail, while on October 23 it flew a more respectable 60 metres, making Santos-Dumont the first person to make a controlled, powered, heavier-than-air flight in Europe. Finally, on November 12, Santos-Dumont remained airborne for 21 seconds, covering a distance of 220 metres and clinching the Archdeacon Prize. The nation erupted in celebration, with Ferdinand Ferber exclaiming:

“Santos is the conquering hero…a new world [is] opening before man.”

Even the British joined in the adulation, though some struck a more alarmist tone. Among these was publishing magnate Lord Northcliffe, who prophetically wrote:

“Santos-Dumont flies 722 feet! Let me tell you, there will be no more sleeping safely behind the wooden walls of old England with the Channel as our safety moat. If war comes, the aerial chariots of the enemy will descend on British soil.”

Yet despite the excitement on both sides of the Channel in reality, Santos-Dumont’s achievement was a case of too little, too late. Like most early French aircraft, the 14 Bis lacked adequate roll control, barely qualifying as a controllable aircraft. Furthermore, a full year before in late 1905 the Wrights had made history by flying their aircraft an astonishing 39 kilometres over Huffman Prairie in Ohio, utterly dwarfing Santos-Dumont’s 220-metre hop. In August 1908 Wilbur Wright would demonstrate the superior agility of the brothers’ Model A Flyer over Le Mans racetrack outside Paris, prompting French aviation pioneer Leon Delagrange [“Lay-ohn Duh-lah-grahnje”] to exclaim “we are beaten!” Yet some, especially in Brazil, continue to maintain that it was Santos-Dumont, not the Wright Brothers, who was first into the air. This assertion is based on the fact that the 14 Bis had wheels while the early Wright aircraft had skids and were launched from a track using a falling-wight catapult device. Later rules set out by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale or FAI dictate that to qualify for a flight record an aircraft must take off and land entirely under its own power, meaning, according to Wright Brothers detractors, that only Santos-Dumont’s attempts technically count as actual flights. However, this argument ignores that on the Wrights’ historic 1903 flight, the Flyer did indeed take off under its own power. Furthermore, as with the argument that cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was not the first into space in 1961 because he ejected and did not land with his spacecraft, the FAI has proven itself willing to ignore minor technicalities if the case for a record is obvious enough.

Santos-Dumont performed several more short flights in the 14 Bis before moving on to a more sophisticated design he dubbed the Demoiselle or “damselfly”. Built of lightweight bamboo struts with the pilot seated in a frame suspended directly beneath the wing, the Demoiselle is considered by many historians to be the very first ultralight aircraft. Santos-Dumont piloted the fast and agile Demoiselle on numerous record-breaking flights, including a 200 kilometre cross-country trip between St. Cyr [“Saint Seer”] and Buc [“Book”] in September 1909. With his typical generosity and enthusiasm for aviation, Santos-Dumont released the plans for the aircraft for free, and over 300 copies were built in Europe and the United States. But the Demoiselle was to be Santos-Dumont’s last aerial achievement. In 1909 he began suffering the symptoms of multiple sclerosis and, after making his last flights at the first great Air Show at Riems, closed up his shop, disbanded his workmen, and withdrew into depression and exile. Over the next 20 years he drifted between Europe and his native Brazil, dabbling in astronomy, tinkering with various inventions, and making impassioned pleas against the use of aircraft in warfare. All the while his mental and physical health continued to fail, friends and acquaintances describing the “little Santos” as a “living skeleton.” In 1932, revolution broke out in Brazil, and military aircraft began attacking positions around São Paulo. This sight proved too much for the chronically depressed Santos-Dumont, and on July 23 he took his own life at the age of 59. The Government decreed a three-day period of national mourning, and on December 21 Santos-Dumont was buried at São João Batista Cemetery in Rio de Janeiro, under a statue of Icarus the aviator had designed himself.

Alberto Santos-Dumont is still considered a national hero in Brazil, with countless streets and other sites named in his honour. Though he may not have been first into the air, “little Santos” did more than most to cement the promise and romance of flight in the popular imagination, his dashing and eccentric escapades bringing an air of genteelness and wide-eyed optimism to the field of aviation the likes of which it would never see again.

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In the early morning hours of March 26, 1941, Royal Navy sailors on watch at Souda Bay, on the northern coast of Crete, were alarmed by an unusual sound: the high-pitched whine of high-powered engines, growing ever louder. As the sailors strained their eyes into the pre-dawn gloom, a swarm of tiny, fast-moving craft suddenly burst from the darkness, heading straight for them. There was no time to react; within seconds, large explosions shook four ships – including the heavy cruiser HMS York and the Norwegian tanker Pericles – sending up tall geysers of flame and water. Believing the fleet was under air attack, antiaircraft guns aboard British warships opened fire, sending tracers dancing into the night sky. But the attackers were already gone. When dawn finally broke over Souda Bay, four ships lay at the bottom and dozens of sailors dead. The Royal Navy had fallen victim to the Italian Regia Marina’s secret weapon: the Motoscafa da Turismo or MT, a high-speed motorboat packed with high explosives whose daring pilots had to jump free just before impact to avoid certain death. By the time the Second World War ended in August 1945, two other Axis powers – Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan – would also deploy similar craft – with widely varying results. This is the story of one of WWII’s most bizarre naval weapons.

The Italian Navy was a pioneer in the development of naval special forces. During the First World War, Italian naval engineer Raffaele Rossetti invented an innovative new weapon called the mignatta or “leech”. This was effectively a low-speed electric torpedo fitted with a detachable explosive warhead and handles for two combat swimmers to cling to the side. Riding the mignatta with their heads just above the water, the swimmers would infiltrate an enemy harbour, attach the warhead to the hull of a target ship, and set a time fuse. They would then escape before the warhead detonated. On November 1, 1918, Rossetti, along with Raffaele Paolucci, used the mignatta to attack the Austrian battleship Viribis Unitis, anchored in Pula Bay in what is now Croatia. While the two swimmers were immediately captured, the crew of the battleship did not believe their story and re-boarded the ship, which immediately sank and capsized killing 400 sailors. Unbeknownst to the Italians, just a few hours before the attack the ship had been transferred over to the newly-created State of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs – officially allied with Italy – and renamed the Jugoslavija.

Two decades later in 1941, the Italian Navy created a dedicated special forces unit called the Decima Flottiglia Motoscafi Armati Silurianti or “10th Assault Vehicle Flotilla” – better known as the Decima MAS. Assembled and commanded by aristocrat Captain Junio Valerio Borghese – AKA the “Black Prince”, the Decima developed a number of innovative weapons including the Silurio Lenta Corsa or “Low-Speed Torpedo” – better known as the maiale or “pig.” Effectively an upgraded version of the earlier mignatta, the maiale was an electrically-driven torpedo with a detachable warhead designed to be ridden into enemy harbours by a pair of combat frogmen – this time equipped with underwater breathing apparatus. Using maiale, the men of the Decima carried out a number of daring and successful raids on British harbours in the Mediterranean, including Alexandria and Gibraltar. These operations, in turn, inspired the British to create their own combat frogmen, manned torpedoes, and midget submarines.

Another weapon developed by the Decima was the Motoscafa da Turismo or “high-speed motor boat”, nicknamed the barchino or “little boat.” This was a 5.6 metre long wooden motor boat with a canvas deck, powered by a 95 horsepower Alfa Romeo outboard motor that gave it a top speed of 33 knots or 61 kilometres per hour. The bow was packed with 300 kilograms of high explosive, while the single pilot rode in a small cockpit overhanging the rear transom. Barchini were designed to be carried close to their targets by a mothership, whereupon they would be launched and infiltrate an enemy harbour at low speed to avoid detection. When within around 100-200 metres of the target, the pilot would lock the rudder, open the throttle, and pull an escape handle, which would engage a primitive ejection seat and launch him overboard. The barchino would continue forward at full speed until it impacted the target’s hull. This detonated a small explosive charge that ripped off the boat’s bow and caused the boat to sink, whereupon a hydrostatic fuze would detonate the main charge at a depth of one metre. If the pilot was lucky, he would be picked up by the mother ship and returned to base.

The MTs were built by the companies Baglietto of Varazze and CABI of Milan, with the first examples being delivered for testing in early 1939. Test attacks against the obsolete cruiser Quarto revealed numerous flaws, such as a lack of adequate engine power and a tendency for the hull to leak at high speeds. This led to the development of the faster and more seaworthy Motoscafo da Turismo Modificato or MTM, which entered service in November 1940. The MTMs were first used operationally in the March 26, 1941 raid on Souda Bay in Crete, for which the boats were ferried to their targets by the destroyers Franscesco Crispi and Quintino Sella. The raid resulted in four ships sunk and all six barchino pilots being captured by the British. But while both HMS York and the Pericles sank in shallow water and were soon re-floated, the former was scuttled by its crew when the Germans invaded Crete in May 1942, while the latter sank under tow in April while under tow to Alexandria.

On the 26th of July, 1941, the Decima launched an attack against Grand Harbour in Valetta, Malta using two maiale human torpedoes and six barchini. Unfortunately, the mission was a complete failure, the British having detected the raiders as they were being launched. All eight vehicles were destroyed, fifteen Italians killed, and eighteen captured. The only damage inflicted was to a bridge linking the breakwater to Fort St. Elmo, which was struck by a barchino and destroyed. In the wake of this disaster, the Italians would attempt to use barchini on a number of different occasions, including along the Egyptian-Libyan coast and in the Black Sea in support of the German invasion of Russia. However, none of these operations were very successful. Following the signing of the Italian armistice with the Allies in September 1943, the Italian Social Republic, the fascist puppet state in Northern Italy, continued to build and use barchini in combat. One of the last victories scored by the strange vehicles was against the French destroyer Trombe, which was heavily damaged off the northern Italian coast on April 16, 1945 – three weeks before the end of the war. After the war, four MTMs were captured and used by Shayetet 13, the naval commandoes of what would soon become the state of Israel. On October 22, 1948, during the Israeli War of Independence, the boats were used to attack the Egyptian sloop El Emir Farouq. The sloop sank in five minutes, while a nearby minesweeper was heavily damaged.

Explosive motor boats were also deployed by Nazi Germany. As covered in our previous video The Laughably Awful German Midget Submarines, by mid-1944 the effectiveness of the German Kriegsmarine had been all but neutralized. Advancements in Allied anti-submarine technology and tactics had put the once-mighty U-boat arm permanently on the back foot, while the German surface fleet – never large to begin with – remained largely bottled up in port, the German High Command hesitant to risk its expensive capital ships in combat. And with the Allies having established solid beachheads in Normandy and Southern France, the Kriegsmarine was desperate for new ways to strike back at the seemingly unstoppable tide of Allied shipping. And so it was that in late 1943, Admiral Karl Dönitz, head of the U-boat arm, established an elite naval attack unit under the command of Rear Admiral Hellmuth Heye. Though officially known as Marine Einsatz Abteilung or “Special Naval Attack Force”, these forces were colloquially known as Klein Kampf Verbände, K-Verbände, or simply “K-units”. The K-Verbände fielded a number of strange weapons, including a series of midget submarines such as the Neger, Seehund, and Biber. They also developed their own explosive motor boats known as the linsen or “lentils.” The dimensions, performance, and mission profile of the linsen were very similar to the Italian barchini, but with one major difference: linsen could be guided remotely by radio, allowing attacks to be carried out from greater distances. However, the boats still needed human pilots to guide them close to their targets. Once in position, the pilot turned on the radio receiver, opened the throttle, and jumped free. Meanwhile, a radio operator aboard an accompanying command boat guided the linse towards its target, using a set of red and green lights to maintain alignment. If all went well – and that was a big if – the pilot would then be rescued by the command boat and returned to base. Linsen were organized into attack groups called rotten, comprising two attack boats and one command boat. Four rotten made up a gruppe, while four gruppe made up a flotilla.

Linsen were first used on the night of August 2, 1944. Along with 58 Neger human torpedoes, 32 Linsen carried out an attack against Allied shipping off the coast of Normandy. The mission was a complete failure, with 41 Linsen and Neger being destroyed for the loss of zero Allied vessels. Several more attacks were carried out in Normandy and the Belgian port of Antwerp – with similar results. In total, the Linsen flotillas claimed only eight enemy ships sunk, including one cruiser, two destroyers, and two freighters. Meanwhile, nearly 70 boats and their crews were lost. One of the main shortcomings of the Linsen was their relatively low speed, which made them vulnerable to enemy fire. In response, German naval engineers set out to develop a faster version known as the Tornado. This was effectively a pair of surplus seaplane floats held together by a simple frame and powered by the same Argus 109-014 pulse-jet engine used on the infamous V-1 flying bomb. While theoretically much faster than the Linse, the Tornado was doomed by the unavailability of 109-014 engines, which were all earmarked for V-1 production. Another proposed alternative was the Schlitten or “Sledge”, an upgraded Linsen fitted with a Ford V8 engine that gave it a top speed of 65 knots. However, the war ended before this craft could see combat.

As a side note, just like with the Italians with human torpedoes, the German use of remote-controlled explosive speedboats actually goes back to the First World War. In the final years of the conflict, the German Imperial Navy fielded an advanced weapon called the Fernlenkboot or FL-boot- a 17-metre-long speedboat packed with 700 kilograms of explosives which had a top speed of 30 knots and was guided from the shore through a spool of wire 20 kilometres long. The devices were used against British shipping off the coast of Flanders, with one successfully sinking the Royal Navy monitor HMS Erebus on March 1, 1917. It was among the first successful uses of an unmanned vehicle or “drone” in military history.

It is perhaps unsurprising that Imperial Japan also used explosive motor boats during WWII. However, unlike their Italian and German counterparts the Japanese pilots made no attempt to bail out prior to impact, using their craft – known as Shinyo or “Sea Quake” as suicide weapons in the Kamikaze tradition. Shinyo were developed starting in March of 1944, with the first examples being based on regular 18-metre steel-hulled torpedo boats. Construction, however, was quickly switched over to wood due to a shortage of raw materials. Driven by one pilot, unarmed the vessels had a top speed of 23 knots. However, when fitted with a 270 kilogram explosive charge, this dropped to only 18 knots, making the Shinyo extremely vulnerable to enemy fire. Consequently, many vessels were also fitted with a pair of 120mm anti-ship rockets for self-defence. A similar vessel known as the Maru-Ni was also developed for the Japanese Imperial Army, which was armed with two depth charges. Unlike the Shinyo, Maru-Ni were not intended to be suicide craft; instead, the pilot was expected to drop his depth charges, turn around, and speed away before the weapons exploded. However, the blast radius of the charges made survival practically impossible.

On August 1, 1944, 400 students reported for Shinyo training at the Naval Torpedo School at Kawatana near Yokosuka. Nearly all were Air Force or Navy Kamikaze pilots, who had transferred over due to a shortage of aircraft. The students, whose average age was 17, were given three choices of assignment: conventional torpedo boats, Shinyo suicide boats, or as suicide frogmen or Fukuryu. Around 150 students chose Shinyo duty. 6,197 Shinyo were produced by war’s end, with 1,100 being deployed to the Philippines, 400 to Okinawa and Formosa – today Taiwan – and smaller numbers to Korea, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Hainan, and Singapore. The vast majority, however, were deployed along the Japanese coast in preparation for the anticipated Allied invasion.

The Shinyo managed to score a handful of victories, most notably the sinking of the Landing Craft Infantry LCI(G)-365 and LCI(M)-974 near the Philippines and the damaging of the destroyers USS Charles J Badger and USS Hutchins off Okinawa. However, due to their slow speed, the vast majority of the craft were picked off by Allied guns before they could get anywhere near their targets. Just like the Italian Barchini and German Linsen, the Shinyo was a weapon of last resort, deployed in desperation by a fighting force whose fate was already sealed.

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Claim:

Images shared in January 2026 authentically show tech billionaire Elon Musk and actor Sydney Sweeney together and confirm the two are dating.

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A rumor that circulated on social media in January 2026 claimed photos confirmed tech billionaire Elon Musk and actor Sydney Sweeney were dating. Two images showed the pair either kissing (archived) or looking into each other’s eyes (archived). A third picture depicted many people — perhaps including paparazzi — photographing the pair in front of the Nobu restaurant in Los Angeles (archived).

In short, all three images were fake and generated with artificial intelligence.

Searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo found no news media outlets reporting any news of Musk dating Sweeney. Entertainment news outlets would have widely covered the alleged romantic development if it had really occurred — especially if photographers captured pictures of the pair in front of an L.A. restaurant.

Days before the fake images appeared on social media, news outlets and tabloids, including People, Page Six and others, reported Sweeney was in a relationship with investor and former talent agent Scooter Braun.

The fake images surfaced online in the weeks following Musk twice (archived) referencing (archived) the size of Sweeney’s breasts in X posts.

Snopes emailed a representative for Sweeney to ask about the images. We also messaged two X users mentioned later in this story to inquire about the generative-AI tools they or others used to create the fake images and will update this article if we receive a response.

Fake images show Musk dating Sweeney

On Jan. 14, X user @distributedkv posted (archived) an AI-generated image showing Musk and Sweeney kissing in a room with a fireplace. The post, which was viewed millions of times, had a caption reading, “BREAKING: Elon Musk and Sydney Sweeney are reportedly dating.”

(@distributedkv/X)

Hours later, X user @alpaysh posted (archived) another AI-generated image showing Musk and Sweeney looking into each other’s eyes in the back of a car. Its caption read, “BREAKING: Elon Musk and Sydney Sweeney are reportedly dating.” The post also had millions of views, but fewer than the previous one with the fireplace setting.

(@alpaysh/X)

The third fake image, also shared (archived) Jan. 14, appeared on another X user’s account. The image depicted Musk and Sweeney in front of the Nobu restaurant in Los Angeles, with many people photographing the pair. The caption read, “BREAKING: Elon Musk and Sidney Sweeney spotted together in LA.” The post received tens of thousands of views.

(@Burnzzz0/X)

According to Google Street View, the Nobu restaurant in L.A. has a different sign than the one shown in the fake image.

Prompts with the Google Gemini AI tool SynthID Detector scanned all three images for a SynthID watermark — a hidden label Google adds to images made or manipulated with its AI platforms.

For the kissing and restaurant images, Gemini answered, “Most or all of this image was edited or generated with Google AI.”

For the image depicting the pair in the back of a car, Gemini answered, “Based on my analysis, this image was generated or edited using Google AI.”

For further reading on how the SynthID Detector can help assess photographic authenticity, see our previous report on an image allegedly showing former U.S. President Bill Clinton and President Donald Trump cuddling in bed.

Sources

Claim:

A January 2026 Department of Homeland Security data leak revealed Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys leader, was an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.

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Context

Tarrio’s name did appear in a watchdog database that claims to contain leaked information about ICE personnel — but he was classified as a “propagandist agitator,” not an ICE agent. At the time of this writing, his entry in that database had last been updated in December 2025, more than a month before the reported leak.

In January 2026, after a reported data leak containing the identities of around 4,500 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol employees, a claim (archived) circulated online that Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the far-right Proud Boys movement, was listed among the leaked names as an ICE agent.

One X user who posted the claim wrote, “Proud Boy Leader / Convicted Felon Enrique Tarrio, Is one of Trump’s Nazi ICE Agents. Imagine That.”

The claim also circulated on Facebook (archived), Threads (archived), Bluesky (archived) and Reddit (archived). Snopes readers wrote in asking if the claim was true.

Many people who made the claim shared screenshots (archived) purportedly from ICEList.is, a watchdog database that, according to its about page, identifies ICE agents and seeks to hold them legally accountable for their actions. According to internet users who shared those screenshots, Tarrio appeared in the ICEList.is database of agents. 

The screenshots showing Tarrio’s name on the ICEList.is database were authentic, meaning not generated by artificial intelligence. However, a spokesperson for ICEList.is said via email that the database included more classifications than just ICE agents. The spokesperson wrote:

Tarrio is listed as a propagandist agitator, not an agent, as it says in his profile, it also says that the agency is not applicable, so no, he is not an ICE agent. We want to track those who spread propaganda, and those who play out stunts of provocation, as well as agents.

ICE generally does not reveal the identity of its agents, who often appear in public wearing masks to obscure their faces. However, Tricia McLaughlin, the Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary for public affairs, wrote in an emailed statement that Tarrio “was never hired by ICE.” Tarrio himself wrote (archived) on X that a post (archived) that appeared to suggest he worked for the agency was satire. Therefore, we rate this claim false. 

In response to claims circulating online, Tarrio wrote (archived) on X on Jan. 14, 2026: 

I F***ING WISH I WORKED FOR ICE.

A brothah needs those 50k. And what a joy would it be to target the nannies and lawn workers of liberals. You want to really get deportations going? Hire the F***ING ProudBoys.

On a serious note: I have received a heavy influx of death threats since these r****ds decided to post this. It’s their goal to spread disinfo so the IDIOTS that believe this take action.

I’ve also received many media requests from mainstream outlets. They didn’t even bother to look at the names listed. If they did they’d see it’s in order by last names and mine isn’t. You can’t hate these people enough. They belong in prison!

Tarrio was correct that ICEList.is appeared to have formatted his name differently from some of the others listed. The ICEList.is spokesperson said the formatting of Tarrio’s name was “simply an oversight.”

Additionally, Tarrio’s page on ICEList.is showed that the database last modified his page on Dec. 1, 2025, more than a month before the reported January 2026 data leak that online users claimed his name featured in — further evidence that Tarrio’s name was not part of the leak.

Tarrio, originally from Miami, was national chairman of the Proud Boys between November 2018 and September 2021, according to reports.

He received a 22-year prison sentence in 2023 for seditious conspiracy and other charges related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. In January 2025, Tarrio walked free after President Donald Trump’s sweeping clemency grant to more than 1,500 people charged with crimes in the Jan. 6 riot.

Snopes previously reported on a false claim that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem testified to Congress that Republicans voted to allow ICE to hire people who participated in the Jan. 6 riot.

Sources