Category: Fact Checking

A number of explanations have been offered to explain a series of supposed sightings of a sea serpent at Loch Ness, a large, deep, freshwater lake in the Scottish Highlands. Some have hypothesized that the Loch Ness Monster, known as Nessie, was really just a giant eel or possibly an odd shaped log. Others held that Nessie was a prehistoric plesiosaur that somehow survived extinction. In April 2021, another theory was popularized on the internet: The Loch Ness Monster is really just a whale penis:

While the picture on the left is one of the most famous ones to supposedly show the Loch Ness Monster, and while the picture on the right truly shows a whale penis, we can say with confidence that these objects are not the same. 

The picture supposedly showing the Loch Ness Monster is widely known as the “surgeon’s photograph,” as it was reportedly taken by surgeon Robert Kenneth Wilson. This picture was published by the Daily Mail in 1934 and served as a source of speculation about a legendary lake-dwelling beast for decades. While several other “sightings” followed the surgeon’s photograph, this picture was revealed to be a hoax in the 1990s when Christian Spurling, one of the man involved in this hoax, confessed shortly before his death.

The Sunday Telegraph reported that Spurling, a skilled model maker, teamed up with Wilson and their friend Marmaduke Wetherell to create a hoax picture of a sea serpent using a toy submarine and an 18-inch clay model:

16 Mar 1994, Wed Sioux City Journal (Sioux City, Iowa) Newspapers.com

In other words, the Loch Ness Monster isn’t a whale penis because the Loch Ness Monster is a toy submarine. 

While a whale penis may not be the answer to all of our Nessie questions, whale penises may truly have been the culprits behind some old sea serpent sightings. 

In 2005, a team of researchers published a paper in the Archives of Natural History that examined an account of a sea serpent sighting off the coast of Greenland by a missionary named Hans Egede in 1734. Egede drew a picture of the alleged creature and described it as a “most dreadful monster.” Egede wrote, as recounted in the 1883 book “Travellers’ Tales: A Book of Marvels“:

“A most dreadful monster showed itself upon the surface of the water in the year 1734, off our new colony, in the sixty-fourth degree of latitude. The monster was of so huge a size, that coming out of the water, its head reached as high as the mast-head: Its body was as bulk as the ship, and three times as long. It had a long pointed snout, and spouted like a whale fish, great broad paws (fins?), and the body seemed covered with shell-work, it’s skin being very rugged and uneven. The underpart of its body was shaped like an enormous huge serpent, and when it dived again udner water, it plunged backward into the sea, and so raised its tail aloft, which seemed a whole ship’s length distant from the bulkiest part of the body.

The Archives of Natural History paper analyzed Egede’s account and drawing and identified several whales that may have been this most dreadful monster. Additionally, the author’s noted that it was possible that the “serpent-like tail” was the “snake-like penis” of a large baleen whale:

However, there is an alternative explanation for the serpent-like tail. Many of the large baleen whales have long, snake-like penises (Figures 4 and 5). If the animal did indeed fall on its back then its ventral surface would have been uppermost and, if the whale was aroused, the usually retracted penis would have been visible. The penises of the North Atlantic right whale and (Pacific) grey whale can be at least 1.8 metres long, and 1.7 metres long respectively, and could be taken by a naïve witness for a tail. That the tail was seen at one point a ship’s length from the body suggests the presence of more than one male whale.

The authors noted that they were not suggesting that all sea serpent sightings were misidentified whale penises. However, they do point to at least one other sea serpent sighting that had some of the same whale-penis indicators as the Egede account.

In 1875, the crew of a ship named the “Pauline” witnessed what they believed was a sea serpent attacking a group of whales. A description of the incident from Capt. Drevar was published in the North Whales Chronicle a few years afterward in 1877:

What reference to its credibility all that we can say is that Captain Drevar, who is a well-known shipmaster in the port of Liverpool, gives us personal assurance of the entire authenticity of his narrative. The others of the crew make similar declarations of accuracy, and therefore we tell the story just as it was told to us.

[…]

The weather was fine and clear, wind and sea moderate. Observed some black spots on the water, and a whitish pillar about third feet high, above them. At the first glance I took all to be breakers, as the sea was splashing up fountain-like about them and the pillar, a pinnacle rock, bleached with the sun: but the pillar fell with a splash, and a similar one rose. They rose and fell alternatively in quick succession, and good glasses showed me it was a monster sea serpent coiled twice round a large sperm whale. The head and tail parts, each about thirty feet long, were acting as levers, twisting itself and victim round with great velocity. They sank out of sight about every two minutes, coming to the surface still revolving and the struggles of the whale and two other whales that were near, frantic with excitement, made the sea in their vicinity like a boiling cauldron, and a loud and confused noise was distinctly heard. This strange occurrence lasted some fifteen minutes, and finished with the tail portion of the whale being elevated straight in the air, then waving backwards and forwards, and heaving the water furiously in the last death struggle, when the whole body disappeared from our view, going down head foremost to the bottom, where no doubt it was gorged at the serpent’s leisure, and that monster of monsters may have been many months in a state of coma, digesting the huge mouthful.

While we can’t say for certain what Drevar saw in 1875, we can say that this description reminded us of a BBC Earth video that showed sperm whales as they prepared to breed:

While the famous picture of the Loch Ness Monster certainly wasn’t a case of mistaken whale-penis identity, and while whale-penis sightings probably can’t explain every sea serpent sighting throughout history, it is plausible that some of these “sea serpents” were attached to the bottom of a whale.

In early April 2021, readers inquired about a viral video titled “Train Tackles Bendy Tracks.” It purportedly showed a real train riding on treacherous tracks that appeared to be in need of repairs. The video also appeared online as “world’s worst train tracks.”

The video was first published on March 31, 2017, which perhaps explained its reappearance in early April 2021. Some publishers recycle content annually on the same date as previous years.

We found the Storyful video on Yahoo! and also @TheSun on Twitter. Additionally, it had appeared multiple times on UNILAD’s Facebook pages.

It’s true that the video depicted a real train tackling real, bendy tracks. However, the first 52 seconds showed video that had been sped up in the editing process. In reality, the first 52 seconds originally lasted six minutes. It had been sped up to run around seven times faster — perhaps to save viewers around five minutes of waiting and watching.

The video was published to YouTube by Scott Taipale, who added the following description:

PREX 1603 leading PREX 3054 blasts down the former Wabash Railroad’s 5th District! Lol actually I condensed 6 minutes of the train crawling down the track! This is only the third time I’ve gotten a pair on one of their trains so I was pleased to see them. The line was most recently the Maumee and Western Railroad (MAW) before being purchased by Pioneer RailCorp. Maintenance was deferred for decades on this stretch of track. Pioneer has done a great job rehabbing the worst parts but some pockets like this still exist.

A similar video also posted by Taipale showed another train on bad tracks:

We also noticed a third video posted to YouTube by Taipale, named “Train derailment on the ND&W Railroad.” It showed a boxcar derailing on similarly “bendy” tracks. The first portion of the video had been sped up as well:

Taipale said in the description that the engine uncoupled from the derailed car and continued on without it.

In sum, the video showed a real train tackling bendy tracks. However, the beginning of the video had been sped up by the video creator.

For further reading, we previously reported on an abandoned train tunnel in Pennsylvania.

For decades, “The Simpsons” has been the inspiration behind a number of internet hoaxes and rumors, from the supposed prediction of the Donald Trump presidency (false) and the foretelling of Pokemon Go (also false), to a long list of political pranks and online bamboozles.

And, in 2021, a tweet that was shared to Twitter on April 1 by music publicist Eric Alper drew a comparison between Margaret Groening’s obituary and Marge from “The Simpsons.” Despite the conspicuous date of the posting, it did not appear to be an April Fools’ joke.

The claim that Margaret Ruth Groening inspired the blue-haired motherly figure in “The Simpsons” is true. Margaret was indeed the mother of Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons. And the names of her three children inspired the main characters of the classic 1989 adult cartoon. (Though the full name of the fictional Marge Simpson character was Marjorie. The only significant Margaret in the Simpsons universe is Maggie the baby.)

An obituary published in The Oregonian on May 6, 2013, (archived here) described Margaret Ruth Groening, who died in her sleep on April 22, 2013, at the age of 94. Margaret married her Linfield College classmate, Homer Groening, in 1941, whom she chose because he “made her laugh the most.”

Margaret and Homer supported the Oregon Symphony, the Portland Trail Blazers and many local yarn shops (Margaret was a talented needlework artist). Besides Homer, Margaret was preceded in death by her oldest daughter, Patty, who died in Jan., 2013. She is survived by her brother, Arnold; her children, Mark, Matt, Lisa and Maggie; eight grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

According to the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), Matt Groening was born in 1954 in Springfield, Oregon, and grew up two hours away in Portland. His biography noted that he was the son of Homer Groening, an animator and producer of surf movies, and was married to Margaret.

“Many members of the Simpson family are named for members of his own family: Homer, Marge, Maggie, Lisa and Patty,” wrote the website.

It’s no coincidence that The Simpsons family of five have the same names as Margaret’s children. In a 1990 interview, Matt Groening said that the character of Bart Simpson — son of Homer and Marge — was based partly on Dennis the Menace and himself as a child. Bart’s original name was going to be Matt, but he changed it because it sounded too closely related. Fittingly, Bart is an anagram of “brat.” Lisa Groening, Matt’s sister in real life — and Bart’s sister in cartoon form — also worked in entertainment. And Matt himself was born in Springfield, Oregon, a town of more than 60,000 residents that also served as the inspiration of the fictional Ohio-based town in the cartoon show.

And it’s not just Matt Groening’s family members who inspired the characters on the show. NPR noted in 2012 that much of the content in “The Simpsons” was prompted by real people and places in his life.

The names of many characters on the show — Flanders, Kearney, Lovejoy — correspond to street names in Portland, Ore. Indeed, Groening says his goal was to ‘name every character after streets in Portland, but we were in a hurry so I dropped the idea.’

Another clue: The Simpsons live on Evergreen Terrace – also the name of the street the Groenings lived on. And, of course, Homer, Marge, Lisa and Maggie are named after Groening’s parents and sisters, respectively.

A common sight along the walls of Italian steakhouses are signed photographs of the various celebrities who have dined at these establishments. One popular version of this trope that frequently circulates on social media involves actor Brendan Fraser and the seemingly odd note he left at one restaurant, stating “I like the steak! It was my favorite part  I was in the Mummy.”

While Fraser was in “The Mummy,” and while it wouldn’t be unusual for a main course to be someone’s favorite part of a meal, this is not a genuine autograph from the actor.

This fauxtograph was on display at a bar in New York City called Mister Paradise. The image first went viral in 2019 after someone saw this framed picture at Mister Paradise, presumed it was real, and then shared it on social media. Shortly afterward, Will Wyatt, the owner of the bar, clarified to Mel Magazine that this was not a genuine autograph from Fraser. 

Wyatt said:

“I just wrote a really dumb thing and fake-signed it … I hope Brendan Fraser doesn’t think someone is trying to rip him off.”

Mister Paradise had at least two other fake signed photos on display: One of singer Frank Sinatra and another of actor Laurence Fishburne. You can see this photos at Mel Magazine.

While it might not be quite as funny as the fake “I like steak” autograph, we did find a real autograph from the “Encino Man” that includes a few humorous touches. The following image shows an autograph Fraser signed while aboard the “Song Of Flower” cruise ship circa 2007. In addition to signing his name, Fraser also labeled what he was eating — caviar, and what he was drinking — vodka.

The following photograph was posted to Flickr in 2007 by Poppy Amopola.

The woman in this photograph appears to be Diva Amapola, a singer who was performing on the cruise ship during Fraser’s stay. Amapola talked about Fraser in a 2007 interview:

Q: In your travels you met many famous entertainers. Is there a one or two that really impressed you?

A: Movie Star Brendan Fraser was impressive. We met through his parents onboard the ms Song Of Flower. We did not know who he was (we had our own world onboard the ship and we were often uninformed about Hollywood) and so he relaxed and enjoyed himself. Still he gave me a few autographs and now he is a huge star. His parents knew he was going to be a mega star, and after we spent a few more times with him, we knew why. He has looks, talent and drive. How can he miss?

On March 8, 2021, the official United Kingdom Burger King Twitter account posted an oddly misogynistic-seeming message in celebration of International Women’s Day. Burger King wrote: “Women belong in the kitchen.”

While this message appeared quite sexist at first glance — fast food rival KFC even responded via their “KFC Gaming” account with a message telling Burger King to delete their tweet. The attention-grabbing message was just the first in a three-tweet thread in which the company announced a new scholarship for aspiring female chefs.

Here’s Burger King’s full thread:

Burger King wrote:

Women belong in the kitchen.

If they want to, of course. Yet only 20% of chefs are women. We’re on a mission to change the gender ratio in the restaurant industry by empowering female employees with the opportunity to pursue a culinary career. #IWD

We are proud to be launching a new scholarship programme which will help female Burger King employees pursue their culinary dreams!

It appears that many people may have missed the other two messages in Burger King’s thread. At the time of this writing, Burger King’s “women belong in the kitchen” tweet has been retweeted more than 125,000 times. The other two messages have less than 10,000 tweets combined. 

When KFC Gaming, the Twitter account for the restaurant chain’s gaming division (yes, KFC has their own console), called out Burger King for this seemingly sexist tweet, Burger King elaborated on what they were trying to accomplish with this message. In short, it was kind of a bait and switch. This sexist message was supposed to bring attention to the fact that the culinary industry is comprised mostly of men. 

Burger King truly did post “Women belong in the kitchen” on International Women’s Day in 2021. This attention-grabbing tweet was the first message in a three-tweet thread in which the restaurant announced a scholarship program for aspiring women chefs — in hindsight, perhaps not the best to to frame such an announcement. 

You could be forgiven if you thought clicking on a link for an article titled “the real reason behind Joel Osteen’s divorce” might take you to a place that provided information about — or at least mentioned — the well known Houston-based televangelist. You would, sadly, be wrong:

Instead of providing background information about Osteen’s supposed divorce, clicking the link takes the reader to a 23-page, ad-infested slideshow article on a website named “Defintion.org” titled “The Most Unbelievably Expensive Celebrity Divorces,” which includes a picture of Osteen and his wife on the title card.

That photograph is the only time Osteen appears in the story, however — likely because Osteen has not divorced and remains married to his wife, fellow televangelist Victoria Osteen, whom he wed in 1987.

Because this advertisement is a bait-and-switch that provides no information about Osteen or his fictional divorce, we rank the related claim “False.”

When he was brought into the wildlife hospital, the bird was bright orange and resembled a mythical phoenix. And while it may have looked as if it could be the first sighting of a previously undiscovered or exotic bird, it was just a common herring gull that had somehow managed to coat himself in a bright orange spice, either curry or turmeric.

The bird’s plight gained attention online in February 2021, although, as the meme below correctly notes, its adventures in culinary spice originally unfolded in 2019.

We weren’t able to locate social media posts that demonstrate people truly believed the bird to be an exotic new species, but news reports from the time seem to indicate that the gull’s coloring raised questions about what exactly it was.

In July 2019, passersby spotted the bird stranded in all his bright orange glory on the side of A41, a trunk road connecting London and the town of Birkenhead.

They rushed the bird to Tiggywinkles Wildlife Hospital in Buckinghamshire, England, where the staff there nicknamed him Vinny, short for vindaloo, the Indian dish seasoned with curry. They also scrubbed him clean, revealing his natural white and gray feathers.

“When they called to say they had picked up an orange bird, we had no idea what to expect – and would never have guessed at this!” the veterinary hospital wrote in a July 1, 2019, Facebook post.

The gull had “somehow gotten himself covered in curry or turmeric! It was all over his feathers, preventing him from flying properly. We have no idea how he got into this predicament but thankfully, apart from the vibrant colour and pungent smell, he was healthy.”

The staff checked Vinny out, bathed him, and, after returning him to his natural white and gray colors, released him back into the wild.

Why no rating on this article? This is a trending topic but has not yet been rated by Snopes for reasons we’ll outline below.

On Feb. 14, 2021, author Michael Perino shared a story on Twitter about an interesting encounter that he had in a grocery store with a woman who was buying jelly. The woman reportedly told Perino that she always buys the Bonne Maman brand of preserves because she was a holocaust survivor, and that the founders of the company had protected her family during World War II. 

The full thread can be viewed here. The most relevant tweets appear below:

We can’t definitively prove the veracity of this story. For one, we don’t know this woman’s identity. We can say, however, that it is plausible.  

When this story first went viral, some readers pointed out that the Bonne Maman brand was created in 1971 and therefore the story must be false. Others pointed out that the manufacturing company Andros, which owns the Bonne Maman brand, was only founded in 1959, supposedly showing once again that this story couldn’t be true. 

While it’s true that Bonne Maman did not exist in any official capacity until after World War II, the founders of Andros, Jean Gervoson and Pierre Chapoulart, can trace the history of their business back to the French village of Biars-sur-Cère during the second World War. 

Gervoson was born in 1920, and shortly after the war he married a woman named Suzanne Chapoulart, the sister of his future business partner. The Chapoulart family lived in the village of Biars-sur-Cère where they owned a fruit and nut business. In the 1950s, Gervoson started to package and sell his father-in-law’s unsold jams, a business that would eventually evolve into the Bonne Maman brand. While it’s not entirely clear, it seems that the Chapoulart family has been selling fruits and nuts in this small village since the 1910s. 

Playac Press reports (translated via Google):

An industrial jam with the air of “homemade” Jean Gervoson, born in 1920, married Suzanne Chapoulart after the Second World War. His in-laws live in the village of Biars-sur-Cère (Lot). For nearly 40 years, Father Chapoulart has owned a nut and fruit business. In the 1950s, Jean Gervoson had the idea of recovering his father-in-law’s unsold plums to make jams. And sell them! A success, at a time when more women are working (read What is it?). The activity takes on an industrial scale. In 1971, Jean Gervoson decided to create, with his wife and his brother-in-law, Pierre Chapoulart, a brand of jams. Her name, Bonne Maman, is a family nod. Pierre Roche-Bayard, who will remain the group’s general manager until the mid-1990s, works on the packaging. He designs the cover in a gingham pattern, reminiscent of the curtains on his family’s farm. He himself writes a label on the pen holder, taking care of the full and thin lines of the letters. The flagship product is launched. And almost 50 years later, the pot hasn’t changed!

The Jewish Standard also mentioned Bonne Maman in an article published in 2016 about the atrocities that took place in the German city of Worms during the Holocaust, and the people who escaped them. Holocaust survivor Eric Mayer told the publication that at one point during the war he escaped Worms and ended up in the village where Bonne Maman preserves come from (emphasis ours):

Meanwhile, back in prewar Germany, Moritz and Irma Mayer worried about their children, and decided to get them out. “My brother, Fred, my sister, Ruth, and I ended up in a village in Alsace, with much older cousins, and later, still with the cousins, in a town in Burgundy, then in Vichy for a year and a half. We were expelled from Vichy in July 1941 because we were foreign Jews and ended up in southern France,” Mr. Mayer said. His mother, who stayed in Worms, was deported to Belzec and was gassed there in 1942. (His brother died 10 years ago, and his sister, whose last name was Rothschild, died about a year and a half ago, he added.) “We were complete strangers to everyone in this village, Biars sur Cere, which then had about 800 people; it’s the village where Bonne Maman preserves come from.

“I was a courier for the French Resistance in November 1942 until August 1944, at the liberation of southern France.”

“You have to understand what it was like then,” Mr. Mayer said. “There were posters on the walls, from the Nazis and from the collaborators, and they said that if you are found to help a Jew, a freemason, a communist, a socialist, or a pervert, you will be shot on sight.” Despite the great danger in which helping the Mayers and other Jewish children put the villagers, still they kept the children safe. “I have an inordinate feeling of indebtedness to them that I can never repay, even if I live to be the age of Moses,” Mr. Mayer added.

We can’t say for certain if these families were personally involved with aiding Jewish people who were seeking refuge during the Holocaust. We have been unable to find any articles, interviews, or company statements touting this historic act. (The French outlet Capital noted in 2009 that “[in 40 years] Jean Gervoson had never granted the slightest interview.) When we reached out to Bonne Maman, they told us that the company does not comment on personal matters. 

A spokesperson said: “Bonne Maman is privately owned by Andros, a family-owned French company located in Biars-sur-Cere, France. The family prefers to maintain privacy and does not comment on inquiries about personal matters.”

The founders of Bonne Maman can trace the roots of their business back to this small village in France. As Biars-sur-Cère had a population of less than 800 people during World War II, and as this family owned and operated its business during this time, the claim seems at least possible.

On Jan. 8, 2021, The New York Times reported that U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick succumbed to injuries sustained during his on-duty efforts to protect the Capitol from a violent mob of pro-Trump rioters. The latter stormed the building in an effort to stop Congress from formalizing the electoral win of former President Donald Trump’s political rival, U.S. President Joe Biden.

Citing two unnamed law enforcement sources, the Times initially reported Sicknick “was struck with a fire extinguisher,” but on Feb. 16, 2021, the Times updated the story to note that those sources may not have provided accurate information, reporting:

Law enforcement officials initially said Mr. Sicknick was struck with a fire extinguisher, but weeks later, police sources and investigators were at odds over whether he was hit. Medical experts have said he did not die of blunt force trauma, according to one law enforcement official.

But more than three months later, the D.C. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner made public Sicknick’s cause of death. The 42-year-old suffered a stroke and died from natural causes.

As the Associated Press reported:

Sicknick was among five people who died after the riot. Two men have been charged with assaulting Sicknick in the melee.

Investigators initially believed he was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher, based on statements collected early in the investigation, according to two people familiar with the case. And they later thought perhaps Sicknick may have ingested a chemical substance — possibly bear spray — that may have contributed to his death.

But the determination of a natural cause of death means the medical examiner found that a medical condition alone caused his death — it was not brought on by an injury. The determination is likely to significantly inhibit the ability of federal prosecutors to bring homicide charges in connection with Sicknick’s death.

Sicknick’s death has been a source of confusion and sometimes controversy, as illustrated by the evolution of reports about it.

When the New York Times updated their story that originally reported Sicknick was hit with a fire extinguisher, it resulted in a round of stories about the update, primarily in right-leaning outlets. “New York Times quietly updates story that spread now-debunked claim about police officer Brian Sicknick’s death,” a headline on the Blaze website reported.

On Jan. 7, Capitol Police had issued a news release stating Sicknick “was injured while physically engaging with protesters, and passed away at 9:30 p.m. the following day “due to injuries sustained while on-duty.”

Capitol Police said in that news release that Sicknick collapsed after returning to his division office the day of the assault on the Capitol, then was taken to a local hospital, where he died the following night.

The release stated Sicknick’s death was being investigated by the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department’s (MPD) homicide branch, Capitol Police, and federal law enforcement.

But early on, Sicknick’s brother, Ken Sicknick, had told the non-profit news outlet ProPublica that Brian Sicknick’s family was informed the officer had suffered a stroke resulting from a blood clot.

Sicknick’s wasn’t the only law enforcement death that immediately followed the riot. Police were overwhelmed and overrun, and outnumbered officers tried to fend off rioters who were assaulting them from all sides. Roughly 140 police officers were injured, some seriously. Two other officers, Howard Liebengood of the Capitol Police and Jeffrey Smith of the Metropolitan Police, took their own lives in the days following the attack.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced on March 15, 2021, that two men, Julian Elie Khater and George Pierre Tanios, were arrested and charged with counts related to violence at the Capitol including assaulting police officers. The men are accused of spraying three officers, including Sicknick, with an unknown chemical substance.

If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health, suicide or substance use crisis or emotional distress, reach out 24/7 to the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (formerly known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline) by dialing or texting 988 or using chat services at suicidepreventionlifeline.org to connect to a trained crisis counselor.

The popular nursery rhyme “The Muffin Man” supposedly originated as a caution to children, warning them to beware of a 16th-century baker-turned-serial-killer who enticed his young victims by pulling a muffin down the cobblestone streets of London with a string.

At least, that’s one version of the origin story.

In a widely shared TikTok video posted on Jan. 16, 2021, self-described “CEO of History” Jack Williamson claimed that the song originated as a warning to children to avoid England’s first known serial killer. At the time of this publication, the video had been shared more than 8,700 times.

“So, as you might have already learned, the muffin man was indeed a serial killer. He killed 15 children and seven rival pastry chefs,” said Williamson in the recording.

“His name was Frederick Thomas Lynwood and the children’s song was made to warn small children and to help small children identify his MO so that they can report him to authorities.”

But we found no records documenting murders committed by a man of that name, or that he even existed. Williamson did not note his sources, and our own search of the internet returned no legitimate results. As such, we rate this claim as “Unproven.”

It appears that the account Williamson gave was based on an entry posted to Uncyclopedia, a parody version of Wikipedia. According to the comedic online encyclopedia, Lynwood also went by the nickname of “Drury Lane Dicer” and was known as England’s first documented serial killer. A quick look at the entry showed a mug shot of the alleged “Muffin Man” — but of course cameras, photography, and mug shots were not available in the 16th century.  The parody website goes on to describe the childhood and adult life of Lynwood, including his supposed death from choking on a dumpling.

When it came to the origins of the children’s song, Uncyclopedia mockingly claimed that the Muffin Man title came from the manner in which he killed his victims:

His nickname The Muffin Man is actually a reference to how he committed the murders. By local folklore, it is said Frederic would tie a muffin to a string, and as a child tried to get it, he pulled the string, eventually luring the child to his house and giving him ample time to knock the child out with a wooden spoon. However, people often question whether these children actually died from being beaten with said wooden spoon or if the Muffin Man would kill them some other way.

“The song Do You Know the Muffin Man? was used as a warning to small children of the presence [sic] life of crime, and to help identify his modus operandi so that children can report him to the authorities,” joked the website.

A Medium essay written by Sarah Cottrell, meanwhile, reported the legend is either “one hell of a folklore story or one of history’s most creepy mysteries.” In her piece, Cottrell also claimed that Lynwood, who supposedly was born in 1563 and died in 1612, delivered his freshly baked goods to homes on Drury Lane.

But according to the book “The Singing Game” by Opie & Opie (page 380), “The Muffin Man” was first recorded in a British manuscript in 1820 and was preserved in the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford. In its original form as a poem, it read:

Do you know the muffin man?
The muffin man, the muffin man.
Do you know the muffin man
Who lives in Drury Lane?

Still, there are small grains of truth to the rumored claims. A passage recorded in the Cambridge World History of Food confirmed that households during the Victorian period — which spanned between 1837 and 1901 and not during Lynwood’s alleged reign of terror — would often have fresh foods delivered door to door by a “muffin man.” The “muffin” of the rhyme is believed to have been an English muffin baked of bread, not the sweeter U.S. version. And the rhyme could very well have been inspired by a real muffin man of Drury Lane, which is a thoroughfare bordering Covent Garden in downtown London.

Another English version of the song substitutes “Drury Lane” with “Dorset Lane,” an area of east London. Dorset Lane was once reputed as the “worst street in London,” marking the 1888 murder site of Mary Jane Kelly — the youngest of Jack the Ripper’s victims.

But that’s where the similarities stop. There are no historical accounts of the so-named Lynwood rumored to have been the first serial killer in England. In fact, that title goes to Mary Ann Cotton. At the time of her 1873 hanging for the murder of her fourth husband’s son, the 40-year-old Cotton was known to have committed at least 21 murders, including 11 of her 13 children, three of her four husbands, one lover, and her mother, according to Huffington Post.

It appears that nobody really knows the muffin man, after all.

Snopes contacted historical literary experts at the University College London and Oxford University for more information about the origins of the nursery rhyme. We will update the article with any new information. 

The Proud Boys are known for violent and extremist activities, as well as hateful rhetoric against a range of groups, including women, Jews, Muslims, and the LGBT community. But their name has an unexpected origin: It started out like a joke, according to their founder Gavin McInnes.

In this YouTube video, which was posted in 2018, at the 2-minute mark, McInnes described the origin of the name:

McInnes said:

We’re called Proud Boys because I went to one of my kids’ music recitals and some ponce got up there and while everyone’s playing the piano and the violin and doing stuff they tried, he gets up and he goes, “Proud of your boy, I’ll make you proud of your boy.” It’s some song from “Aladdin.” And I was looking around for the dad because I thought there’s no way this dad is proud of his boy, and of course, he was the child of a single mom…duh! His mother told him, yes sing a song, that’s a talent, and there was no dad to say no you’re not, play the piano for christ’s sakes.

The Southern Poverty Law Center also reported that the origin of the name came from the “Aladdin” song, “Proud of Your Boy.”

Ironically, that particular “Aladdin” song was written by Jewish composer-lyricist team of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, the latter of whom was gay. The song was originally written for the 1992 animated movie but was cut, then later revived for the 2011 stage production on Broadway. 

The Proud Boys claim to have an “anti-political correctness” and “anti-white guilt” agenda, but members’ actions have revealed more violent and discriminatory intentions. Proud Boys members have spewed homophobic slurs during violent attacks, and McInnes once recorded a video titled “10 Things I Hate About Jews” before changing the title.

Here is a video of the “Aladdin” song as it was performed on Broadway:

Given that there is video of the founder of the Proud Boys describing the origin of the name, we rate this claim as “Correct Attribution.”

In February 2021, an online advertisement looked to draw readers to a list of celebrities who supported former U.S. President Donald Trump. A picture in the ad showed actor and comedian Adam Sandler with the words “Celebs Who Support Trump.”

Readers who clicked the ad were led through a 50-page article on Definition.org. The story featured 50 celebrities who purportedly supported Trump.

But Sandler didn’t appear on any page.

The clickbait article appeared to have been published on Sept. 29, 2020. Its headline read: “The Celebrities and Billionaires That Backed Donald Trump.”

While President Donald Trump may not have the approval of a majority of Americans (depending on the poll) there’s no doubt he has the backing of many of America’s richest citizens and recognizable faces. These well-known Trump backers have donated large sums of money, time, and publicity to ensuring Trump is reelected in 2020.

While many of these well-known Trump backers supported the 2016 Trump campaign, some did not. However, all on board the Trump 2020 train, and many of the the billionaire backers have contributed money to the Trump Make America Great Again Committee or Trump Victory committee, which is then transferred to the Donald J. Trump For President Committee.

The story’s first several pages featured familiar faces.

For example, Dana White, president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, appeared on the first page. He was followed by actress and comedian Roseanne Barr, as well as actors Scott Baio, Dennis Quaid, Jon Voight, and James Woods.

On July 18, 2016, The Wall Street Journal reported that Sandler had been registered with the Republican Party in the past. He also “performed at the Republican National Convention in 2004.”

There was also the time someone named Adam Sandler donated to Trump. However, in 2019, Yahoo reported that it appeared to be a different person who happened to have the same name.

That same year, Sandler appeared as his classic “Opera Man” character on “Saturday Night Live.” He delivered the following lines during a sketch on “Weekend Update”:

Trumpa, Dumpa
Trumpa, Dumpa
I make – a the wall
I playa the golf
And they take – a the fall

Trumpa, Dumpa
Trumpa, Dumpa
They afraid to impeach
I get to make – a the wall
And Putin make me his beetch

In sum, it’s possible that Sandler privately supported and voted for Trump. However, the ad with a picture of the actor and comedian led to a story that never ended up mentioning him. Since the ad from Definition.org appeared to be nothing more than clickbait, we have rated this claim as “False.”

We previously reported on other stories concerning Sandler, including two death hoaxes that circulated in 2015 and 2017.

In the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump and other right-wing elements, an old photograph reemerged online showing U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina posing for a photograph with Joe Biggs, a prominent member of the right-wing Proud Boys group.

On Jan.12, Timothy Burke tweeted out the photograph, along with the following caption: 

I feel like not enough has been made of Proud Boys leader Joe Biggs having dinner at the Trump hotel with Lindsey Graham before Biggs helped organize an assault on the U.S. Capitol?

In advance of the attack on the Capitol, Biggs indicated he was coordinating the group’s plans, and according to reports, he was the “lead coordinator” of the Proud Boys’ actions on the ground that day. On Jan. 4, police in Washington, D.C., arrested Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio on suspicion of destroying a Black Lives Matter banner taken from a historic Black church in Washington, a month earlier.

Tarrio was additionally charged with unlawfully possessing two high-capacity firearm magazines found in his vehicle during an arrest that the FBI said was linked to intelligence about plans for violence during the House and Senate certification of Electoral College votes on Jan. 6.

The photograph was authentic, and did indeed show Graham posing for a picture with Biggs in what a spokesperson for Graham acknowledged was likely a Trump hotel. However, Graham’s spokesperson refuted Burke’s claim that the two men were “having dinner,” and the description of the photograph as being taken “before Biggs helped organize an assault on the U.S. Capitol” gave the mistaken impression that the two events were proximate in time.

In reality, the photograph was taken more than a year before the attack on the Capitol, and no evidence exists to suggest that Graham had any advanced knowledge of Biggs’s plan. A spokesperson for the senator insisted Graham “does not know” Biggs. 

Analysis

Based on third-party social media posts, it appears Biggs originally posted the photograph to one of his Instagram accounts, @anticom3, during a visit to Trump’s Washington, D.C. hotel on Nov. 7, 2019. That account has since been deleted, so we were unable to find a copy of the original picture. However, a Nov. 7, 2019, Twitter post included the photograph of Graham and Biggs, meaning it appears to have been taken earlier that day at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.

This means that Graham posed with Biggs for the photograph more than a year before the attack on the U.S. Capitol, contrary to the impression created by Burke’s tweet, which ambiguously stated that the two men had met “before Biggs helped organize an assault on the U.S. Capitol” — a formula of words which likely suggested to many viewers that their meeting had taken place shortly before the Capitol attack. It did not.

The second questionable component of Burke’s tweet was the claim that Graham and Biggs had dined together. The photograph does not demonstrate that. The “dinner” claim likely comes from the fact that, as part of the same series of photographs apparently posted to Instagram on Nov. 7, 2019, Biggs included a picture of his dinner plate, with the location “Trump International Hotel, Washington D.C.” Biggs therefore ate dinner at the hotel, and met Graham there. That doesn’t mean the two men ate together. 

Graham’s spokesperson also poured cold water on the “dinner” claim, telling Snopes in an emailed statement: “This is one of the tens of thousands of selfies Senator Graham has taken with individuals.” The spokesperson added, emphatically, that Graham “does not know this individual and has spoken out against the Proud Boys.”

Graham has indeed publicly criticized the Proud Boys in the past. In September and October 2020, the group briefly became the subject of intensive political focus, after they were mentioned during the first presidential debate between Trump and then-Democratic candidate Joe Biden on Sep. 29. 

Biden and moderator Chris Wallace repeatedly asked Trump to condemn and disavow white supremacists and right-wing militias, which Trump failed to do during the debate. Pressed by Biden to specifically condemn the Proud Boys, the president stated ambiguously “The Proud Boys? Stand back and stand by, but I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about Antifa and the Left…”

In response, Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is Black, said “White supremacy should be denounced at every turn” and urged Trump to “correct” the record, adding “If he doesn’t correct it, I guess he didn’t misspeak.” Graham publicly endorsed Scott’s position, explicitly and publicly criticizing the Proud Boys as “a racist organization antithetical to American ideals.” Ultimately, Trump walked back his own words in a subsequent statement, saying, “I condemn the Proud Boys. I don’t know much about the Proud Boys, almost nothing. But I condemn that.”

When a product takes on more than one name and has an elusive backstory, it raises some questions. And we faced a big question mark surrounding the identity of Nathan Gilroy, a personality who had been widely touted on Facebook as an “inventor,” but had no real credentials available to back him up, nor much of an online presence to begin with.

Ads for the so-called “Powersave” device had been circulating on Facebook in late 2020, describing how a young “genius” named Nathan Gilroy had invented an energy-saving device that would reduce electricity costs in homes by 50%.

A video shows a young teen, purportedly an 18-year-old Gilroy, who allegedly grew up in “the poorest neighborhood of St. Louis.” The video claims his device is helping poor families across America who are struggling with electricity bills. Elsewhere, a number of websites shared “facts” about him, claiming that Gilroy graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) at a young age.

There were a number of red flags in the meager information available about Gilroy. Firstly, throughout the video, the young teen does not speak. All the information is conveyed through text overlaid on video, and what appear to be spliced together images and clips that could have been pulled from a range of sources. Even the people offering testimonials about the product are simply talking, voiceless heads on the screen with overlaid text purportedly quoting them.

But to determine whether Gilroy the inventor was a real person behind this device, we reached out to MIT. A representative from its media relations team pointed out that university officials “typically don’t definitively confirm that a person did not attend MIT, as there can be situations where someone enrolled under a different name or participated in a special program.” They did, however, check with the MIT Registrar’s Office in this case, and found there was no record of an individual with the name Nathan Gilroy having been an enrolled MIT student.

There is very little else about him available online. Given that key parts of Gilroy’s identity and credentials are impossible to confirm, his educational background is outright falsified, and the promotional material around him appears deliberately deceptive, we have concluded that such a person does not exist.

In August 2023, a number of Facebook videos emerged, promoting the device again, but this time the so-called inventor was a man named “Noah Watson” and his device was called “BoldHero.” The videos had repurposed the same old clips showed the young man speaking and appearing to give an interview, but we still cannot hear him. This time, his backstory claimed he grew up poor in Jacksonville, Florida, and was raised by a single mother before he went to Harvard. Ultimately the videos seek to promote the same device under a different story and name. 

But is the device just a scam? Described as a “smart device plugged into socket,” and a “voltage stabilizer,” it apparently conserves electricity, but no details are offered about the device’s mechanisms that allow it to do this. It also goes by different names online. One website called it ElectroPro  while others called  it “Power saver.” Amazon shared a version of the device labelled “Powersave.” Facebook videos from August 2023 called it “BoldHero” and the device was also available on Amazon under that name, as of this writing. Most Amazon reviews say the device is useless, or a “total scam.” Scamadvisor, a popular YouTube channel, called it a “complete waste of money” and said the product they ordered looked completely different from how it was advertised.

But the only way to test if the device really works and will save money on electricity bills is to order it oneself. Given that the purported inventor of this device does not appear to exist, we don’t recommend that our readers try. We therefore rate this claim as “False.”

Origin

Mysterious disappearances were often the main focus of both the old and rebooted “Unsolved Mysteries” television shows. “Next on ‘Unsolved Mysteries’… the disappearance of Chipotle workers,” commented TikTok user Cory Fogarty. However, the case of the empty Chipotle likely won’t be looked at in a future episode, because the truth was right there all along.

In early December 2020, TikTok user @migueljrmartinez posted a video that purported to show an empty Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurant:

@migueljrmartinez

@chipotle what’s going here

♬ original sound – Miguel Jr Martinez

Less than a week later, it had been viewed more than 108,000 times. In the video, the restaurant’s lights were on, something in the kitchen was beeping, and a stack of online order receipts was filling the countertop. The TikTok user said: “Guys, there’s no one in here. Who opens a Chipotle …?”

Commenters speculated on what was happening in the video. One user said: “And that’s on someone being scheduled to open and then the entire rest of the staff calls out… so they dip.” Another commented: “That’s what happens when a business doesn’t appreciate their employees. They leave.” Others thought the employees all must have quit. A few commenters had other ideas: “I would’ve made me some Chipotle. A few bowls and burritos, chips, guacamole, and queso, extra steak to go.”

However, it was much ado about nothing. Chipotle employees didn’t mysteriously vanish, nor did any customers. The video presented a strange situation with an empty restaurant and a small pile of online order receipts. The truth was right near the beginning of the video.

While standing next to the front door, @migueljrmartinez panned the camera left to right. A sign was visible on the front door. We flipped the video frame horizontally:

Temporarily Closed

We are temporarily closed.

We apologize for the inconvenience and will be up and running as soon as possible.

According to commenters, the video purportedly showing an empty Chipotle was recorded at the Willowbrook Blvd. location in Wayne, New Jersey.

As for why the Chipotle location was temporarily closed, a tweet from a Cedar Grove High School lacrosse Twitter account may have answered the question: New Jersey had experienced below-freezing temperatures in early December.

REGARDING CHIPOTLE FUNDRAISER. Apparently the Willowbrook location had to close today due to a heating issue. We apologize for the inconvenience and hope that @ChipotleTweets will let us reschedule ASAP. @CGLacrosseClub @CGHSLax @CGHS_Athletics @CGHSblack_gold

— CGHS Lacrosse Fans (@cghs_lacrosse) December 8, 2020

We reached out to Chipotle, and they confirmed that restaurant was temporarily closed because of a heating issue.

In December 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released additional data concerning a COVID-19 vaccine from the pharmaceutical company Pfizer ahead of a meeting with an independent panel of scientists and public health officials to discuss the new drug’s approval. Although the report showed that the vaccine was largely effective, some social media users singled out one seemingly scary statistic: Four of the patients who received the vaccine developed Bell’s palsy, a type of temporary facial paralysis.

The information contained in the above-displayed tweet is largely accurate, although it should be noted the individuals pictured at the bottom of this message are not the same individuals who were involved in the COVID-19 vaccine trial. This image dates back to at least 2019 and was apparently included to illustrate the sort of facial paralysis that occurs with Bell’s palsy. 

More importantly, this tweet (and dozens more like it) may give readers the impression that this vaccine caused Bell’s palsy. As of this writing, there’s no evidence to support that assertion. 

The FDA noted in its report that four people (out of about 22,000) in the vaccine group developed Bell’s palsy, while no cases were reported in the similarly sized trial group. However, this low incident rate is consistent with the expected background rate of Bell’s palsy in the general population.

The FDA wrote:

Bell’s palsy was reported by four vaccine participants and none in the placebo group. These cases occurred at 3, 9, 37, and 48 days after vaccination. One case (onset at 3 days postvaccination) was reported as resolved with sequelae within three days after onset, and the other three were reported as continuing or resolving as of the November 14, 2020 data cut-off with ongoing durations of 10, 15, and 21 days, respectively. The observed frequency of reported Bell’s palsy in the vaccine group is consistent with the expected background rate in the general population, and there is no clear basis upon which to conclude a causal relationship at this time, but FDA will recommend surveillance for cases of Bell’s palsy with deployment of the vaccine into larger populations.

Pfizer Canada President Cole Pinnow reiterated this point to the CBC:

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1829670467550/

Disneyland’s Snow White Grotto is perhaps one of the most peaceful places in an otherwise chaotic, yet magical, theme park. The calm, flowing water is a welcome departure from the barrage of strollers and massive crowds, especially on a hot day in Anaheim, California. Snow White Grotto can be found near the front of the east side of Sleeping Beauty Castle. It’s usually not packed with too many people.

The grotto includes Snow White, all seven dwarfs, and a few animals. It was dedicated by Walt Disney on April 9, 1961. Unfortunately, the statues all arrived at roughly the same height. This meant that Snow White was about as tall as the dwarves.

D23.com, the Official Disney Fan Club, posted that “the reason all eight marble figures were the same height was traced back to a set of eight “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” gift soaps, all molded the same size to fit inside the package.”

In order to remedy the situation, John Hench of WED Enterprises (now Walt Disney Imagineering) found “an ingenious and elegant solution.”

D23.com published the trick:

John solved the problem using “forced perspective,” the same technique that makes Disneyland buildings seem taller by building each successive level at a smaller scale. By putting Snow White high atop the grotto, she seems to be the proper size.

John also had figures made of various birds, deer, and bunnies to heighten the effect. The “tradition” of a same-height Snow White was duplicated for the grotto at Tokyo Disneyland.

It’s true that forced perspective was used to make the Snow White figurine appear taller than the dwarf statues. The marble figurines were eventually replaced with fiberglass replicas. One point of disagreement between some Disney fanatics involved how the figurines arrived in the first place. We even found two official Disney websites that posted differing explanations.

On the official Disney Parks blog, it said: “The white, marble figurines depicting Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs arrived anonymously from Italy as a gift for Walt Disney.”

However, D23.com, also an official Disney website, published the name of the sculptor:

The grotto was the result of a collection of sculpts that was ordered from Italy. Walt was fond of them and asked Disney Legend John Hench to find a Disneyland home for them.

John dreamed up the Snow White Grotto in 1960. Sculptor Leonida Parma fashioned the figures from pure Carrara marble.

Commenters on the Disney Parks blog story pointed out that they had learned the truth from Walt Disney Imagineers. For example, a commenter named Bradley posted:

According to imagineer Valerie Edwards, who talked about the sculptures during the Adventures by Disney Backstage Magic tour I had taken, the story that they were donated anonymously is false and that they were in fact commissioned by Disney from a specific Italian sculptor whose name I don’t recall, but she did mention it.

She did concur that the size mix-up was an honest mistake, blaming misunderstandings when it came to converting between measuring systems.

Michele Himmelberg, who was the Public Relations Director at Disneyland Resort, and the author of the Disney Parks Blog story, responded: “Hi Bradley, we’ll have more about this story from a Disney expert in the coming weeks. Stay tuned and thanks for reading!”

We were unable to find a later story on the blog about the grotto.

Snow White Grotto may be lacking in thrills when compared to other Disneyland attractions, although it does light up when the sun goes down. However, whatever it lacks in fun, it more than makes up for it by the generous purpose of the wishing well. The Disney Parks blog described what happens after parkgoers toss coins and make wishes:

Throughout the years, guests have tossed pennies and small coins into the well, along with their wishes. They may not realize that making their own wish also grants a wish. For decades, the money collected in the Wishing Well has been donated to children’s charities. Inscribed on the well is the sentiment: “Your wishes will help children everywhere.”

At the well, parkgoers can hear Snow White sing “I’m Wishing.”

In December 2020, readers asked Snopes to check the authenticity and accuracy of a diatribe against outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump, widely attributed to actor and director George Clooney. 

The speech has been shared many thousands of times over the past three years, in social media posts, and in the form of memes. For unknown reasons, it enjoyed something of a resurgence in October and December 2020.

A typical post read:

George Clooney’s response after Trump accused him of being a “Hollywood elite”.

“Here’s the thing: I grew up in Kentucky. I sold insurance door-to-door. I sold ladies’ shoes. I worked at an all-night liquor store. I would buy suits that were too big and too long and cut the bottom of the pants off to make ties so I’d have a tie to go on job interviews. I grew up understanding what it was like to not have health insurance for eight years. So this idea that I’m somehow the ‘Hollywood elite’ and this guy who takes a shit in a gold toilet is somehow the man of the people is laughable.

“People in Hollywood, for the most part, are people from the Midwest who moved to Hollywood to have a career. So this idea of ‘coastal elites’ living in a bubble is ridiculous. Who lives in a bigger bubble? He lives in a gold tower and has twelve people in his company. He doesn’t run a corporation of hundreds of thousands of people he employs and takes care of. He ran a company of twelve people!

“When you direct a film you have seven different unions all wanting different things, you have to find consensus with all of them, and you have to get them moving in the same direction. He’s never had to do any of that kind of stuff. I just look at it and I laugh when I see him say ‘Hollywood elite.’ Hollywood elite? I don’t have a star on Hollywood Boulevard, Donald Trump has a star on Hollywood Boulevard! Fuck you!”

Some of those posts and memes contained a small number of very minor tweaks in wording, but overall, they accurately and fairly attributed the diatribe to Clooney, who did indeed hammer Trump as a “guy who takes a shit in a gold toilet” and “lives in a gold tower,” and did indeed finish his speech by telling Trump “Fuck you!”

Clooney’s remarks came in the context of an interview with the Daily Beast, published on Sept. 22, 2017. Many of the viral social media posts claimed Clooney was speaking in response to Trump’s accusation that Clooney was part of a “Hollywood elite.”

But that’s not quite right. The question (or prompt) to which Clooney was responding was, “Trump has been stoking this culture war between “coastal elites” and Middle America — the irony of course being that Trump himself is a “coastal elite.” Below is the exchange as it appeared in its original context:

In the late summer and fall of 2020, a conspiracy theory spread on social media claiming that the catastrophic wildfires that raged on the West Coast were started by advanced laser weaponry.

Conspiracy theories about direct energy weapons and wildfires have been circulating online since at least 2018, the same year the Camp Fire killed 88 people and destroyed thousands of homes in northern California.

Direct energy weapons are weapons of war. The U.S. Department of Defense in August 2020 said it is partnering with the private sector to develop both high-powered laser and microwave weapons. The weapons would be used in battlefield or military defense scenarios to hit targets like drones and rockets, and eventually defend aircraft against missiles and bring down ballistic missile threats.

The image above is not from a wildfire in 2020. The original image was taken in 2015 by Associated Press photographer Elaine Thompson.

The original image was included in a gallery of photographs published by ABC News depicting the 2015 Valley Fire, which tore through Lake County and Napa County, about 90 miles north of San Francisco. According to investigators, the Valley Fire was caused by a hot tub with improperly installed wiring at a residential home in the town of Cobb.

Even without that information, if you inspect the image, you will notice that the plastic slide isn’t the only thing undamaged by fire. A number of trees, in addition to a swing set in the background — which appears to be made of metal components and not microwave safe — were also undamaged

“While some of the [2020] fires are still under investigation, we have no reason to believe any were caused by energy weapons,” Lynne Tolmachoff, spokesperson for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, told Snopes by phone.

While many of the fires were started by dry lightning strikes, some were caused by human activities — for example, the El Dorado fire was caused by a pyrotechnic device used by a family at a gender reveal party. Experts say that the intensity and frequency wildfires in California as a whole are being exacerbated by climate change.

The seminal moment in the career of Joe Biden occurred in November 1972 when, as a 29-year-old lawyer whose only previous political experience was as a member of the New Castle County Council in Delaware, he pulled off an astounding upset victory over a Republican incumbent and won election to the U.S. Senate by a mere 3,162 votes.

Six weeks later, however, before he had assumed office, Biden’s life took the most tragic of turns when his wife Neilia and their 1-year-old daughter, Naomi, were killed in an automobile accident. For the ensuing 36 years of his Senate career, Biden famously commuted via Amtrak to Washington, D.C., from the family home in Wilmington, Delaware, daily in order to be home for his sons Beau and Hunter, who had been severely injured but survived the crash that killed their mother and sister.

As in any such tragedy, one of the paramount questions is: what caused the fatal accident? Neilia Biden’s station wagon was broadsided by a tractor-trailer truck at an intersection, but who — or what — was the underlying cause of the accident?

Social media posts circulated during Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential run declared that Biden had misrepresented the accident as being the fault of a drunken driver, and even that Biden had deliberately lied about it:

It is true that at least twice, Biden has publicly stated or alleged that the driver tractor-trailer who hit his wife’s station wagon had been drinking. During a speech he gave at the University of Delaware a week after the 9/11 terror attacks, for example, Biden said:

To the loved ones of the victims, there is nothing really we can say to erase this tragedy. And, those of you who think it’s presumptuous of me to say that … in a different circumstance, I got one of those phone calls … I got a phone call saying, “Your wife’s dead; your daughter’s dead.” And I’ve only said that three times in public before. But, I say it here because it’s so important for you to understand. I got one of those phone calls. It was an errant driver who stopped to drink instead of drive and hit a tractor-trailer, hit my children and my wife and killed them.

And in December 2007, while stumping for the Democratic presidential nomination in Iowa City, Biden said the following while answering a voter’s question about negative campaigning:

“Let me tell you a little story,” Mr. Biden told the crowd at the University of Iowa. “I got elected when I was 29, and I got elected November the 7th. And on Dec. 18 of that year, my wife and three kids were Christmas shopping for a Christmas tree. A tractor-trailer, a guy who allegedly — and I never pursued it — drank his lunch instead of eating his lunch, broadsided my family and killed my wife instantly, and killed my daughter instantly, and hospitalized my two sons, with what were thought to be at the time permanent, fundamental injuries.”

The accident took place at the intersection of Limestone and Valley Road in Hockessin, Delaware. At the time, it was a remote, rural section of New Castle County, described as follows by a probationary volunteer fireman who responded to the scene and attended the driver of the tractor-trailer:

Limestone Road was a popular trucker shortcut in the Piedmont foothills leading from Delaware into Pennsylvania. The intersection with Valley Road was extremely dangerous, located at the bottom of two steep hills. Truckers traveling in either direction used the momentum coming down one hill, in order to climb the other. The speed limit on Limestone Road, at the intersection, was 35mph and huge REDUCE SPEED signs were posted a half-mile in both directions. Whether Curtis Dunn was speeding is unknown, but he had applied his brakes, which was apparent from twin 150 ft. skid marks.

But as Politico noted in a 2009 profile of Biden, the other driver was not charged with drunken driving, or anything else that would indicate fault on his part. Based on evidence and witness accounts, it appeared that Neilia Biden had pulled into the truck driver’s right of way at an intersection with a two-way stop, and the tractor-trailer driver was unable to stop in time to avoid striking her vehicle:

The driver of the truck, Curtis C. Dunn of Pennsylvania, was not charged with drunk driving. He wasn’t charged with anything. The accident was an accident, and though the police file no longer exists, coverage in the newspapers at the time made it clear that fault was not in question. For whatever reason, Neilia Biden, who was holding the baby, ended up in the right of way of Dunn’s truck coming down a long hill.

“She had a stop sign. The truck driver did not,” Jerome Herlihy told me. He’s a retired judge who then was a deputy attorney general and once was a neighbor to Biden and remains friendly. A pal of Biden at the time asked Herlihy “to go out to the state police troop where the driver of the other vehicle was to make sure everything was going all right,” and so he did. “In the end,” Herlihy said, “I concurred in their decision that there was no fault on his part.”

Does this mean Biden was untruthful — even lying, perhaps — when he implied that Dunn had been drinking? According to Lou Angeli, the fireman referenced above who treated Dunn at the scene, observed, no evidence definitively establishes or disproves that point:

In regards to intoxication, there was no way to determine if Mr. Dunn had been drinking, since neither of the police officers had breathalyzers aboard their cruisers. His injuries were such that his demeanor was similar to that of someone in a stupor, but those of you who serve in emergency medicine know that such behavior is often presented by victims who are in shock, or perhaps even diabetic.

I’ve learned that all of the records pertaining to this accident are lost. It doesn’t surprise me. Back then our ambulance incident report was filled out on a 5×7 card and filed away in a box. Once a month the information was transferred to a master list, which was later placed in storage.

If Mr. Dunn was intoxicated, there was no way to determine that at the hospital either, since alcohol blood tests were not mandatory in 1972. The hospital records are missing, as well as the police reports.

Angeli asserted that this alleged aspect of the accident wasn’t a “lie” Biden simply made up out of whole cloth, and that right or wrong, rumor and belief that drinking had contributed to the crash was prevalent among the local community:

To be honest, those of us in fire-rescue here in Delaware assumed that Mr. Dunn had been drinking, based on comments made by police officers at the scene. And in the Delaware fire service, rumors travel from station to station like wildfire.

Until he remarried in 1977, whenever Joe Biden attended a public safety event, parade or spoke during a firehouse banquet, police officers and firefighters would approach him and discuss the accident and the tragedy of his wife Neilia and daughter Naomi falling victim to a drunken driver. Imagine how those discussions must have affected the young Senator.

Either way, we didn’t turn up any instances of Biden’s having publicly raised the issue in the last 13 years, and Biden has since apologized to Dunn’s daughter, while his spokesman declared that Biden now “fully accepts the Dunn family’s word that these rumors were false”:

Biden called [Dunn’s daughter Pam Hamill], she told me. “He apologized for hurting my family in any way,” she said. “So we accepted that — and kind of end of story from there.” She sounded tired, and tired of talking about this.

Maybe [Biden] was merely passing along rumors he had heard from investigators and others. A now-dead emergency worker who was on the scene that day suggested as much …

Or maybe Biden was engaging in what grief expert Rob Zucker described to me as “a retelling of the horror.” It’s something people sometimes do, he said, tweaking facts, shifting blame, if nothing else to make the grief more “palatable.”

“It’s a common challenge bereaved parents in particular struggle with after a sudden, violent death. I think the fact that he has this way of sometimes understanding the story is really an expression of the challenge for any person to go forward in their lives,” Zucker added.