Category: Fact Checking

Claims that a Chinese man underwent surgery so that his severed hand could be grafted onto his leg in order to preserve the limb until it could be reattached to his arm circulated online in early December 2025.

Internet users on sites like Reddit have posted about this particular claim for years, but in December 2025 the rumor underwent a resurgence of popularity thanks to a series of posts on Facebook (archived, archived, archived).

Many posts shared the purported story along with photographs that alleged to show the result of the surgery in question.

According to internet users, the surgery was performed in order to keep the hand alive with a strong blood supply until it was able to be reattached where it belonged.

One post called the surgery “a miracle shaped by hope and determination.”

The claim that a surgeon saved an injured man’s severed hand by temporality grafting it to his leg and later reattached it to his arm was widely reported as a success by the news media when it allegedly occurred in December 2013. Snopes has not been able to review documentation of the surgery ourselves, so we have left this claim unrated, though widely available reporting and photographs suggested the claim was true.

The surgery purportedly occurred at a hospital in Changsha, China, in which an injured worker, Xie Wei, lost his hand while operating a machine.

A series of graphic photographs available for viewing on the reputable image repository Getty Images dated Dec. 4, 2013, appeared to be the origin of some of the images shared in the above social media posts.

Getty captioned each photo with the below: 

This picture taken on December 4, 2013 shows Xie Wei’s hand grafted to his ankle in a hospital in Changsha, central China’s Hunan province. Chinese doctors have saved his severed hand by grafting it to his ankle, local media reported. Xie Wei lost his right hand in an accident at work but could not have it reattached to his arm right away. Doctors kept the hand alive by stitching it to his left ankle and “borrowing” a blood supply from arteries in the leg. Later they managed to replant the hand back on his arm.

China Daily also published an array of photographs of the procedure in December 2013.

Snopes reached out to Dr. Juyu Tang, reported to have been the one who conducted the surgery in question, for comment and a request for available documentation of the procedure.

Tang was listed on the faculty page for Xiangya Medical College, Central South University, which was described as having “well-known microsurgical experts.” Additionally, the faculty page noted Tang was “chief physician, bone science professor, doctoral research tutor” and “current director and deputy director of the Department of Orthopedics, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University,” located in Changsha.

Tang was mentioned by name as the surgeon responsible in some reports from the time from outlets like the BBC, CNN, NBC News, Yahoo, The Toronto Star, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and China Daily.

One particular photograph on Getty Images depicted a doctor who appeared to match the faculty photo of Tang on the Xiangya Medical College website. In 2015, CNN published an image gallery from the surgery, which included some of the Getty Images photos as well as other photos identifying Tang.

Further, a list of Tang’s published research on ResearchGate, a database for scientific research papers, clearly depicted his focus of study in skin graft techniques and tissue reconstruction. Tang’s faculty page stated his focus of research as “the basic and clinical study of allograft composite tissue transplantation” and the “basic and clinical study of perforator flap [techniques].”

Perforator flaps, put simply, is a method of reconstructive surgery by which tissue from elsewhere on the body is used, such as the procedure allegedly performed by Tang.

A 2008 editorial in “The Medscape Journal of Medicine” by Steven Morris noted “the quest has always been to find the best tissue transfer with a dependable blood supply, which can be transferred reliably to close a defect”:

Perforator flaps have become increasingly popular in reconstructive microsurgery. To close soft-tissue defects left by trauma or after the excision of tumors, reconstructive surgeons have employed a number of surgical techniques. These tissue transfers, which are also known as “flaps,” have evolved over the past century from random-pattern flaps with an unknown blood supply, through axial-pattern flaps with a known blood supply to muscle and musculocutaneous flaps.

The December 2013 CNN report stated that the victim “recovered without complications” and his employer paid for the surgery, “which cost about 300,000 Chinese yuan, or about $49,400.”

The Toronto Star quoted a University of Toronto plastic surgery professor, Dr. Dimitri Anastakis, who said of the surgery, “We’ve done comparable things at the University of Toronto… I’m impressed with the creativity… I’m impressed with the drive to save the person’s hand and restore function… It’s particularly cool…  In China, they do phenomenally creative work.”

By all accounts, the claim that Tang was able to save a man’s hand by attaching it to his leg appeared to be true, but until we can look at the evidence first hand, this claim will remain unrated. 

Sources

In late December 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice released several batches of files related to its investigation of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In the days that followed, accounts across multiple social media sites shared an image purportedly showing U.S. President Donald Trump with a young girl whose face was censored. 

One popular X post (archived) sharing the image, with more than 27 million views as of this writing, read: “They forgot to delete this one.” 

Many users replying to these posts appeared to believe the image authentically depicted Trump with an unknown girl, while others claimed she was Ivanka Trump, the president’s eldest daughter. 

There were multiple signs the image was not authentic; however, we were not able to definitively determine the image was AI-generated.

First, the date in the upper right corner — “9   1’02” — is nonsensical. This could be camera malfunction, though it could also be an artifact of AI generation or an intentional edit to make the origins of the image difficult to trace.

(X user @keithedwards)

The earliest version of the image we could find appeared on social media user Keith Edwards’ platforms, including YouTube and X (archived). We reached out to Edwards via X, Instagram and email seeking comment about whether he created the image and whether it was AI-generated or otherwise altered, and will update this report should we learn more.

While Edwards’ YouTube account used the image as the thumbnail for a video titled “The FBI forgot to redact this,” and he mentioned “one file they forgot to redact” involving Trump “and a 14-year-old girl” (at 0:22), Edwards did not show the thumbnail image during the 10-minute video, indicating it was likely intended as clickbait. 

(YouTube account @keithedwards)

Edwards’ YouTube account was filled with other, similarly shocking thumbnails with expressive overlays of Edwards’ face combined with large, vague, bright yellow captions. These are all classic signs of content designed to be clickbait — content meant to attract viewers for ad revenue.

Reputable news media outlets have widely reported any appearance of Trump in the files that were released to the public on Dec. 19, but these reports did not include the image in question. A Google search of the keywords “trump” “child” “epstein” and “plane” revealed results related to other claims, but did not turn up the image in question. If it was authentic and still publicly available, reputable news media outlets likely would have reported on it.

(Google.com)

While the Trump administration has received criticism for at least 16 files disappearing from the government site after the DOJ released them on Dec. 19 with no notice to the public, Edwards posts claimed the image in question had not been deleted. However, it was not among the files we reviewed.

We’ve reported on several images of Trump with underage girls that were fake. We’ve also extensively reported on Trump’s relationship with Epstein over the years.

Sources

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For months, social media users have asked the same question: What, exactly, is the purpose of those woven strips on towels? 

The inquiry has spread on platforms including X, Reddit and Facebook since at least March 2025. Several posts included a picture with the claim, “Most people will go their entire life without ever knowing what the lines on bath towels actually mean.”

Social media users have answered the question with various jokes or theories. Posts with tens of thousands of likes suggested the woven strips help towels dry faster, make them easier to grip or improve their hold when they are pinned to clotheslines. Some posts insisted that the woven strip is called a “dobby weave” or “dobby border” and that it prevents fraying or other issues with a towel’s structure. 

It turns out the answer may be all of the above — at least according to towel wholesalers and textile experts. “Known as a dobby border, this woven strip helps prevent fraying, improves absorbency, and gives towels a professional, polished look,” Towel Hub wrote in a March 11, 2025, blog post. The towel manufacturer also said the design feature improves grip and increases the speed at which a towel dries. 

“The woven strip helps maintain an even structure, preventing the edges from becoming too bulky,” Towel Hub’s blog post said. The strip keeps the towel lighter and speeds up drying by ensuring “moisture is evenly distributed throughout the towel’s surface.” 

Whitney Crutchfield, a Fashion Institute of Technology professor who specializes in textiles, said via email the flat woven section is called a “dobby weave” because it is usually characteristic of the types of fabric that can be woven on a dobby loom, a type of weaving loom.

Crutchfield also said the dobby weave is a better “canvas” for decoration and branding compared to the rest of a towel, which can obscure detailing. 

Towels with woven strips are also easier to handle when “drying off, folding or stacking” and less likely to stretch compared to towels without the feature, according to the Towel Hub post. The so-called dobby border is particularly important for businesses that use towels frequently and intensely, such as hotels or gyms, and clean them via industrial washing machines and heavy-duty detergents.

As for the X user’s complaint about shrinking, the towel wholesaler wrote: 

Not all dobby borders are created equal. A well-made woven strip should be tightly stitched and seamlessly integrated into the towel’s design. Loose or thin strips can weaken over time, diminishing the towel’s durability and overall lifespan.

A blog post by Direct Textile Store in 2018 said there are actually two different types of woven strips: “dobby borders” and “cam borders.” The latter are less decorative — “just a straight line across, generally less than an inch thick, with no specific patterns or designs.” However, both are used for similar reasons, according to the post.

Towel Hub, Direct Textile Store and other towel manufacturers did not return inquiries about the woven strip’s purpose as of this writing. We will update this story if they do. 

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At 3:45 PM on September 5, 1945, history was made at Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario as the Zero Energy Experimental Pile or ZEEP achieved criticality for the first time. In that moment, Canada entered the nuclear age – only the second country after the United States to do so. While rarely thought of as a leader in nuclear technology, Canada has long punched above its weight. During the Second World War, uranium from Canadian mines fuelled the first atomic bombs, while many Canadian scientists like Dr. Louis Slotin were intimately involved in the Manhattan Project. After the war, Dr. Harold Johns of the University of Saskatchewan developed cobalt therapy for the treatment of cancer, making Canada a world leader in the production and use of medical isotopes. But perhaps Canada’s greatest achievement in the nuclear field is the CANDU, a highly-innovative nuclear reactor that ranks among the safest and most economical in the world. When first introduced in the late 1960s, CANDU seemed poised to revolutionize the nuclear power industry, but due to various political and economic factors only a handful of units were ever built. In this era of looming climate catastrophe, where nuclear power looks to be the only viable means of producing clean, reliable electricity, it is worth asking: what made the CANDU so special, and why did it fail to catch on? This is the fascinating story of Canada’s forgotten super-reactor.

CANDU, short for CANadian Deuterium Uranium, was developed by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited or AECL, a crown corporation formed in 1952 to develop peaceful uses for nuclear power. The innovative design of this reactor grew out of Canada’s unique limitations as an industrial nation. While Canada had vast reserves of uranium ore in its northern territories, it lacked the capacity to enrich said uranium into conventional nuclear reactor fuel. And for those unfamiliar with the process of enrichment and why it is so important, it is worth taking a slight detour to examine the inner workings of a typical nuclear reactor.

At the heart of every atom lies a small, dense structure called a nucleus, composed of two types of subatomic particles or nucleons: protons, which have a positive electron charge; and neutrons, which have no charge. This is in turn surrounded by a cloud of negatively-charged electrons which determine the atom’s overall electric charge and reactivity – though this is not relevant to the subject at hand. The number of protons in the nucleus – i.e. its atomic number – determines the type of element; for example, hydrogen has one proton, helium two, lithium 3 and so on. The number of neutrons, meanwhile, determines the isotope. For example, if an atom of carbon, which always has 6 protons, also has 6 neutrons, then it is the isotope carbon-12; but if, instead, it has 8 neutrons, then it is the isotope carbon-14 – and to learn more about that particular isotope and how it is used to determine the age of archaeological finds, please check out our previous video How Do We Know How Old Things Like Dinosaur Bones Are?

When atomic nuclei become too large or suffer an imbalance between the number of protons and neutrons, the the weak nuclear force – one of the four fundamental forces of the universe along with the strong nuclear force, electromagnetism, and gravity – is no longer able to hold the nucleons together, and the nucleus becomes unstable and begins to break apart. This is known as radioactive decay or simply radioactivity. There are many different types of radioactive decay, the four most common being alpha decay, beta decay, gamma decay, and spontaneous fission. In alpha decay, the nucleus emits an alpha particle composed of two protons and two neutrons; in beta decay it emits a beta particle (identical to an electron), while in gamma decay it emits photons of high-energy, short-wave electromagnetic radiation known as gamma rays. Of these forms of ionizing radiation, gamma rays are the most highly-penetrating and dangerous to living cells; while alpha particles can be stopped by paper, human skin, or even a few centimetres of air and beta particles by a thin sheet of aluminium, it takes a thick layer of lead or concrete to block gamma rays.

In each of these forms of radioactive decay the nucleus transforms or transmutes into a new element and isotope, which itself may also be radioactive and undergo further decay. This goes on until a stable isotope is finally reached. For example, the most common isotope of uranium, uranium-238, goes through a decay chain of up to 14 steps, transmuting into Thorium-234, Protactinium-234, Uranium-234, Thorium-230, Radium-226 and so on before finally becoming the stable isotope Lead-206.

The fourth major form of radioactive decay is spontaneous fission, in which the nucleus splits or fissions, producing two or more smaller nuclear fragments known as fission products and one or more free neutrons. If these neutrons are directed towards other heavy nuclei, they can strike and split them in a process known as induced fission, releasing more free neutrons which go on to fission yet more nuclei and so on in a nuclear chain reaction. Such reactions can release enormous amounts of energy; for instance, a single kilogram of uranium, burned in a nuclear reactor, can produce the energy equivalent of 500 tons or 5 standard rail cars of coal.

However, a chain reaction can only become self-sustaining under very specific conditions. For example, a minimum quantity of nuclear fuel configured in a particular geometry is needed to ensure that more neutrons remain in the reactor to trigger fissions than escape into the outside environment. This is known as the critical mass. Furthermore, the probability of a neutron fissioning a nucleus is highly dependent on its energy, with the highest probability or neutron cross-section for uranium being achieved by low-energy or thermal neutrons at around 0.025 electron-volts (as an aside, neutron cross-section is measured in units called barns, equivalent to 100 square femtometres. This was coined by physicists working on the Manhattan Project, who quipped that to a neutron, a uranium nucleus was “as big as a barn”. A related unit created around the same time is the shake, equivalent to 10 nanoseconds and derived – and we’re not making this up – from the expression “two shakes of a lamb’s tail”. As if you needed any more proof that physicists are very, very odd people…).

Unfortunately, the free neutrons given off during atomic fission are high-energy or fast neutrons, with a relatively low probability of inducing further fissions. This is why most reactors place a material called a moderator between the fuel elements to slow the free neutrons down to the correct energy level and sustain the reaction. The earliest reactors, including the historic Chicago Pile 1, used ultra-pure carbon in the form of pyrolytic graphite as the moderator. However, this material had numerous shortcomings – namely the annoying habit of spontaneously bursting into flames. Indeed, this dangerous property played a major role in two of history’s greatest nuclear reactor disasters: the 1957 Windscale Fire in Sellafield, England; and the 1986 Chernobyl explosion in Ukraine – and to learn more about the extraordinary – and somewhat insane – process of building the world’s first nuclear reactor, please check out our previous video That Time Scientists Built the World’s First Nuclear Reactor Under a Chicago Football Stadium.

As a result, most subsequent reactors have instead used ordinary distilled water as the moderator, which conveniently doubles as a coolant for carrying heat away from the core. But water has its own downsides, particularly its ability to absorb large numbers of neutrons. The only fissile isotope found in nature – that is, the only one capable of sustaining a nuclear chain reaction – is uranium-235. However, this isotope accounts for only 0.72% of natural uranium, the rest being non-fissile uranium-238. This results in a very low rate of spontaneous fissions, meaning that if natural uranium is placed in a reactor moderated with ordinary water, that water will absorb too many neutrons to sustain a chain reaction. The conventional solution is to enrich the fuel to contain a higher proportion of uranium-235, producing a greater neutron flux that can overpower the neutron-absorbing properties of the water moderator. Most reactor fuel for light water moderated reactors is made of low-enriched uranium or LEU, which contains around 3-5% uranium-235. Unfortunately, uranium enrichment is an extraordinarily resource-intensive process, requiring giant facilities full of centrifuges and other equipment and vast amounts of electrical power – resources post-war Canada simply did not have.
Thankfully for the physicists at AECL, there was another solution: heavy water. This is a form of water containing deuterium, a heavy isotope of hydrogen with an extra neutron in the nucleus. As its name suggests, heavy water is 10% denser than ordinary light water. It also has a neutron capture cross-section 508 times smaller than that of ordinary light water, meaning that a heavy-water moderated nuclear reactor can run on unenriched natural uranium fuel. However, the scattering cross section of heavy water is also lower than that of light water, meaning that more of it is needed to slow neutrons to the correct energy levels. Furthermore, it is very expensive, currently trading at nearly $600 per litre. This is due to the extremely resource-intensive process used to produce it, which involves using large amounts of hydroelectricity to electrolyze ordinary water. Indeed, during the Second World War, the Nazi effort to develop a nuclear bomb was focused on heavy water-moderated reactors. However, the only major source of heavy water in Europe was the Norsk Hydro plant in telemark, Norway, where it was produced as a byproduct of fertilizer synthesis. Knowing this, in 1943 British-trained Norwegian commandoes conducted a series of sabotage raids which succeeded in destroying the heavy water plant and severely crippling the nascent German nuclear program – and to learn more about this extraordinary story, please check out our previous video How Close Did the Nazis Actually Come to Building an Atomic Bomb?

This brings us back at last to the Canadian nuclear program, which due to their economic and logistical advantages used natural uranium fuel and heavy water moderator in most of its earliest reactors, including ZEEP in 1945, the National Research Experimental Reactor or NRX in 1947, and the National Research Universal Reactor or NRU in 1957. Interestingly, on December 12, 1952 NRX became the site of one of the world’s first major nuclear accidents when a malfunction in the cooling system resulted in a partial meltdown of the core. Cleanup and repair of the reactor involved 150 personnel loaned from the U.S. Navy nuclear submarine program, including one Lieutenant Jimmy Carter – later President of the United States. But while these relatively small research reactors continued to operate for decades, producing mountains of valuable data and life-saving medical isotopes, when in 1955 AECL began work on a full-scale civilian power reactor they ran into another logistical barrier. Most power-generating reactors use a primary coolant loop of either light or heavy water to carry heat from the core to a steam generator, where the heat is transferred to a secondary loop and used to generate steam. This steam is then passed through a turbine, turning a generator and producing electricity. To prevent the water in the primary coolant loop from boiling, it is maintained at high pressure – typically around 150 atmospheres. However, Canadian industry in the 1950s and 60s lacked the ability to produce sufficiently large pressure vessels to contain a reactor core. Indeed, when construction began in 1961 on the pilot-scale Nuclear Power Demonstration or NPD reactor near Chalk River Laboratories, the containment vessel had to be contracted out to a firm in Scotland. As this design could not be economically scaled up, halfway through construction AECL engineers developed a radically new core design that would become the cornerstone of the full-scale CANDU reactor system.

In this design, the heavy water moderator is contained in a large, horizontal cylindrical tank called a calandria. As this moderator is unpressurized, the calandria does not need to be particularly robust and can be more easily manufactured in Canada. Instead, the fuel elements are contained in multiple smaller pressure tubes running horizontally through the calandria, which can be produced using conventional pipe-fitting technology. These tubes, which carry pressurized coolant past the fuel elements, are made of zircaloy – an alloy of zirconium, tin, and niobium all but transparent to neutrons – and are contained within larger calandria tubes to prevent radioactive coolant from leaking into the moderator. The gap between the pressure and calandria tubes is filled with carbon dioxide gas, which acts as an insulator to prevent heat from leaking into the calandria.

The CANDU is fuelled by natural, unenriched uranium in the form of uranium dioxide, a black ceramic-like material that is compressed into small cylindrical fuel pellets. These are stacked inside hollow zircaloy fuel pins which are then sealed and assembled into fuel bundles measuring 500 millimetres long, 100 millimetres in diameter, and weighing 22 kilograms. Early fuel bundles contained 37 fuel pins of equal diameter, but in the mid-1980s AECL introduced improved CANFLEX bundles with 43 pins of different diameters to improve burnup homogeneity and heat transfer to the coolant.

These bundles, along with the horizontal pressure tubes, give the CANDU a capability almost unique among reactor designs: on-line refuelling. After a certain period of operation, reactor fuel becomes so depleted in fissile U-235 that it can no longer sustain a chain reaction and must be replaced. In most nuclear reactors, where the fuel elements are arranged vertically, this involves shutting down the reactor, allowing the fuel to cool down, removing the top cap of the reactor vessel, and swapping out the fuel elements. This process can take weeks or even months, severely cutting into the reactor’s production capacity. By contrast, CANDU reactors can be refuelled continuously while they are still running. A pair of robotic refuelling machines on either side of the calandria insert fresh fuel bundles into one end of the pressure tubes, causing spent bundles to fall out the other side. This unique capability gives CANDU an extremely high capacity factor – the percentage of a power plant’s total lifespan actually spent generating electricity. When CANDU was commercially introduced in the late 1960s, most regular light water reactors had capacity factors of around 50%, spending nearly half their lifespans being refuelled or undergoing maintenance. CANDU, by contrast, offered capacity factors of 70% or greater, which – along with the use of cheaper natural uranium fuel – theoretically made the technology much more economical in the long term. Indeed, Unit 7 reactor at the Pickering B nuclear power plant in Ontario currently holds the world record for continuous operation at 894 days – nearly two and a half years.

On-line refuelling also makes CANDU more flexible to operate than most other reactor designs. For example, if a certain section of the core is running unusually “hot” or “cold”, then special fuel bundles containing more or less-enriched uranium can be inserted into that section to correct the imbalance and promote more homogenous neutron flux and fuel burnup. This process, along with the ability to divert steam away from the generator turbines, also allows CANDU power plants to perform deep load following, adjusting their output to match the ever-changing demands of the electrical grid. Indeed, more advanced designs like the Enhanced CANDU 6 and Advanced CANDU Reactors or ACR-1000 can quickly cycle down to as low as 60% maximum power and back with no ill effects.

Furthermore, CANDU’s ability to burn natural uranium means it can easily burn all sorts of alternative fuels, including the spent fuel from regular light water reactors – a practice known as Direct Use of PWR Fuel in CANDU or DUPIC. Containing around 0.9% uranium-235, spent PWR fuel is rich compared to regular CANDU fuel, allowing 30-40% more energy to be extracted which would otherwise go to waste. This capability is currently being studied by South Korea, which operates a fleet of both PWR and CANDU reactors. CANDUs are also being studied for converting the long-lived actinide elements like plutonium and americium found in spent nuclear fuel into shorter-lived radioactive elements, reducing the amount of time radioactive waste must be stored – and to learn more about the complex science of nuclear waste disposal, please check out our aptly-named video How Does Nuclear Waste Disposal Work?

CANDU can also burn so-called mixed oxide or MOX fuel, composed of uranium mixed with plutonium. This fuel cycle theoretically allows for the peaceful and productive disposal of plutonium from decommissioned nuclear warheads, reducing the risk of nuclear proliferation. However, some critics have argued that the construction of the fuel reprocessing facilities required to support this cycle would actually increase the risk of proliferation by giving civilian agencies the ability to extract and purify plutonium.

And if that weren’t enough, CANDUs are easily adapted into breeder reactors, which convert normally non-fissile or fertile isotopes into fissile ones and can theoretically breed more fuel than they consume. For example, when the fertile isotope Thorium-232 is bombarded with neutrons in a reactor core, it can absorb a neutron to become Thorium 233. This then decays twice via beta decay to become Uranium-233, which, like Uranium-235, is fissile and can be burned in the reactor. This fuel cycle is being actively investigated by several nations including India, which boasts large deposits of thorium ore. However, breeder reactors can also be used to breed plutonium-239 from uranium-238, significantly increasing the risk of nuclear proliferation. Indeed, CANDU-derived reactors have already been used for this purpose – but more on that later.

Further innovation is to be found in the CANDU’s control system. In most nuclear reactors, power output is adjusted using so-called control rods made of neutron-absorbing materials like cadmium or boron, which are moved in and out of the core to control the neutron flux and the rate of the chain reaction. CANDU uses a similar system, only the control rods – which move vertically in the calandria at right angles to the pressure tubes – are known as adjuster rod units or ARUs and are made of stainless steel. However, to allow for even finer control, the CANDU core is divided into 14 zones, each fitted with multiple ion chambers and self-powered vanadium flux detectors to monitor neutron density as well as zone control unit or ZCUs. These are vertical metal tubes which can be filled with varying levels of neutron-absorbing light water, allowing neutron flux and fuel burnup in each zone to be adjusted with a high degree of precision.

But perhaps the greatest strength of the CANDU design is its high degree of safety – among the best of any nuclear reactor design. This is accomplished by a combination of both passive and active safety systems. Actually sustaining a nuclear reaction in natural uranium fuel requires a great deal of precision in the core design, meaning that any disturbance tends to reduce rather than increase the rate of the reaction. This is yet another case in which the CANDU’s unique horizontal pressure tube design proves its ingenuity; if these tubes start to overheat, they will sag under the force of gravity, throwing them out of alignment and causing the nuclear reaction to slow down. The CANDU’s use of heavy water as a moderator is also a major safety feature. Nuclear fission produces large numbers of smaller nuclei known as fission products, most of which are highly radioactive. The decay of these fission products generates a large amount of heat, which is why reactors must be actively cooled for a period of time even after the chain reaction has been shut down. If a reactor suffers a loss of coolant accident, or LOCA, this decay heat can rapidly build up, potentially leading to a core meltdown. The typical response to such an event is to pump water into the core to cool it down, but in a light water reactor this risks making the core critical again and re-starting the chain reaction. However, as the CANDU core is only critical in heavy water, in an emergency it can be cooled with ordinary water without fear of re-starting the reaction.

The CANDU’s unique calandria-and-pressure tube design also allows it to get around a common problem that plagues many other reactor designs: a positive void coefficient. The void coefficient indicates how a reactor’s reactivity is affected by the formation of voids or steam bubbles in the coolant and moderator. If the coefficient is positive, this means that the reactivity will increase, generating more heat and more steam and potentially triggering a runaway chain reaction. Indeed, this was one of the major factors in the 1986 Chernobyl disaster: the control rods, when lowered into the core, created voids in the coolant, causing the reactivity to spike and the coolant to flash-boil, causing a steam explosion that ripped the core apart. In the CANDU core, however, coolant and moderator are separated, with the former having such a small volume compared to the latter that the effect of void formation in the coolant has a relatively minor impact on the overall reactivity of the reactor. Furthermore, the large mass of moderator in the calandria acts as a giant heat sink that can easily absorb any excess heat. The core thus reacts very slowly to power excursions, giving operators ample time to get the reaction back under control.

Another passive safety feature is the mounting of CANDU’s steam generators above the calandria. In the event of a cooling pump failure, this allows decay heat from the fuel to circulate and be carried away via natural convection, preventing the core from overheating and melting down. Each of the coolant loops feeding the steam generators is also divided in two, meaning that any loss of coolant accident likely to effect only one-quarter of the total core.

In addition to these passive features, CANDU reactors are also fitted with a number of active safety features. For example, the Adjuster Rod Units as well as a set of four cadmium Mechanical Control Absorbers can be rapidly lowered into the core to reduce its reactivity. There are also two independent shutdown systems: SDS-1 comprises 28 cadmium shutdown rods suspended over the calandria by electromagnets, such that in the event of a power failure, the rods will automatically drop into the core and shut down the reaction. As these rods are inserted into the low-pressure calandria and not the pressure tubes, the formation of high-pressure steam by a runaway reaction cannot cause them to be ejected from the core – and for more on a now largely-forgotten nuclear disaster where this happened – with gruesome consequences – please check out our previous video The SL-1 Accident – America’s First Fatal Reactor Mishap. Meanwhile, SDS-2 injects neutron-absorbing gadolinium nitrate into the moderator, stopping the reaction dead.

The last major safety system installed at most CANDU power plants is a vacuum building, a large reinforced concrete structure connected to the reactor containment building and maintained at lower than ambient pressure. In the case of a steam explosion, the steam vents into the vacuum building and immediately condenses, preventing it from breaching containment and releasing radioactivity into the environment. Working in combination, all of these various safety systems make a disastrous criticality excursion or core meltdown exceedingly unlikely.

The first pilot-scale CANDU demonstration reactor, the Nuclear Power Demonstration or NPD, first achieved criticality on April 11, 1962, and achieved its full power generation capacity of 22 megawatts on June 28 of that year. This was the first nuclear power to be generated in Canada. NDP proved the viability of the CANDU design concept, and remained in operation as an engineering research reactor for 25 years before being shut down and decommissioned starting in 1987. The first commercial-scale CANDU plant was the Douglas Point Nuclear Generating Station, built on the shores of Lake Huron near Kincardine, Ontario. Douglas Point first achieved criticality on November 15, 1966 and officially entered service on September 26, 1968 with a maximum generating capacity of 206 megawatts of electricity. This was soon followed by the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station on the shores of Lake Ontario, whose first generating unit entered service on July 29, 1971. Seven more units would be added between 1971 and 1986 for a maximum capacity of 14 gigawatts. Next came the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station near Kincardine on Lake Huron, whose 8 units were commissioned between 1977 and 1987 for a total capacity of 22.6 gigawatts; followed on February 1, 1983 by the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station in New Brunswick, with a single 660 megawatt reactor.

Meanwhile,in November 1970 the Gentilly-1 reactor in Bécancour, Quebec first achieved criticality . This was an experimental version of the CANDU intended to reduce the original design’s complexity and cost and make it more attractive for international export. Unique among CANDU reactors, Gentilly-1 had vertically-oriented pressure tubes, allowing the use of a single refuelling machine mounted beneath the calandria, and used regular light water as a moderator and coolant – a design choice which required the use of low-enriched uranium or LEU fuel. The unit was also configured as a Boiling Water Reactor or BWR. As previously mentioned, in a Pressurized Water Reactor or PWR the cooling system is divided into two separate loops: a primary loop that extracts heat from the core and carries it to a heat exchanger or steam generator, and a secondary loop that uses heat transferred from the primary loop to generate steam, which is passed through a turbine connected to a generator to produce electricity. By contrast, a BWR has only a single coolant loop, in which coolant is fed directly into core and turns immediately to steam, which is then fed through a turbine. While simpler and cheaper to build and operate than PWRs, BWRs come with their own set of issues – for example, radioactive contamination of the turbines by fission products from the core. Instrumentation and control of the core is also more complex, resulting in a higher risk of accidents – indeed, BWRs were involved in both the 1979 Three Mile Island and 2011 Fukushima nuclear accidents. Unfortunately, Gentilly-1 was plagued with technical problems and never worked as intended, logging only 180 days of normal operation over 7 years in service. The reactor was shut down in 1979 and a regular 925 megawatt CANDU-6 unit installed beside it, entering service on October 1, 1983. A third unit was planned for the Gentilly site, but this was cancelled when it was decided that Quebec’s future energy needs could be met using hydroelectricity. In 2012, operator Hydro-Quebec decided to shut down Gentilly-2 for economic reasons and initiated a 50-year, $1.8 billion decommissioning process.

The last CANDU plant to be built in Canada was the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station near Clarington, Ontario, whose four reactors, with a combined capacity of 11 gigawatts, were commissioned between 1992 and 1993. Together, the Darlington, Bruce, and Pickering plants generate around 58% of Ontario’s electrical power.

Throughout this period, AECL continued to refine the CANDU design, producing a number of different versions. The original design introduced in 1968 had a rated capacity of 500 megawatts and was designed for use in large multi-unit installations. This was followed in the early 1980s by the CANDU 6, a 600-megawatt design intended for small single or double-unit installations. An even larger 900-megawatt version known as CANDU 9 was later developed, though as of this recording none have actually been constructed. In 1962, construction of an innovative CANDU variant known as Whiteshell Reactor or WR-1 began at AECL’s Whiteshell Laboratories in Pinawa, Manitoba. First achieving criticality on November 1, 1965, WR-1 used a special mixture of organic terphenyl oils called HB-40 instead of heavy water as its primary coolant. This had numerous advantages over the conventional CANDU design; most notably, oil has a much higher boiling point and heat capacity than water, allowing the coolant system to operate at higher pressures and temperatures. This, in turn, increases the thermal efficiency of the entire system, allowing for more energy to be produced using a smaller core. Use of oil also reduced corrosion of the core components, extending the life of the reactor. But while WR-1 ran for 20 years and promised to significantly improve the cost and efficiency of the CANDU system, the design was never successfully commercialized and the experiment was shut down in 1985 for economic reasons.

At the same time as it was building reactors across Canada, AECL was also making significant efforts to market the CANDU overseas, with its first foreign sales success being India. AECL had previously sold India the Canada India Reactor Utility Services or CIRUS research reactor. Based on the NRX reactor at Chalk River Laboratories, CIRUS was installed at the Bhabha Atomic Research Center near Mumbai in 1956. A similar reactor was later sold to Taiwan in 1969, but the country broke off nuclear relations with Canada after the latter officially recognized the People’s Republic of China. In 1966, AECL negotiated a deal to build two reactors in India based on the first Canadian CANDU installation at Douglas Point. The first of these, the Rajasthan Atomic Power Project or RAPP-1, began operation in 1972. However, on May 18, 1974, while RAPP-2 was still under construction, India detonated its first atomic bomb, rather surreally nicknamed “Smiling Buddha”. It soon emerged that the plutonium for the bomb had been produced using the CIRUS research reactor, violating an agreement that the reactor only be used for peaceful purposes. Absurdly, India tried to claim that it had not, in fact, violated the agreement, since Smiling Buddha was a “peaceful nuclear explosion.” Suuure, India… AECL, unconvinced by this argument, pulled out of the RAPP project and ceased all further transfers of nuclear technology to India. Then, in 1976, Canada updated its nuclear export policy, limiting transfers of nuclear technology to nations which had signed the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty. As a result of the Canadian withdrawal, completion of RAPP-2 was delayed until 1981. However, India went on to copy the CANDU design to produce its own indigenously-manufactured version called the Indian Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor or IPHWR. As of this recording there are 18 IPHWR reactors in operation across India – and to learn more about the real-life effort to use nuclear weapons peacefully, please check out our previous video That Time the Soviets Tried to Extinguish a Fire With a Nuke for…Reasons.

In 1971, AECL built a 137 megawatt CANDU unit at the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant in Pakistan – the first operational reactor in the Muslim World. This, too, proved controversial, especially following the 1974 Indian nuclear test, since it was feared that Pakistan would use this reactor to develop its own atomic bomb. The Karachi installation was followed in 1983 by a 635 megawatt installation at the Embalse Nuclear Power Station in Argentina. That same year, the first 657 megawatt unit at the Wolsong Nuclear Power Plant in South Korea came online; this would be followed by three more units between 1997 and 1999. In 1996 and 2007, two 706 megawatt units came online at the Cernavodă Nuclear Power Plant in Romania; while between 1994 and 2003 seven units with a total capacity of 4.1 gigawatts were installed at the Quinshan Nuclear Power Plant in China. Many of these deals were highly controversial at the time due to AECL’s questionable business practices. Being a relative newcomer to the global nuclear energy market, the crown corporation faced intense competition from established players like American firms Westinghouse and General Electric, forcing it to court smaller nations lacking the industrial capacity to build more conventional reactor designs – many of which were government by authoritarian regimes. For instance, construction of the Cernavodă plant was begun under the auspices of communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, while the Embalse project was undertaken by the right-wing regime of Isabel Perón and – after the 1976 coup d’état – the military junta led by Lieutenant General Jorge Rafael Videla. It also later emerged that AECL had paid bribes to both the Argentine and South Korean governments, prompting an official investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Finally, when construction began on the Quinshan plant, critics questioned the ability of the Chinese to safely operate nuclear reactors due to the Communist Party of China’s lack of transparency and accountability. The sale also occurred shortly after the infamous 1989 Tianamen Square Massacre, leading activists to protest AECL’s dealings with the Chinese government.

But such controversies were the least of AECL’s problems, for despite decades of intensive sales efforts to countries as varied as Australia, Chile, Egypt, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Russia, Thailand, and Yugoslavia, demand for CANDU reactors both at home and abroad quickly fizzled out, with only 41 units were built worldwide between 1968 and 2003. Of these, 24 were installed in Canada – all but two (Gentilly 2 and Point Lepreau) outside of Ontario. Other Canadian provinces showed little interest in the technology, opting instead to use either hydroelectric power or fossil fuels like coal and oil.

So, what happened? Why, despite its numerous advantages in efficiency, flexibility, and safety, did the innovative CANDU fail to catch on more widely both domestically and abroad? While the specific reasons are complex, the overall answer boils down to three main factors: politics, economics, and the inexorable march of technology. The economy of running a power plant is typically measured in terms of Levelled Unit Energy Cost or LUEC, the average cost to produce a kilowatt-hour of electricity over the plant’s lifetime. This figure includes all costs including initial design and construction, maintenance, refuelling, administration, and final decommissioning. Thanks to its on-line refuelling capability and use of cheap natural uranium fuel, CANDU is able to achieve an impressively low LUEC of 3.2 cents per kilowatt hour, compared to 4.1 cents for a coal plant and 6.6 cents for natural gas. However, this advantage is greatly offset by CANDU’s enormous up-front construction costs. This problem is common to all nuclear power plants – with construction costs typically accounting for 65% of overall lifetime cost and refuelling less than one cent per kilowatt in generating costs – but particularly pronounced in CANDU. The low scattering cross section of heavy water plus the low reactivity of natural uranium fuel means more of both are required to achieve criticality. This in turn results in a larger core, calandria, containment building etc. compared to conventional reactor designs, pushing up initial construction costs. This is made even worse by construction delays, which have occurred on numerous occasions. For example, while plans for the Darlington Nuclear Generating Station were approved in 1973, numerous delays caused by – among other things – budget shortfalls, changes in government, the 1973 oil crisis and the 1979 Three Mile Island accident meant that construction did not begin until 1981 and the fourth and final reactor not commissioned until 1993. This caused the total capital cost of the plant to balloon to an eye-watering $11.9 billion – more than double the original estimated budget.

While such high up-front costs are theoretically offset by CANDU’s low long-term operating costs, most politicians only think in terms of four-year election cycles, making the technology unattractive to many potential buyers. Worse still, CANDU becomes most economical when operated at capacity factors above 60%. As previously mentioned, when first introduced, CANDU reactors offered capacity factors far superior to conventional light water reactors. However, over the following decades dramatic improvements in reactor management have allowed LWRs to achieve capacity factors as high as 90%. Meanwhile, the increasing maintenance demands of the aging CANDU fleet plus the relatively poor performance of refurbished units have brought the reactors’ capacity factors down to around 80-90% and their LUECs up to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, all but eliminating their original economic advantages. Lower up-front costs plus comparable capacity factors and LUEC have thus led most clients to choose conventional LWRs over CANDUs.

CANDU reactors have also historically suffered from numerous design defects – most notably the decision to use zircaloy in the pressure tubes. This alloy is highly susceptible to a type of corrosion called hydrogen embrittlement, which can cause the tubes to crack and rupture over time. Indeed,
such a rupture in the Pickering-2 reactor resulted in a major loss of cooling accident in 1983. Other common problems include corroded feed water pipes, defective steam generators and poor maintenance and safety practices, which have resulted in many CANDUs spending increasing amounts of time offline undergoing repairs and upgrades. Others have been decommissioned as the cost of refurbishment was deemed too high. Indeed, of the 41 CANDUs built around the world, as of this recording 31 are still in operation – 19 in Canada.

Finally, major nuclear accidents like Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986 led to major slump in the global nuclear energy market, which severely impacted CANDU’s already limited sales prospects. Nonetheless, AECL continued to upgrade the CANDU design in order to make it more economical and attractive. For example, the 740-megawatt Enhanced CANDU 6 or EC6 maintains around 95% of the original CANDU 6’s design features while incorporating simplified and cheaper construction techniques, advanced control systems, enhanced safety margins, and improved deep load following capabilities.

An even greater departure was the 700 megawatt Advanced CANDU Reactor or ACR-700, which introduced more modularized construction and abandoned the original design’s natural uranium and heavy water system in favour of low-enriched uranium fuel containing 1-2% uranium-235 and pressurized light water coolant. This design not only reduced the cost of heavy water by nearly one-third, but also allowed for a more compact and energy-dense core and greater thermal efficiency., potentially reducing up-front construction costs by up to 40%, increasing overall power output by up to 50%, and significantly reducing nuclear waste production. Yet despite the promise shown by ACR-700 and its 1200 megawatt follow-up, ACR-1000, the design ultimately failed to find any buyers, prompting AECL to shelve the design in 2009. Then, in 2011, AECL sold its reactor division to Candu Energy, a wholly-owned subsidiary of controversial Quebec-based construction firm SNC Lavalin. In the wake of this deal, Candu Energy took over maintenance and refurbishment of existing CANDU plants in Canada, pursued the completion of long-dormant projects in Romania and Argentina, and sought new sales opportunities for the technology in countries like China and Britain, focusing on the ECR-6 design. Meanwhile, back in Canada, great interest has been expressed in using CANDU reactors as steam plants for extracting oil from Alberta’s bitumen sands – a system which promises significant long-term cost savings and reduced carbon dioxide emissions compared to conventional natural gas-fired units. However, the revelation that it would take up to 20 such reactors to meet Alberta’s projected oil production growth, combined with general anti-nuclear sentiment among the Canadian public, resulted in this project being postponed indefinitely.

In today’s climate-conscious world, where nations are increasingly turning to alternative energy sources to help curb greenhouse gas emissions, one would assume that a technology like CANDU would be poised to make a comeback. After all, it has been estimated that over the past 60 years, Canadian nuclear power has prevented the release of more than 900 million tonnes of carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the atmosphere – saving up to 20,000 lives. However, plans for Canadas nuclear future have instead focused on a newer, even more flexible technology: Small Modular Reactors or SMRs. In 2017, in response to an “SMR Roadmap” report cprepared by Natural Resources Canada, Candu Energy developed a compact 300 megawatt reactor called the CANDU SMR. Easily transportable by truck, rail, or even aircraft and more easily and cheaply installed than larger units, these reactors are ideal for serving communities too small and remote to warrant conventional power plants – such as those in Canada’s north. They can also be used to make up for smaller shortfalls in baseload power generation and for various non-standard applications such as bitumen sands extraction, industrial heating, and seawater desalination. Many other firms around the world are also actively developing SMRs, with the global market for this technology being projected at nearly $150 billion between 2025 and 2040. The future of nuclear power, it seems, lies in thinking small.

Despite its lacklustre commercial performance, the CANDU remains one of the safest and most innovative reactor designs in history – an ingenious adaptation to the limited industrial resources available to the fledgling Canadian nuclear industry in the 1950s and 1960s. Yet despite this, due to an unfortunate combination of shifting politics, economics, and technological advances, CANDU failed to achieve its considerable potential, winding up as a dead end in the history of nuclear power. In other words, it was the right technology at the wrong time.

Expand for References

In September of 1808 Covent Garden Theatre in London burned to the ground. The exact cause of the fire has never been established but due to the extensive amount of flammable items throughout combined with an amazing number of flaming light fixtures, fires of some sort at theaters were relatively common, even inspiring a London fire code requiring several wet blankets be kept near the stage to help put out any fire before it could spread- the 18th century version of a fire extinguisher.

Unfortunately, on September 19, 1808, the water on the street the theater was on was shut off to fix an issue with the system. The next morning, a fire started at around 4AM. With little means to effectively fight the blaze, it took just 3 hours to destroy the historic building and, along with more mundane things, a fair number of manuscripts that would today be given the always inaccurate moniker of “priceless”, as well as the late George Frideric Handel’s organ he had donated to the theater. On top of this, over 20 people lost their lives, and many dozens more were injured.

The loss of the theatre was a huge blow to the London community. You see, thanks to the Licensing Act of 1737, at the time, there were only two theaters in all of London that had been granted the right to perform full length spoken plays, and even these had to be approved beforehand by government officials. All the other non-patent theaters, outside of occasionally temporary patents, were forced to restrict themselves to songs, acrobatics, dances, and the like. When they did show plays, they had to be mimed to stay within the bounds of the law.

Given the popularity of plays at the time and now with only one venue in town able to show them, efforts were quickly made to build a new theatre in place of the old, despite the lack of funds by the principal owners of the old structure to do so. You see, the insurance payout for the old building was only £50,000 (about £4 million or $5 million dollars today), with the cost to build a new theater to at least the level of the old estimated to be about three times that amount.

Stepping up to support the project, £10,000 was donated by the Duke of Northumberland. However, instead of accepting this, one of the principal owners of the theater and one of the most popular actors in all of Britain, John Kemble, refused the donation as such. Instead, he sent the Duke a bond promising to pay the sum back. The Duke, in turn, sent Kemble back his bond, along with a letter noting that as there was likely to be a bonfire to celebrate the start of construction, Kemble should throw his bond in it to “heighten the flames”.

A donation of £1,000 also came in from the Prince of Wales, future King George IV. The remaining funds comprising nearly £80,000 were acquired via subscription shares.
Money in hand, construction of the newer, improved Covent Garden Theatre began on January 2, 1809 under the supervision of famed architect Sir Robert Smirke, with the Prince of Wales himself ceremonially laying the first stone.

Things became even more urgent to get the theater built when, in February of 1809, the other theater in London allowed to show full plays, Drury Lane, burned to the ground.
Going back to Covent, nine months after the first stone was laid, a theater was born, largely superior to the original save for a few controversial changes. These included two galleries that were much smaller than the originals, meaning less seating for the plebeians. These also offered such a restricted view that patrons would come to complain that they could only see the legs of those on the stage.

Similarly, the third tier of the theatre (which had previously been freely available to the general public to purchase tickets for) had been converted into very large box seats areas to be rented by the year by wealthy patrons. These came complete with private areas where a curtain could be drawn, something quickly criticized for allegedly being so that the elite could solicit the services of prostitutes who often could be found at theaters of the age. In fact, many of the actresses themselves supplemented their income in this way, leading to the British expression “Said the actress to the Bishop”, implying illicit things actresses would tell ministers during confession. This was a precursor to the American version of an expression with the same meaning, “That’s what she said”, which was first popularized in the 1970s on Saturday Night Live.

Going back to the theater, in addition to these controversial changes, to help recoup the costs of rebuilding the new structure, Kemble raised the price of tickets about 15%, with the exception that the cost of the gallery, which as noted now had extremely restricted viewing, remained the same.

This brings us to opening night- September 18, 1809. Things started out innocently enough with the singing of the National Anthem, but then immediately turned tumultuous, with the crowd loudly chanting things like “Old prices!” throughout the performance of Macbeth.

Of course, actors and actresses of the age were used to this behavior from crowds. The idea of a “passive audience” is a fairly recent phenomenon, even in theatre. Throughout history crowds have always been encouraged in some way to express their enthusiasm, and even sometimes take part in the show, going all the way back to Ancient Greece where audience participation in plays and speeches was practically a civic duty.

The obvious downside of this is that crowds also felt entitled to express their displeasure in any way they pleased. As an example we have this 19th century account of a performance reported in the New York Times:

John Ritchie… made his debut before a Hempstead audience at Washington Hall a few evenings ago. He had a crowded house, and was warmly received, in fact, it was altogether too hot for him, there being distributed among the audience a bushel or two of rotten tomatoes. The first act opened with Mr. Ritchie trying to turn a somersault. He probably would have succeeded had not a great many tomatoes struck him, throwing him off his balance and demoralizing him. It was some time before the audience could induce him to go on with the performance. He next attempted to perform on the trapeze. As he lay upon the bar with his face toward the audience, a large tomato thrown from the gallery struck him square between the eyes, and he fell to the stage floor just as several bad eggs dropped upon his head. Then the tomatoes flew thick and fast, and Ritchie fled for the stage door. The door was locked, and he ran the gauntlet for the ticket office through a perfect shower of tomatoes. He reached it, and the show was over.

While you might think ruining the show in such a way would cause the better paying audience members to see to it that the plebs in the cheap seats would knock it off, nobody seemed to mind as half the fun of going to these shows was interacting with the performers in some way for some (particularly in the cheap seats) and for others observing what certain members of the crowd would get up to during the show. If a performance was good, the crowd would quickly see to it that anyone interfering in a negative way would be jeered down. If it was bad, well, the audience’s response was more fun to watch and take part in then. It was all about who could be more entertaining- the people on the stage, or the people in the crowd, or quite often a mixing of the two.
In this particular case, however, it wasn’t what was happening on the stage that was eliciting the negative response. In fact, that night’s performance featured Kemble’s sister, Sarah Siddons, who was almost universally considered the greatest tragedienne of the era.
Things got even worse at this inaugural performance when it was finally, mercifully over and the protesters refused to leave. This prompted Kemble to send for the police. The bobbies ended up inflaming the situation, with the seething crowd deciding to start rioting. Some arrests were made, but the crowd still refused to disperse until well into the am.
As to why the police were completely ineffective here, beyond it being difficult to control a large, angry crowd, there was apparently heated debate on whether or not the police actually could legally force a crowd who had paid to be there to disperse.

The next day, protesters once again filled the theatre, upping the ante by sneaking drums, whistles, frying pans, bells, and rattles into the performance, which they then used to completely drown out the actors on stage. On top of that, they reportedly broke out into what would be referred to as the “OP dance”, in which they more or less all stomped loudly on the benches in the pit in time as they chanted for old prices.

This type of behavior continued on during every performance until the 23rd when Kemble himself spoke to the mob during that evening’s performance, attempting to placate them by explaining: “That a committee of gentlemen had undertaken to examine the finances of the concern, and that until they were prepared with their report the theatre would be closed.”

Kemble thus closed the theatre for a few days while a report on the price change was compiled, examining whether the increase in price was justified or not. Of course, given the committee examining the issue was a subset of the shareholders in the theater, nobody paid attention to the report when it came out showing that, indeed, the approximately 15% price increase was deemed reasonable by said shareholders.

The crowd thus continued their antics when the theater opened back up, with newspapers as far as Edinburgh regularly reporting on the nightly tumult at the Covent Garden Theater. People across the nation quickly took sides, with those wanting the prices reversed referring to themselves as “OPs”, and those who were on the side of the theater owners called “NPs”.

Beyond making a ruckus at the shows, protesters also reportedly regularly gathered outside of Kemble’s home at all hours chanting for “original prices”, including coming up with a variety of unflattering songs illustrating what they thought of Kemble and his new prices.

Back in the theater, along with plastering it in banners and posters protesting the price change, the theater denizens began to sneak even more ridiculous things into performances including farm animals, flocks of pigeons they’d release inside the building, giant distracting hats and even a coffin with a banner stating in part “Here lies the body of the new price…”

Protesters additionally began turning up to performances in outlandish costumes including full drag, as well as organizing races and mock fights in the pit- in all cases, attempting to either drown out anything the actors were doing on stage or otherwise distract from it.
Kemble got so desperate to try to stop the teeming masses ruining the shows that he even went as far as paying professional boxers, including former boxing champion Daniel Mendoza (the guy who popularised that weird way all old-timey boxers seem to stand) to act as bouncers to enforce law and order.

Similar to the police, Mendoza and his fellow fighter’s presence unsurprisingly failed to calm the crowd down and caused even more tumult to erupt during performances anytime the fighters tried to intervene.

While you might think surely at some point people would get tired of the whole thing and want to just settle down and watch the performance they paid the inflated prices to see- the OPs refused to quit night after night.

And so it was that with no end in site, after about three months of near constant unrest at the shows, the former extremely popular actor, Kemble, gave in to the demands, issuing a public apology to the gathered crowd at the theatre on December 15th as well as formally restoring the old prices. Kemble also dropped all charges that had been leveled at protesters that had been arrested in the interim.

Now having the 19th century version of TV back, the masses were satiated. This was much to the relief of the royals, some of whom feared the OPs might band together against other similar perceived slights against commoners at the time as newspapers were more and more drawing parallels between what was happening at that theater with other aspects of life in the British empire. But now with their entertainment back, no such revolution occurred.

Things worked out for the theater as well, even at the original prices, with ticket sales for the following decade averaging around £80,000 per year, about double the annual operating costs.

Bonus Fact:

If you happen to be wondering how we went from a couple thousand years of audience participation in performances to the passive audiences we have today in the span of only about a century, to begin with, shows started shifting from the actors actively acknowledging the audience was there, generally purposefully interacting with them, to instead pretending the audience was non-existent and performing as though what was happening on the stage was real and sort of “in another dimension”, so to speak. Essentially, the invisible fourth wall was created to preserve the illusion, and audiences began to more and more be expected not to break that wall down by interrupting the performance.

Other factors that helped this switch along included advancements in stage lighting, allowing for shifting the focus from both the audience and the stage to just the stage, further solidifying the invisible “fourth wall”. Accordingly, theatres were redesigned and rather than having the classic horseshoe shape (so wealthy spectators in the seats high up could enjoy the audience’s show as much as what was happening on the stage, as well as easily observe what other wealthy patrons were getting up to), now every seat commonly faced towards the stage and it became difficult to see what members of the audience were doing. Effectively, the audience ceased to be part of the night’s entertainment.

As the show began to focus more on what was happening on the stage, the cheap seats in the pit began to be upgraded from simple wooden benches to plush seats where the wealthy began to sit so they could see the performers better. When this happened, those wealthy patrons sitting near the stage were less than enthusiastic about getting hit by poorly aimed projectiles, helping to morph the rules to this being no longer accepted behavior in the theatre, though it has persisted somewhat in certain other venues.

For instance, throwing things on the stage at pop music concerts is relatively common, and even the Beatles once lamented that for a little over a year period they were continually hit on stage, first with soft Jelly Babies in England and then in America with the much harder Jelly Beans. In fact, the Beatles’ 1964 performance in San Francisco had to be completely stopped twice due to the barrage of Jelly Beans becoming too intense, forcing them to retreat and implore the audience to knock it off.

Beyond this, heckling at comedy shows is still relatively common. Perhaps the best example of all where non-passive audiences have endured is at most sporting events, where boisterous behavior of patrons still often resembles that of audiences through most of history. But due to stricter rules and that the rowdier members of the crowd are typically further from the field of play, this doesn’t usually disrupt the sporting spectacle, though the athletes still have to endure non-stop taunting or cheering (and the occasional projectile) in many professional sports from fans at all levels.

Of course, it is not uncommon to have an (often inebriated) fan running onto the field of play and being chased around by security. Despite this interrupting the show, the rest of the audience paid to see, everyone tends to cheer for the runner and find the whole thing thoroughly enjoyable, particularly the longer the fan on the field can manage to evade capture… We really haven’t changed that much at all, it turns out.

According to a rumor that has circulated online for years, novelist Ernest Hemingway once wrote: “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”

For example, on Nov. 12, 2025, a TikTok user shared the quote as part of a photo post (archived) showing a piano, accompanied by German-born British composer Max Richter’s famous piece, “On the Nature of Daylight.”

Social media users shared the same quote, and in most cases Hemingway’s name, on Bluesky (archived), Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Pinterest (archived), Reddit (archived), Threads (archived), TikTok (archived) and X (archived). Others attributed the words to physicist Albert Einstein or author Kay Bratt.

In short, Hemingway, who died in 1961, truly authored the quote about happiness in intelligent people. Rather than being written in his own voice, however, it was attributed to a character in his posthumous 1986 novel, “The Garden of Eden.” 

The quote in ‘The Garden of Eden’

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology website hosted a copy of the full novel, including the in-question quote, which appeared on Page 97 (emphasis ours):

When they were at lunch in the dining room out of the wind, David asked, “What about your friend Nina?”

“She’s gone away.”

“She was handsome,” David said.

“Yes. We had a very big fight and she went away.”

“She was a b****,” Catherine said. “But then I think almost everyone is a b****.”

“Usually they are,” the girl said. “I always hope not but they are.”

“I know plenty of women who aren’t b*****s,” David said.

“Yes. You would,” the girl said.

“Was Nina happy?” Catherine asked.

“I hope she will be happy,” the girl said. “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”

“You haven’t had such a long time to find out about it.”

“If you make mistakes you find out faster,” the girl said.

“You’ve been happy all morning,” Catherine said. “We had a wonderful time.”

“You don’t need to tell me,” the girl said. “And I’m happier now than I can remember ever.”

The novel’s 1986 release

In 1986, The Commercial Appeal newspaper in Memphis, Tennessee, reported freelance writer Fredric Koeppel’s thoughts about the posthumous release of Hemingway’s novel, saying the story takes place in the south of France and in Spain and concerns “a main character who is also a writer who has just married a beautiful and wealthy woman named Catherine.”

Koeppel’s piece in the paper, excerpted below, specifically mentioned the quote about happiness:

Catherine is a little crazy, the man finds out, and when they make love she wants him to call her David and she calls him Catherine and she tells him she wants to be a boy but she wants to be his good girl too.

Catherine keeps cutting her hair shorter and shorter between episodes of swimming and sitting in the bar drinking martinis and wine and eating south-of-France type food. But David is trying to write stories about (guess where) Africa and (guess who) his father, and he feels more real in his stories than in his life with Catherine, which is getting complicated.

The beautiful woman who wants to be a boy seems jealous of her husband’s success, and she burns all his good reviews and even the stories he is working on. She picks up a girl and brings her home for both David and her to love and make love to; things get even more complicated, and the characters are alternately miffed or ecstatic and Catherine gets weirder and weirder.

It’s like “The Black Book” or “Nightwood” or that movie, “The Hunger,” with Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie and Susan Sarandon, where everyone is very beautiful and chic and sophisticated and yet their eyes are sad and they are filled with a great swelling sadness because life beyond its simply heavenly lovely days and wine and terrific food and its esthetic stuff is filled with sadness itself, and all our hopes and desires will turn to sad ashes.

People in this novel say things like “Don’t we have wonderful simple fun?” and “Remember everything is right until it’s wrong” and “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.” And if David says more than three sentences to Catherine he apologizes for making a speech because he mistrusts rhetoric and he must keep tightening his discipline so he won’t lose control.

For further reading, Snopes previously reported on a photo allegedly showing Hemingway and fellow author George Orwell during the Spanish Civil War. We also investigated the claim Hemingway once won a bet by crafting the six-word short story, “For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Worn.”

In December 2025, a rumor spread that the Department of Government Efficiency had discovered that U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, owed $1.6 million in unpaid taxes. 

A post on Facebook with a photograph of Sanders shared the claim on Dec. 24, adding that the senator was being referred to the Department of Justice for tax evasion (archived): 

(America’s Last Line of Defense)

Bernie Sanders has 30 days to come up with $1.6 million in unpaid taxes on income he didn’t declare until DOGE found it earlier this year.

Sanders failed to report his grant money as income, even though $5 million of it went into his Cayman Islands accounts.

He’s also being referred to the Justice Department for tax evasion.

Some users replying to the post seemed to take the rumor as a fact. Snopes readers searched the website and reached out by email, seeking to confirm whether the rumor was true. 

Multiple web searches revealed no evidence DOGE had uncovered that Sanders owed more than $1 million in back taxes, however.

Rather, the rumor about Sanders being referred to the DOJ for tax evasion originated with America’s Last Line of Defense — a Facebook account that describes its output as being humorous or satirical in nature. Its bio states: “The flagship of the ALLOD network of trollery and propaganda for cash. Nothing on this page is real.”

Further, a watermark on the photograph of Sanders that illustrated the claim read “NOTHING on this page is REAL.”

The fictional story spread as news spread that Sanders was set to swear in New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, often described as a democratic socialist. Mamdani was set to take office Jan. 1, 2026.

ALLOD has a history of making up stories for shares and comments, sometimes relying on artificial-intelligence writing software to do its storytelling. 

Snopes has addressed many such satirical claims by ALLOD in the past, including false rumors about the net worth of progressive lawmakers and a rumor that Chelsea Clinton owed money to the U.S. Agency for International Development.

For background, here is why we alert readers to rumors created by sources that call their output humorous or satirical.

The human body is capable of surviving a frankly astonishing amount of trauma to the point that even the loss of entire limbs isn’t necessarily something that will inherently kill us so long as we keep a sufficient amount of blood circulating and avoid a deadly infection. Curiously, despite stories of people surviving things like falls from high in the sky without a parachute or being hit by cars, a persistent myth about the body is that our fingers are relatively easily bitten off, with some even putting forth this can be done with little more effort than it would take to bite through a good sized carrot. But can a human being actually bite off their own finger as depicted in such films as the 2012 Jack Reacher? Or is this simply not possible?

As for the whole carrot thing, the first and most obvious reason this idea is ridiculous is that human bones are stronger than even the most hardy of carrots by several orders of magnitude. Though admittedly exact figures for the force required to chomp a carrot in two are somewhat sparse, a commonly quoted figure for the amount of force required for the average full sized carrot is around 200 Newtons. In contrast, according to a 2012 study published in the Journal of Biomedical Engineering, it takes on average about 1485 Newtons or roughly 330 pounds of force to fracture a human finger bone, which keep that one in mind as it’s going to be important to our discussion later.

For anyone curious about how these results were obtained, researchers jammed the fingers of cadavers donated for medical research into an apparatus and tested the force required to go snap. Beyond the bodies, the researchers also used a handful of brave volunteers, with, again, both alive and dead individuals having their hands placed into a specially made contraption designed to bend them at awkward angles and subject them to various amounts of force. The purpose of the research was to test whether electric windows in motor vehicles are capable of shearing off a human finger, with the results finding that they are not, even in the most unlikely of “jamming scenarios”. Most pertinent to the topic at hand, according to this study, most still living test subjects reported nothing more than slight discomfort at forces well above what it would take to snap a carrot.
These results aren’t surprising given that bone is stronger by weight than steel and about four times more resistant to force than concrete. Carrots, on the other hand, can be snapped in half by a small child. There’s really no comparison to be made here between the two despite the fact that many do, and some even going so far as to put forth that it’s not just an analogy, but that the strength of the two is similar.

Okay, so we’ve established that fingers are stronger than carrots. Something that we’d have thought wouldn’t shock anyone with a functioning brain, but here we are. But what about the other half of this idea- that an average human could bite through a human finger?

The first aspect of this we need to cover is whether your tooth or your finger bone would break first? While nobody seems to be taking any cadavers and having them mash down on finger bones to see, it seems likely from the data we do have available that the tooth would win out here given tooth enamel, while very thin, is significantly stronger than bone, and what’s under it directly is similar to bone. On top of that, when talking compressive forces, studies do show that your mashers have what it takes here. Thus, at least with a healthy toothed individual, it’s generally thought the bone would fracture first in the majority of cases.

So, the hardware is capable in healthy toothed individuals. What about biting power? Well, mostly no, but also in extremely rare cases, borderline yes. But also no. Sorry, not even close.

Confused? Let’s dive in, shall we.

First, let’s discuss some studies on human biting power, and keeping in mind the aforementioned figure of an average of 1485 Newtons or roughly 330 pounds of force required to fracture a human finger bone.

Enter Dr. G. E. Black who tested the average biting force of numerous humans from near enough every walk of life imaginable. During his testing, Dr. Black found that the average amount of max force a human being is capable of delivering with a single bite is about 760 Newtons or roughly half what would be required to fracture a human finger bone.

Of note about Dr. Black’s research is that these figures were the highest amount of force subjects could provide when biting with their molars, AKA the teeth used to grind and crush food. Or to put it another way, teeth that are in no way optimally suited for cutting through bone. As for teeth that are suited for cutting, the incisors, Dr. Black found that the average maximum force men could exert when biting with these teeth was a lowly 370 Newtons while the average for women was 253 Newtons.

Other studies include the work of Patricia Takaki et al in their 2014 study Maximum Bite Force Analysis in Different Age Groups. In it, they found some rather interesting results, such as that the strongest biters of all were, surprisingly, prepubescent males with a maximum bite force of around 354 Newtons, with the only other close being young adult women at 345 Newtons. As for more seasoned adult men and women, they rang in around 284 and 304 Newtons respectively. As for the overall averages, males rang in at 285 Newtons and females at 253.

Yet another study, this one, Maximum Voluntary Molar Bite Force in Subjects with Normal Occlusion, published in the European Journal of Orthodontics in 2010 looking at individuals from 15-18 years old, they saw a maximum of 777 Newtons in male subjects and 481 Newtons in females, in this case about half to 1/3 what would be required to fracture a finger bone.

From these and many other studies you’ll find a somewhat large range of maximum bite force, but all of which is insufficient to fracture a human finger bone, in most cases substantially so. But there is an important caveat here and something that explains some of the wide variance- pain. In this case, not even factoring in the pain you’d feel when biting your own finger, but in the teeth. Going back to Dr. Black’s study, he noticed that people generally stopped biting when their teeth hurt. Takaki et al’s study also noted the same was happening, which was speculated to be how prepubescent boys in their study could show greater bite strength than adult males with much more powerful jaw muscles.
Thus, the limiting factor here, at least so far, is not potential biting power, but your pain tolerance. (We’ll get into theoretical mashing power shortly and whether this is sufficient to chomp through finger bones.) But before that, this pain factor is similar to an idea you may have heard that the brain usually actively limits the amount of force we exert with our muscles in order to prevent injury. Of course, there are exceptions to this and in life or death situations things like adrenaline and the like can help us ignore this pain and power through, or similarly in some cases being drugged up on certain substances can result in the same, which is why you occasionally hear stories of drugged up individuals going beast mode on a group of police officers trying to subdue them, tossing them around like rag dolls.

So what about the theoretical limit of human biting power if pain wasn’t a factor? Could a human bite off a finger then? Well, almost, at least according to a research done by one Dr. Stephen Wroe. Analyzing skulls, jaws, etc. of various animals, Wroe created a computer model to try to figure out an estimate of what we humans might be capable of in biting power if pain wasn’t a factor. And, at least according to his model, the max a human could probably do with their strongest positioned teeth for this is in the ballpark of 1100-1300 Newtons, which is only slightly less than the average of 1485 Newtons to fracture a human finger bone. Close enough that presumably there are some outlier individuals who could do it if pain wasn’t a factor.

Of course, this is only theory. Are there any real world examples of humans biting fingers off? It turns out, while insanely rare, yes. Although in the few cases we could find, other forces contributed outside of sheer biting power. Further, it should be noted that in these rare cases we could find it was not so much biting through bone, but severing and tearing around the joint tissues and structures which is still, to be fair, insanely difficult to do.
As for these specific examples, we have such a 1999 forensic case report published in the British Dental Journal, Biting Off More Than You Can Chew, which by the way, the researchers note in this “The case report represents a very unusual bite injury and is the most damaging bite injury, in terms of tissue loss, we have seen in more than 40 years of combined forensic experience.” So what was the damage? In a nutshell, during a bar fight, one man managed to bite off the tip of the finger of another man just past the base of the nail bed around the joint, with significant enough damage done in the process that it could not be reattached. Given how the tissues were severed and injured, it appears there was also significant pulling force involved to accentuate the biting force.

In another case, two women fighting over shoes saw the woman apparently unwilling to give the shoes back grab the other woman by the hair, then start by biting her forehead because, sure, why not? When the other woman tried to push the gnashing teethed woman away, said biter bit one of the other woman’s fingers, with the combination of bite force and, similar to the aforementioned bar fight, the pulling away force, see the tip of the woman’s finger become detached.

Thus, in the end, when talking bite force alone, while it does appear that at least our best mashing teeth and jaws and muscles of an adult are in theory close to capable of fracturing a human finger bone, and given some people are outliers, presumably there are people out there who can theoretically do this, most people cannot, especially in real world scenarios. This is not just from the pain if biting your own finger, but also because of the pain in your teeth and jaw muscles as well causing your brain to nope out of such mashing in most cases. That said, perhaps in a drunken bar fight, where other forces like yanking your arm back and tearing and the like are involved, and particularly all centered around a joint, rather than actually needing to bite through the bone itself, it does appear possible to bite off a finger in this way. But even then, real world examples are almost non-existent, pointing to the difficulty of accomplishing even this, and also that most bar fights don’t involve the Wachootoo or Mike Tyson…

But, in the end, it would seem if you ever find yourself in a Jack Reacher-esk situation where someone is going to put a bullet through your brain if you don’t chomp your thumb off, about the only workable strategy here, beyond trying to incapacitate the person with the gun first, would be to first break your thumb somehow, perhaps via curb-stomping it at an odd angle, and then attempting to gnash your way through the skin and supportive tissues at the break point… This would dually be beneficial because if you did it swift enough, the breaking force could be applied before your brain could make you stop. And, once the extreme pain from said breaking is already present, you may not be as consciously aware of the pain from gnashing through the connective tissues…

On that note, in a similar vein, British explorer Ranulph Fiennes once cut half of the fingers on his left hand off after sustaining severe frostbite while trying to walk to the North Pole on his own. Rather than waiting for the necrotic flesh to perhaps heal as doctors advised to save as much of his hand as possible, Fiennes cut the most damaged parts of his fingers off with a saw in his garden shed…

Moving on from there to other British badassery, British military legend, the so-called “Unkillable Soldier”, Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart tore off his own fingers during WW1 when a doctor refused to amputate them after he was wounded in his left hand. During the war Adrian was also shot 7 times, including twice in the head, survived a couple plane crashes, and eventually also lost an eye and his whole hand. When later asked about all this, Adrian was quoted as quipping “Frankly, I enjoyed the war.” … So much so that he once again signed up for the second world war as well. Of all of this, he stated, “Governments may think and say as they like, but force cannot be eliminated, and it is the only real and unanswerable power. We are told that the pen is mightier than the sword, but I know which of these weapons I would choose.”

Expand for References

Throughout history humans have many stories discussing various supposed humans and other beings that we dismiss as legend as a matter of course. Perhaps no source of such legendary figures is more robust than figures related to various religions, with basically no one today, for example, thinking that Hercules ever actually existed, despite the countless and sometimes rather detailed tales of his various adventures passed down through history. But while few, if anyone today, still worships the gods and demi-gods of Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece, there are still many centuries old religions that have survived today who have figures that, at least those who follow the religions, take for granted really did exist. This brings us to the subject of today- did the founder of one of the most significant religions in human history, Jesus of Nazareth, actually exist? And, if so, what do we definitively know about what he did or said?

As to the first question, yes, unequivocally, as Jesus was an incredibly popular name in the region around the time Jesus was said to have walked the Earth, Jesus of Nazareth definitely existed… That’s like saying did “John” from New York exist? Yes. New York John exists… Nice guy. Makes great pizza.

But that’s not very interesting. So what about THE Jesus of Nazareth?

Well, while it might come as something of a surprise to some, for reasons we will get into momentarily, historians, from atheist to agnostic to Jewish to Christian, pretty much all universally agree that the Jesus described in the New Testament, did, in fact, exist, and even that it’s extremely likely that at minimum a couple key significant elements of his life as described in the New Testament also very likely did happen, which we’ll get into in the tail end of this video.

As archaeologist and historian Dr. Byron McCane of the Atlantic University of Florida states, “I do not know, nor have I heard of, any trained historian or archaeologist who has doubts about his existence.”

That said, that’s not to say there aren’t many people out there who don’t agree. For example, a 2015 pole in Britain surveying around 4000 people found that a whopping 40% of them did not believe Jesus ever existed. But going back to historians, Professor emeritus of Jewish studies and Archeology at Duke University, Dr. Eric Meyers, concurs with Dr. McCane, chiming in, “I don’t know any mainstream scholar who doubts the historicity of Jesus. The details have been debated for centuries, but no one who is serious doubts that he’s a historical figure…. Those who deny the existence of Jesus are like the deniers of climate change.”

Holdouts to the idea that Jesus existed like to point out, however, that we don’t have any hard archaeological evidence or writings from Jesus himself, or even surviving contemporary writings from when he supposedly lived corroborating his existence. This is correct. However, if that’s the rubric being used to tell if some historic figure actually existed or not, we’d pretty much have to assert that almost nobody in history ever existed, including some extremely prominent figures absolutely no one, including many of these holdouts, questions lived. As atheist New Testament scholar Dr. Bart Erhman notes, “The reality is that we don’t have archaeological records for virtually anyone who lived in Jesus’s time and place.”

Pertinent to the topic at hand, up until extremely recently in history, there was not much of any contemporary evidence whatsoever that Pontius Pilate existed- the Roman governor of Judaea most remembered today for having Jesus crucified. That all changed in 1961 when a quite literal hard piece of evidence was found. At the site of Caesarea Maritima archeologists discovered a stone totally and in all ways coincidentally called the “Pilate Stone”, dating back to the time Pilate and Jesus were doing their respective dances. (For reference, Pilate was the prefect of Judea from 26-36 AD. And may or may not have been a great dancer.)

While it’s a damaged block without the complete text surviving on it, it definitely mentions Pilate being the prefect of Judea, with it generally thought, filling in the missing parts, it states, “To the Divine Augusti Tiberieum… Pontius Pilate… prefect of Judea…has dedicated [this]… … …Also I’m a kickass dancer.” As to what that’s referencing, it would appear he took dance classes as a kid as a part of his formal education… Or whatever… On the rest, the stone was dedicating some sort of temple or other significant building.

But before this and some surviving coins, the evidence of Pilate Pilating was arguably less than the evidence for Jesus Jesusing. And important to again explicitly point out here, Pilate was quite literally one of the most important people in all of Jerusalem at the time, and an extremely prominent Roman figure while Jesus, some random peasant Jew, was doing his thing.

Going back to Dr. Bart Erhman, he sums up, “With respect to Jesus, we have numerous, independent accounts of his life in the sources lying behind the Gospels (and the writings of Paul) — sources that originated in Jesus’ native tongue Aramaic and that can be dated to within just a year or two of his life (before the religion moved to convert pagans in droves). Historical sources like that are pretty astounding for an ancient figure of any kind.”

So putting aside holding the question of Jesus’ existence to a higher standard than anyone else in history, what about when we apply the standards historians do generally ascribe to? What’s the actual evidence there?

While there is other more secular evidence we’ll get to in a bit, so stay tuned as there are some relative smoking guns here, the most obvious answer is, of course, the writings in the New Testament itself.

Now, on the surface you may discount this, as using the Bible to prove the Bible seems rather absurd. So why do most historians, including those of the secular variety, not take this view in this case?

For starters, the sheer weight of archeological evidence that backs up a number of things discussed in these works during these periods the works are discussing. This, at least, demonstrates that they weren’t just conjured up completely by significantly later authors.
Beyond this, some have also suggested such suppositions as the “criterion of embarrassment”, positing that a group would not completely make up a story that would embarrass themselves.

Thus, as historian Will Durant notes,

“Despite the prejudices and theological preconceptions of the evangelists, they record many incidents that mere inventors would have concealed—the competition of the apostles for high places in the Kingdom, their flight after Jesus’ arrest, Peter’s denial, the failure of Christ to work miracles in Galilee, the references of some auditors to his possible insanity, his early uncertainty as to his mission, his confessions of ignorance as to the future, his moments of bitterness, his despairing cry on the cross.” And of course his death on the cross itself as a common criminal, something that was a bit of a major scandal for early disciples after the fact.

Going back to Dr. Ehrman, he states of this, “The Messiah was supposed to overthrow the enemies – and so if you’re going to make up a messiah, you’d make up a powerful messiah. You wouldn’t make up somebody who was humiliated, tortured and then killed by the enemies.”

New Testament scholar N.T. Wright also chimes in, “It flew in the face of all Hellenistic wisdom: part of the point of crucifixion was that it completely degraded the sufferer. It denied him any chance of a noble death, a considerable preoccupation among pagans. It also, in the normal run of things, denied him a proper burial as well, since the body would have been eaten by birds, rats, or other carrion and any final remains dumped in a common pit.”

Moving swiftly on from such speculative hypotheses, of which there are many leveled against the New Testament works to try to ascertain veracity of elements in them, Paul the Apostle’s surviving works, considered to have been written around 50-60 AD, only about 20 or 30 years after Jesus’ accepted death, mention meeting various people who knew Jesus personally, including a brother of Jesus’, named James, as well as a couple of Jesus’ apostles, including Peter, who Paul was a guest of for a couple weeks in Jerusalem not long after Paul’s conversion.

Further, given these were written not long after Jesus’ death and were accepted, it’s apparent for this and many other reasons that nobody at the time questioned whether Jesus had existed, many of whom would have been alive when the alleged events occurred, with some of these events quite noteworthy in terms of stirring up trouble amongst Jewish and Roman higher ups.

On top of this, other evidence strongly suggests Christianity had already exploded in Judea and parts of the Roman Empire at this point Paul was writing. This is important because it would have taken some time for this relatively large spreading to occur- further significantly dwindling the couple decades between when Jesus is referenced to have existed and when we know for sure a rather large group of people from the region believed he did.

On this note, also important in all of this is nobody among the non-Christian Jews or Romans seems to have questioned Jesus existed either, even at this very early point when many alive should have been able to know definitively either way. And certainly given all the trouble the Christians were causing the Jews and Romans at the time, the higher ups here would have had quite the incentive to put forth any evidence that Jesus had not existed to shut up the Christians had he not.

But that still all has some level of speculation tied to it, or is from a Christian source. So what about some sources that are, shall we say, slightly more independent? Do any such relatively contemporary sources exist?

Well, if you’ve been following along so far and otherwise don’t think historians are idiots, it turns out, yes- two of which are generally considered quite definitive, at least with regard to the question of whether Jesus existed.

For starters, enter an individual generally considered the greatest of all Roman historians, Senator Publius Cornelius Tacitus, who was born a couple decades after Jesus’s death. Tacitus not only gives a direct reference to the particular Jesus in question, but, interestingly, he also states that Jesus was crucified by Pilate.

In his Annals (115 AD) in chapter 44 of book 15, he discusses Christians being targeted as a scapegoat by Nero. Stating,

“…Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind… Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion; for it was not, as it seemed, for the public good, but to glut one man’s cruelty, that they were being destroyed.”

Now, it should be noted here that some question if perhaps Tacitus was simply repeating something the Christians themselves were saying, with no backing source elsewise. After all, it had been at this point many decades since Jesus was apparently executed. However, this notion is generally dismissed given Tacitus’ preeminence as a historian and track record of having evidence to back what he said so definitively in his works, even if in many cases such evidence is lost to us today.

It’s also noted that Tacitus’ position as a senator gave him access to many official records. And perhaps most significant of all, he was part of the Quindecimviri sacris faciundis, which, among other things, oversaw various foreign religious cults at the time in Rome. This would suggest that Tacitus would likely have been extremely familiar with and had access to any records of Christianity that existed at that point. Thus, while the skepticism here isn’t necessarily completely unwarranted, in combination with Tacitus’ reputation and the other evidence at hand and how it all correlates, most historians accept this as a valid early independent source of Jesus’ existence.

Speaking of other evidence to add to the pile, we have a rather more ironclad reference in the writings of another of the most famous historians of the period, Flavius Josephus- a man born in Jerusalem almost to the year when Jesus is thought to have been crucified.

For those who haven’t watched our video on the quite literal deadliest fart in history that resulted in the deaths of 10,000 people that Josephus documents thoroughly, a brief background is in order, as it’s important as to why Josephus’ taking for granted that Jesus existed is thought so significant. As Dr. Robert Van Voorst notes, “If any Jewish writer were ever in a position to know about the non-existence of Jesus, it would have been Josephus. His implicit affirmation of the existence of Jesus has been, and still is, the most significant obstacle for those who argue that the extra-Biblical evidence is not probative on this point.”

Born in 37 AD to an extremely prominent and wealthy family in Jerusalem, Josephus’ mother was a descendant of the Hasmonean dynasty (former rulers of the region), and his father was a Jewish priest. Josephus spent his formative years on the Jewish side of the Jewish/Roman conflict, ultimately the head of the Jewish forces in Galilee. However, in 67 AD after a six week siege of Yodfat, Josephus’ siding with the Jews came to an abrupt end. While exactly what happened is up for debate given Josephus’ own account is primarily what we have to work with, on the 47th day the Romans took the town, and Josephus himself and a few dozen others took refuge in some caves. Rather than be captured, they decided it was better to die, but owing to suicide being a sin, they drew lots to see who should kill who and commensed with this mutual slaughter. In the end, the final survivors came down to Josephus and one other man, who decided rather than kill one another, perhaps it would be better to surrender after all… Party foul…
Upon doing so, Josephus ingratiated himself upon the head of the Roman forces, Vespasian, by prophesying that Vespasian would become emperor of Rome. And so it was that rather than kill Josephus, Vespasian decided to take him as slave. Two years later, Josephus was freed when Vespasian became Emperor and was granted Roman citizenship and more or less completely cast his lot on the Roman side of things, including serving as advisor and translator to Vespasian’s son Titus during the 70 AD siege of Jerusalem.
Of course, Josephus isn’t really remembered today for any of these exploits, but rather for such things as his highly influential work The Jewish War, which, among other things is considered one of the best sources for information about this pivotal period of Jewish history that ultimately saw their temple destroyed and their people displaced and lands confiscated for Roman use. It, and his other notable work Antiquities of the Jews, also functioned as significant works in the early days of Christianity, given its description of events surrounding the era that comprised the life of Jesus of Nazareth, including accounts of prominent Biblical figures such as Herod the Great, John the Baptist, and Pontius Pilate.
Noteworthy in his efforts in all of this was to give an account that was impartial, unlike so many others of the era. As Josephus noted of those covering the same events, “they have a mind to demonstrate the greatness of the Romans, while they still diminish and lessen the actions of the Jews.” While given his Jewish heritage you might think he’d be inclined to color things more in their favor instead, Josephus himself noted his goal was to be impartial and that he would “not go to the other extreme … [and] will prosecute the actions of both parties with accuracy.” Something for the most part historians generally agree he ultimately did.
In any event, Josephus mentions Jesus, not just once, but twice in Antiquities, written about a half century after Jesus was executed. That said, the first mention, in Book 18, is generally thought to have been altered at some point in history in its details. However, most historians accept that the reference to Jesus here is still valid. Just that extra details were added by some Christian scribe later and just universally copied from there. In this one it states (and we’ll put here in brackets the parts that many assume were later added)

“About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man [if indeed one ought to call him a man.] For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. [He was the Christ.] When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing amongst us, had condemned him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. [On the third day he appeared to them restored to life, for the prophets of God had prophesied these and countless other marvelous things about him.] And the tribe of the Christians, so-called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.”

We should probably also mention that there also exists a 10th century Arabic version of the first passage apparently copied from some original that maintains even the seemingly modified parts, but worded in such a way that perhaps may have been closer to what the Jewish Josephus actually wrote:

“At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus. And his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. And those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them after his crucifixion and that he was alive; accordingly, he was perhaps the Messiah concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders.”

Whatever the case on either of these, as to why elements of this are almost universally questioned here, as alluded to, Josephus was a devout advocate of Judaism. Thus, Josephus referring to Jesus as the Christ would seem to indicate he was himself a convert and had, like many other Jews, accepted Jesus as the Messiah. The problem is that this doesn’t really jive with other things Joesphus wrote at all or things known about him.

While you might also wonder then if perhaps this whole passage is a forgery, almost no historian takes that end of the extreme either, for a variety of reasons from writing style and specific vocabulary in a large part of it, to also that the second reference we’ll get to in a bit seems to imply that Josephus had mentioned Jesus before in a more expansive way so that the reader should already know who he was talking about. Had the more expansive text not existed originally at all, the second reference would have required more context. Further, the second reference appears to have no such modification and simply uses Jesus as a reference to clarify who someone else was.

Naturally because of the apparent modification of some sort, this first reference can’t be taken at face value on the details. However, when discussing it as an early reference that Jesus did, in fact, exist at least, most historians accept that much about it.

As to the second reference, the context of this one in Book 20 is rather long and an aside too far if fully quoted, but the important part is embedded in an account of an event in which a new high priest decided to take advantage of the fact that the Roman procurator, Albinus, was out of town and have executed some individuals he didn’t like, “…so he assembled the sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others…” Unfortunately for the high priest, Albinus got word of this abuse of power and subsequently stripped the position of high priest away and instead gave the high priesthood to, funny enough, a guy named Jesus… But a different Jesus, son of Damneus. On this one, Josephus actually mentions 12 total men named Jesus. Again, it was a common name in the region.

As an interesting little brief aside, as alluded to, Josephus also is one of the early independent sources for the existence of John the Baptist, noting,

“Now some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod’s army came from God, and that very justly, as a punishment of what he did against John, that was called the Baptist: for Herod slew him, who was a good man… Herod, who feared lest the great influence John had over the people might put it into his power and inclination to raise a rebellion… Accordingly, he was sent a prisoner, out of Herod’s suspicious temper, to Macherus, the castle I before mentioned, and was there put to death.”

Moving on from Josephus and Tacitus, there are several other allusions to Jesus independent of the writings included in the New Testament from around this same time period, though these are not, in general, given quite as much credence as these two historians’ works for various reasons.

For example, we have such text as a letter from a stoic philosopher from Syria, Mara. Writing the letter from prison after his city was captured by the Romans, Mara states, “What else can we say, when the wise are forcibly dragged off by tyrants, their wisdom is captured by insults, and their minds are oppressed and without defense? What advantage did the Athenians gain from murdering Socrates? Famine and plague came upon them as a punishment for their crime. What advantage did the men of Samos gain from burning Pythagoras? In a moment their land was covered with sand. What advantage did the Jews gain from executing their wise king? It was just after that their kingdom was abolished. God justly avenged these three wise men: the Athenians died of hunger; the Samians were overwhelmed by the sea and the Jews, desolate and driven from their own kingdom, live in complete dispersion. But Socrates is not dead, because of Plato; neither is Pythagoras, because of the statue of Juno; nor is the wise king, because of the “new law” he laid down.”

However, it’s not clear when exactly this letter was written, possibly as early as 73 AD, and that is the general consensus, but also possibly as much as a couple hundred years after this. If the former, which, again, is the general consensus, it would be among the earliest references to Jesus. If in the ballpark of the latter, it’s of little value here, especially considering Jesus isn’t technically named, though seems very much to be who is being referred to.

Potentially a lot more significant is Roman historian Suetonius’ account, which is very similar to the aforementioned Tacitus reference. In his Lives of the Twelve Caesars (121 AD), he also mentions Nero abusing the Christians. But more pertinently, in the Life of Claudius, he states, “Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, [Claudius] expelled them from Rome.”

This is thought to be referencing an event that occurred around 50 AD, and seems to also be what Acts 18:2 in the New Testament is referring to, where it states, “After this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. There he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla because Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome.”

While many think the “Chrestus” here is referring to Jesus, the specific spelling and wording leaves some ambiguity given it *seems* as if “Chrestus” was still alive, instigating these disturbances.

Noteworthy on this one, however, is that it is entirely possible Suetonius just thought “Chrestus” was still alive. Another alternative is Suetonius was just meaning it was the teachings of “Chrestus” that were causing the issues. Or perhaps he was talking about someone else completely. As you can imagine, the slight ambiguity in wording sees this one largely dismissed as definitive of anything.

Moving on from there, Pliny the Younger, in a letter to Emperor Trajan in 112 AD discussing the cult of Christianity states, “They (Christians) were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food, but of an ordinary and innocent kind.”

Unfortunately for this one, baby Pliny doesn’t seem to have any real source for the reference to Christ here other than the Christians themselves. Which, at least does say at this point they believed Jesus had existed and they were worshiping him. But that doesn’t really add anything to the most likely much more well researched sources in Tacitus and Josephus.

We could go on and on and on on various references like this that historians for one reason or another debate the value of in terms of answering the questions of whether Jesus existed or not, along with things he may or may not have done.

In the end, in modern times we’re used to having video, picture, or significant documented evidence various people exist today. Like, we’re pretty confident none of you out there thinks Simon Whistler doesn’t exist. This is despite the fact that you’ve likely never met me, never seen my ID to tell if that’s my real name, and even don’t really know if I am, in fact, a product of clever AI video generation, which would go a long way towards explaining how I appear on so many channels with new ones popping up all the time.

Unfortunately for historians they, on the whole, don’t have the luxury of such robust datasets, and must look at a preponderance of often rather scant evidence, and then apply the standard criteria of historical investigation to determine the likelihood of a person existing, or some event having happened or not.

When doing all of that in the case of Jesus of the Christian faith, on the whole, the vast majority of historians the world over of all backgrounds are of the opinion that at the least we can all agree that Jesus of Nazareth did, in fact, exist.

As for anything beyond that, most historians also go further in relatively comfortably saying Jesus was probably baptized by John the Baptist. That he definitely gathered disciples to spread his particular message, which was very similar to John the Baptist’s. Although as one Biblical scholar, John Dominic Crossan, states, “John had a monopoly, but Jesus had a franchise.” Thus, John the Baptist’s ministry didn’t really last much past his death, though a handful of holdouts among his disciples did persist through the 2nd century AD. (And noteworthy today, there is a group called the Mandaeans who still consider him one of the greatest, and last, prophets of their religion). Going back to Jesus, it’s further generally accepted that in the process of his ministry, at some point he upset some prominent Jewish and Roman leaders. As a result of this, he was ultimately crucified at the order of Pontius Pilate. And, finally, after he died, at least some of his disciples were undeterred and continued to spread his teachings anyway, despite that most of them, in turn, were also killed for it.

Outside of this, who knows? Some put forth we can’t really say he said or did anything reported in the works compiled into the New Testament. While others give a little more credence to these works in terms of what he supposedly said and did, noting things like that nobody really argues that Socrates didn’t say at least in general some of what his students later said he said. Despite that the similarities here are pretty spot on, with the only documentation of anything he said written down long after he was gone. We just take the word of Plato, etc. that what they wrote he said is in the ballpark of accurate. And, in fact on this one, it’s known quite definitively Plato, for example, used Socrates as a bit of a character at times to insert his own ideas. That’s not to mention the rather contradictory accounts of some of the things Socrates supposedly said, and even that his very personality varied from different sources who knew the very real man Socrates.

Going back to Jesus, the things Jesus supposedly said were written down in the ballpark of a few decades after his death, very clearly at least in part using other records that no longer exist, including of the oral variety, as their basis. Thus, while there may have been some modification in between, similar to Socrates, it seems reasonable enough to assume at least the broad elements of Jesus’ teachings are in there, even if it’s possible others inserted their own ideas or twists. And, of course, similar to Socrates, exactly what he said verbatim is unknowable to anyone but Dr. Emmett Brown.

Whatever your opinion on any of that, to sum up, while there certainly are many holdouts the worldover on the matter of Jesus’ existence, professional historians of all backgrounds are as confident he existed as pretty much anyone we know of in history. Again as Dr. Eric Meyers, so frankly states, given the preponderance of evidence here, “Those who deny the existence of Jesus are like the deniers of climate change.”

Expand for References

In December 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice began releasing documents, many of which were heavily or entirely redacted, in batches after it failed to meet the Congressionally mandated deadline to make public all documents pertaining to its investigation of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The Justice Department released three batches of documents within several days of the deadline, then declared it may need a few more weeks to release the entirety of its Epstein files.

After the Justice Department released its third batch of documents on Dec. 23, people across social media began sharing a “hack” that supposedly revealed the contents of some or all retractions in the files. Popular posts on TikTok (archived), Facebook (archived), Bluesky (archived), Instagram (archived) and X (archived) shared the hack, which amounted to copying the document’s text and pasting it into another file or program.

Some popular social media posts on Threads (archived) and X (archived) said this method revealed more than 600 instances of the name “Trump ” (empty space included) in the latest batch of documents.

Ok. Now had a chance to check and, well, at least some docs do appear to be straight up classic redaction fail. And there are some *interesting* bits here.

www.justice.gov/multimedia/C…

[image or embed]

— Mike Masnick (@mmasnick.bsky.social) December 22, 2025 at 11:10 PM

It was true that at least one document in the third batch of the Epstein files could be unredacted with a simple copy and paste. However, Snopes could not identify how widespread this easily undoable redaction mistake was, nor could we confirm that “hacking” the redactions like this revealed hundreds of mentions of President Donald Trump. Therefore we are not putting a rating on this story.

Many of the social media posts sharing the trick use portions of the same document as their example: a 2022 court document regarding Epstein’s estate. Testing by Snopes confirmed copying any redacted portions of that particular document and pasting them elsewhere — Snopes tested in Microsoft’s Notepad and Google Docs — shows the text that was intended to be redacted.

For example, the entirety of paragraphs 203, 204 and 205 were redacted from Page 41 of the file. However, when Snopes copied the paragraphs and pasted them else, the text read:

203. Defendants also attempted to conceal their criminal sex trafficking and abuse conduct by paying large sums of money to participant-witnesses, including by paying for their attorneys’ fees and case costs in litigation related to this conduct.

204. Epstein also threatened harm to victims and helped release damaging stories about them to damage their credibility when they tried to go public with their stories of being trafficked and sexually abused.

205. Epstein also instructed one or more Epstein Enterprise participant-witnesses to destroy evidence relevant to ongoing court proceedings involving Defendants’ criminal sex trafficking and abuse conduct

Snopes found little success attempting this method on other documents. The Instagram post sharing the trick posted a screenshot from Page 61 of a file with court documents from United States v. Maxwell. However, any redacted text in that document, including the portion on Page 61, remained redacted when pasted elsewhere. Other documents Snopes tried, including a court document and an email exchange from the most recent batch of released files, remained redacted after copying and pasting the text elsewhere.

So while Snopes can confirm that this method works for at least one document and can confirm it doesn’t work on all of them, it is unknown how many other documents, if any, have redacted text easily revealed through copy and paste.

Trump mentions

Snopes could not confirm whether the copy-and-paste method revealed hundreds of mentions of Trump in the documents, although it appeared examples of these mentions shared on social media were already visible.

By reverse image searching the screenshot of Trump mentions in the X post to find higher-quality versions, Snopes found the source of the screenshot appeared to be a thread by the Faytuks Network X account (archived). Faytuks Network began the thread by sharing the same copy-and-paste method of revealing redacted text as other social media posts had done. However, when it posted the screenshots of the Trump mentions, the text of the post just included a list of file names and then the sentence, “All the files with the word ‘Trump’ in dataset 8.”

Despite the post appearing in the thread that began with sharing the copy-and-paste trick, it did not state that the snippets in which Trump was named were revealed by this trick. In fact, Trump’s name wasn’t redacted in the corresponding files Snopes was able to track down.

The Faytuks Network’s screenshot noted the words “Trump traveled on Epstein’s private jet many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware)” apparently from the file ending with the numbers 17337. Snopes found those same words without DOJ retractions in a file ending with the numbers 16732. The Faytuks Network also made note of nine Trump mentions in a file ending with 1504. Although Snopes could not find that file, another file, 14263, contained all nine of those Trump mentions without any redactions.

For many of the other files listed in the screenshot, Snopes either could not find the file number or found what appeared to be an entirely different file using the same number. This was an issue not unique to Faytuks Network’s post about the third document dump. Time magazine (archived) also referred to a file, 20518, in a story about Trump mentions in the DOJ’s third batch of documents. 

The Washington Post described how the third batch of files was initially released the afternoon of Dec. 22, 2025, and taken down by 8 p.m. The files were then re-released shortly before midnight. The Post, which downloaded the full set of documents from the initial release, wrote at the time that “it was not immediately clear whether officials had done any further redactions of the documents before posting.”

Therefore it is likely the mismatches between the files listed by Time and Faytuks Network and the files available from the third release in the following days could be explained by the DOJ removing documents or changing how the documents were numbered between the initial release and re-release hours later.

That left Snopes unable to check many of the documents listed in the screenshot for redacted Trump mentions. In the two documents Snopes was able to check, Trump’s name was not redacted.

After the U.S. Department of Justice released a slew of files related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in December 2025, a claim emerged on multiple social media platforms (archived, archived, archived, archived) that someone who claimed to have been trafficked for sex by Epstein submitted a tip to the FBI that U.S. President Donald Trump witnessed her uncle kill her newborn child and dispose of the body in Lake Michigan in 1984, when she was 13.

Snopes readers also emailed us and searched our site for information about the rumor.

The document is authentic; the complainant, whose identity was redacted, submitted the tip to the FBI National Threat Operations Center on Aug. 3, 2020, while Trump was running against Joe Biden, then a former vice president, for a second term in office. 

Although many users online took this rumor as fact, the claims that person made have not been independently substantiated, and the information did not line up with the established timeline of Trump’s friendship with Epstein. 

In an email to Snopes, the FBI declined to comment on whether it had investigated the tip.

What did the tip allege?

The complainant submitted the tip — viewable on the DOJ’s website — on the FBI’s website as a follow-up to a phone call she allegedly had with a detective who had reached out to her after she submitted an initial anonymous tip three or four weeks earlier. The text read, in part:

I talked to [the detective] for about 20 or 30 minutes about my being sex trafficked by my uncle and Jeffrey Epstein in 1984 while I was 13 and pregnant. I told him some other important information about other high profile individuals involved in my sex trafficking and the murder and disposal of my newborn daughter because I gave birth to her while in the middle of this sex trafficking ordeal.

The tip went on to allege that Epstein and the complainant’s uncle arranged a scheme “where different men, and a few women and girls, would come to a variety of boats and yachts and pay money to force me to [redacted] with them.”

The complainant wrote that Trump “participated regularly in paying money to force me to [redacted] with him and he was present when my uncle murdered my newborn child and disposed of the body in Lake Michigan.” There was no additional mention of Trump in the tip.

Is there evidence the tip isn’t legitimate?

While the tip alleged the incident occurred in 1984, Trump reportedly did not meet Epstein until the late 1980s. 

Trump bought Mar-a-Lago in December 1985, and Epstein bought his Palm Beach residence in 1990, though evidence suggests he may have frequented Palm Beach in the 1980s. In 2002, Trump told New York magazine he’d known Epstein for 15 years — suggesting they met in or around 1987. The New York Times published a 1986 photo of Epstein with Wall Street stockbroker Nikki Haskell, whom the Times described as a close friend of Ivana Trump’s — Trump’s then-wife, indicating they may have had overlapping social circles in New York before Epstein bought property in Palm Beach.

It’s unclear why Trump and Epstein would have been in a small town in Michigan when neither of them had any documented links to the immediate area at the time. Trump did own a riverboat casino on Lake Michigan for years — but that riverboat, based in Gary, Indiana, did not open until 1996, according to news reports from the time.

We reached out to the Muskegon County Sheriff’s Office seeking any information regarding a sex trafficking ring in the county — where the incident allegedly took place — in the 1980s, and did not immediately hear back.

The complainant did not name any other prominent people involved in the alleged incident besides Trump and Epstein — who were both heavily featured in the news cycle shortly after Epstein’s death by suicide in 2019 and leading up to the 2020 presidential election. She wrote only: “I told [the detective] some other important information about other high profile individuals involved in my sex trafficking.”

Has the White House responded to the allegations?

We reached out to the White House seeking comment on the allegations, and a spokesperson responded with a link to an X post (archived) by the DOJ that read: “Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election.”

In sum …

The document containing an FBI tip alleging Trump witnessed infanticide involving an Epstein victim is authentic and was available on the DOJ website. Snopes has not substantiated any of the claims in the tip, some of which did not align with the established timeline of Trump and Epstein’s relationship, and the FBI declined to comment on it. 

For further reading, we investigated a letter the DOJ released, purportedly from Epstein to fellow sex offender and former U.S. gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar, that said, in part, “Our president shares our love of young, nubile girls.”

Sources

Rumors that U.S. President Donald Trump made a “Merry Christmas” post to social media that focused largely on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein circulated on the internet the evening of Dec. 25, 2025. 

Users took time from their Christmas celebrations to share the alleged post on popular social media platforms such as X (archived, archived, archived), Facebook (archived) and Instagram (archived). 

The posts sharing the purported claim alleged the president wrote, “Merry Christmas to all, including the many Sleazebags who loved Jeffrey Epstein” and that he added he “was actually the only one who did drop Epstein, and long before it became fashionable to do so.”

Some users chided the post as “deranged” and “bizarre.”

All of this is deranged but the “enjoy what may be your last Merry Christmas.” Is really bizarre. Does he expect World War 3? Has he gotten really bad news about his health and doesn’t expect to be around for next Christmas? pic.twitter.com/RJO6uHawbN

— Poker and Politics (@PokerPolitics) December 26, 2025

The social media post shared in the claim was correctly attributed to Trump.

Trump made the post to his Truth Social account at 6:51 p.m. EST Dec. 25, and it can also be viewed on Trump’s Truth, an archive of all of Trump’s posts on the platform. 

The full post read (paragraphs separated by Snopes for clarity): 

Merry Christmas to all, including the many Sleazebags who loved Jeffrey Epstein, gave him bundles of money, went to his Island, attended his parties, and thought he was the greatest guy on earth, only to “drop him like a dog” when things got too HOT, falsely claimed they had nothing to do with him, didn’t know him, said he was a disgusting person, and then blame, of course, President Donald J. Trump, who was actually the only one who did drop Epstein, and long before it became fashionable to do so. 

When their names get brought out in the ongoing Radical Left Witch Hunt (plus one lowlife “Republican,” Massie!), and it is revealed that they are Democrats all, there will be a lot of explaining to do, much like there was when it was made public that the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax was a fictitious story – a total Scam – and had nothing to do with “TRUMP.” 

The Failing New York Times, among many others, was forced to apologize for their bad and faulty Election “Reporting,” even to the point of losing many subscribers due to their highly inaccurate (FAKE!) coverage. 

Now the same losers are at it again, only this time so many of their friends, mostly innocent, will be badly hurt and reputationally tarnished.

But sadly, that’s the way it is in the World of Corrupt Democrat Politics!!! Enjoy what may be your last Merry Christmas! 

President Donald J. Trump

A review of the president’s social media feed showed only one other mention of Christmas on Christmas Day, celebrating strikes made against the Islamic State group in Nigeria, in which Trump said (archived), “May God Bless our Military, and MERRY CHRISTMAS to all, including the dead Terrorists, of which there will be many more if their slaughter of Christians continues.”  

For further reading, Snopes has fact-checked a variety of alleged posts made by Trump, including rumors that he posted “things can happen” about the Brown University shooting in December 2025 as well as claims he made a post telling the Trans-Siberian Orchestra to “figure out” its gender.