copenlu/druid huggingface dataset:
Claim: Elon Musk claims the earth is flat (Viral Video, 2023-04-22)
Evidence (2017-11-21): "It’ll shut the door on this ball earth," Hughes said in a fundraising interview with a flat-Earth group for Saturday’s flight. Theories discussed during the interview included NASA being controlled by round-Earth Freemasons and Elon Musk making fake rockets from blimps. [...] By November, the AP reported, his $20,000 rocket had a fancy coat of Rust-Oleum paint and "RESEARCH FLAT EARTH" inscribed on the side. While his flat-Earth friends helped him finally get the thing built, the AP reported, Hughes will be making adjustments right up to Saturday’s launch.
Claim: Elon Musk claims the earth is flat (Viral Video, 2023-04-22)
Evidence (2023-08-28): At one point in "The Hitchhiker’s Guide," Adams introduces the architects of the Earth supercomputer. They’re powerful beings who have been living among us, disguised as mice. At first, they were motivated by simple curiosity. But seeking the question made them famous, and they began considering talk-show and lecture deals. In the end, Earth is demolished in the name of commerce, and their path to existential clarity along with it. The mice greet this with a shrug, mouth vague platitudes, and go on the talk-show circuit anyway. Musk isn’t peddling pabulum. His initiatives have real substance. But he also wants to be on the show—or, better yet, to be the show himself.
Claim: Elon Musk claims the earth is flat (Viral Video, 2023-04-22)
Evidence (2024-10-09): Do You Believe The Earth Is Flat? Elon Musk Is Here To Debunk This Theory Once & For All The crazy billionaire who sent a car into space- Elon Musk has always trolled the 'Flat Earth' theory and its believers. [...] As you can see, the Earth is pretty much round and not at all flat. In fact, following the photos and videos that Elon posted, people became convinced that the whole Falcon Heavy mission was his way of destroying the Flat Earthers in the most savage way possible.
Claim: Elon Musk claims the earth is flat (Viral Video, 2023-04-22)
Evidence (2018-01-24): Humans have known for thousands of years that the planet is round, yet the belief in a flat Earth refuses to die. Members of the Flat Earth Society and several celebrities, including Atlanta rapper B.o.B and NBA player Kyrie Irving, claim to hold such beliefs. Let’s examine, then, how the well-known principles of physics and science would work (or not) on a flat Earth. [...] Contrary to popular belief, it’s a misconception that many societies of serious, educated people ever actually believed in the flat Earth theory. "With extraordinary few exceptions, no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the Earth was flat," historian Jeffrey Burton Russell noted in 1997. "A round Earth appears at least as early as the sixth century B.C. with Pythagoras, who was followed by Aristotle, Euclid, and Aristarchus, among others in observing that the earth was a sphere." [...] In any case, while it’s fun to imagine counterfactual scenarios, science proceeds by coming up with theories to explain observations. When it comes to these theories, the simpler, the better, Davis says. The flat Earth idea, however, clearly begins with the idea that the planet is planar, and then attempts to twist other observations to its benefit. You can find odd explanations for individual phenomena under this framework, says Davis, but "it falls apart pretty quickly."
Claim: Claims that Barbara Walters wrote long statement criticizing Jane Fonda for visiting North Vietnam (Viral Quote, 2019-08-13)
Evidence (2019-08-13): The Daily Caller found no record of Walters ever making the statement.
Claim: Claims that Barbara Walters wrote long statement criticizing Jane Fonda for visiting North Vietnam (Viral Quote, 2019-08-13)
Evidence (2019-12-27): FACT CHECK: Did Barbara Walters Author This Statement Criticizing Jane Fonda For Visiting North Vietnam? A post shared on Facebook more than 14,000 times credits retired ABC News anchor Barbara Walters with authoring a statement criticizing actress Jane Fonda for her 1972 visit to North Vietnam. [...] Walters did sit down with Fonda in 1988, but the statement doesn’t appear in that interview either. In fact, Fonda actually apologized for her visit to North Vietnam and for posing for the photograph of her sitting on an anti-aircraft gun during the interview, according to an ABC News transcript.
Claim: Claims that Barbara Walters wrote long statement criticizing Jane Fonda for visiting North Vietnam (Viral Quote, 2019-08-13)
Evidence (2013-03-03): Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden, America's most famous antiwar couple, are making new overtures to this country's political mainstream and to its Vietnam veterans. Ms. Fonda, who took a controversial trip to Hanoi during the Vietnam war, goes on ABC-TV tonight to apologize to Americans who served in that conflict. [...] Fonda's conciliatory statements on Vietnam are drawing national attention, but are also raising questions about her motives. [...] Interviewed by Barbara Walters for the show ``20/20,'' Fonda talks about her 1972 trip, when she climbed onto a North Vietnamese antiaircraft gun for photographs, and made a propaganda broadcast from Hanoi.
Claim: Claims that Barbara Walters wrote long statement criticizing Jane Fonda for visiting North Vietnam (Viral Quote, 2019-08-13)
Evidence (2018-01-24): In 1972, Fonda went on to tour North Vietnam in a controversial trip would come to be the most famous — or infamous — part of her activist career, and led to her the nickname "Hanoi Jane." While in Vietnam, Fonda appeared on 10 radio programs to speak out against the U.S. military’s policy in Vietnam and beg pilots to cease bombing non-military targets. It was during that trip that a photograph was taken of her seated on an anti-aircraft gun in Hanoi, making it look like she would shoot down American planes. [...] On the other hand, the antiwar feeling Fonda came to embody was relatively widespread among the American population at the time, and, as filmmaker Lynn Novick put it in discussing recent documentary series The Vietnam War, some veterans "think she was courageous for going to Hanoi and taking a stand even though they didn’t agree with everything she had to say." More recent scholarship has also emphasized the ways in which the idea of "Hanoi Jane" has grown far beyond Fonda’s actual actions during that tumultuous period.
Claim: Claims that Barbara Walters wrote long statement criticizing Jane Fonda for visiting North Vietnam (Viral Quote, 2019-08-13)
Evidence (2012-03-03): In connection with an honorarium paid to Jane Fonda as one of ABC’s "100 Women of the Century," on or around September 14, 2,009, Barbara Walters stated on The View, "I hope that we have all forgiven Jane Fonda for what she did during the Vietnam War and specifically when she visited the Hanoi Hilton." [...] We are asked to forgive Jane Fonda. I do not. Moreover, I consider Barbara Walters’ "hope" as abysmally lacking in thought as Ms. Fonda’s actions during the Vietnam War. [...] Yes, Ms. Walters comment took place about 2 years ago. Yes, Ms. Fonda’s actions took place almost 50 years ago. But like the Holocaust, one does not forgive those who acted upon the ideas that made possible such grievous evils.
Claim: Claims that Barbara Walters wrote long statement criticizing Jane Fonda for visiting North Vietnam (Viral Quote, 2019-08-13)
Evidence (2019-01-28): Jane Fonda is a star of stage and screen whose career began in 1960. She is the daughter of legendary actor and WWII Naval Officer Henry Fonda. Jane, now 77, is long regarded as enemy #1 among Vietnam veterans (because Ho Chi Minh is dead and even if he weren’t it would be a close vote). [...] "There is one thing that happened while in North Vietnam that I will regret to my dying day. I allowed myself to be photographed on a Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun," she wrote in 2011. "It happened on my last day in Hanoi. It was not unusual for Americans who visited North Vietnam to be taken to see Vietnamese military installations and when they did, they were always required to wear a helmet like the kind I was told to wear during the numerous air raids I had experienced." To this day, Fonda feels the scorn of the military veteran community. If you want to get a feel for how much scorn the community feels, just Google "Jane Fonda Vietnam." I’ll wait.
Claim: Claims that Barbara Walters wrote long statement criticizing Jane Fonda for visiting North Vietnam (Viral Quote, 2019-08-13)
Evidence (2024-03-09): "Hanoi Jane," Jane Fonda’s most infamous nickname, stems from her illustrious past of activism. When the Vietnam War escalated, most American media outlets unilaterally propagated the government’s perspective. Therefore, between 1965 and 1972, nearly 300 teachers, singers, actors, ministers, and human rights activists decided to visit North Vietnam to witness the conflict firsthand. In July 1972, Jane Fonda was among these individuals, and during her visit to North Vietnam, she was particularly impressed by the bomb shelter system. After observing and filming, Fonda concluded that "the United States had intentionally bombed the shelters along the Red River Delta’s system." [...] Benjamin Disraeli once said: "Youth is full of mistakes, adulthood is a constant struggle, and old age is filled with regret." In a 1988 interview with Barbara Walters, Jane Fonda expressed her remorse: "I tried hard to contribute to the anti-violence and anti-war effort, but I cannot deny that there were moments when I was thoughtless and impulsive in my statements and actions. I sincerely apologize to the soldiers who fought valiantly for their country and their families. I made an unforgivable mistake by going to North Vietnam, and those photos will follow me to the grave."
Claim: Claims that Barbara Walters wrote long statement criticizing Jane Fonda for visiting North Vietnam (Viral Quote, 2019-08-13)
Evidence (2017-09-18): For the next several years, Fonda would continue as one of the most prominent public faces in the antiwar movement. But it wasn’t until she traveled to Hanoi in July 1972 that she really enraged critics and fundamentally altered how the world viewed her for decades to come. [...] By July 1972, when Fonda accepted an invitation to visit North Vietnam, America had been at war overseas and with itself for years. She went to tour the country’s dike system, which was rumored to have been intentionally bombed by American forces — something the U.S. government to this day forcefully denies. During her two-week stay, Fonda concluded that America was unjustly bombing farmland and areas far flung from military targets. North Vietnamese press reported — and Fonda later confirmed — that she made several radio announcements over the Voice of Vietnam radio to implore U.S. pilots to stop the bombings. [...] In Hanoi, Fonda also met with seven American POWs and later said they asked her to tell their friends and family to support presidential candidate George McGovern; they feared they’d never be freed during a Richard Nixon administration. Rumors spread and still persist that she betrayed them by accepting secret notes and then turning them over to the North Vietnamese. The POWs who were there have denied that this ever occurred.
Claim: Claims that Barbara Walters wrote long statement criticizing Jane Fonda for visiting North Vietnam (Viral Quote, 2019-08-13)
Evidence (2019-03-14): Jane Fonda’s apology (with reservations, of course) as aired on June 17 by Barbara Walters on "20/20" was nothing but a cynical bid to silence her critics, some of whom have been inspired to block her from shooting on location in their districts. As such, it failed, because Walters ran some film clips of Hanoi Jane clowning around on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun in 1972, which exposed her treason most graphically and for all to see.
Claim: Claims that Barbara Walters wrote long statement criticizing Jane Fonda for visiting North Vietnam (Viral Quote, 2019-08-13)
Evidence (2020-07-22): The claim: Barbara Walters wrote viral commentary accusing Jane Fonda of treason during the Vietnam War [...] We rate the claim that Barbara Walters wrote an inaccurate commentary condemning actress Jane Fonda as FALSE because it is not supported by our research. Misinformation about Fonda’s actions in Vietnam has been circulating for 20 years. Despite fact-checkers and the veterans named in the hoax’s many efforts to correct it, it's continued to circulate and evolve. It's resurfaced many times with new fabricated details that are relevant to current events, whether it be Barack Obama’s fictional honoring of Fonda or a misattribution to Walters. [...] - Check Your Fact, "Fact Check: Did Barbara Walters Author This Statement Criticizing Jane Fonda For Visiting North Vietnam?"
Claim: Claims that Barbara Walters wrote long statement criticizing Jane Fonda for visiting North Vietnam (Viral Quote, 2019-08-13)
Evidence (2019-08-13): No evidence Barbara Walters said this about Jane Fonda [...] The long Aug. 13 post, which details allegations about Fonda that other fact-checkers have debunked, begins: "Barbara Walters writes: Unfortunately, many have forgotten and still countless others have never known how Ms. Fonda betrayed not only the idea of our country, but specific men who served and sacrificed during the Vietnam War." [...] "Jane Fonda told me that she now realizes in her urgent desire to end the war, she unthinkingly caused pain to many Americans who fought in Vietnam," Walters said. "In our interview tonight, she speaks directly to former prisoners of war, to Vietnam veterans and their families. And confronting her past, she then apologizes."
Claim: Claims that Barbara Walters wrote long statement criticizing Jane Fonda for visiting North Vietnam (Viral Quote, 2019-08-13)
Evidence (2018-05-16): There’s still no evidence Barbara Walters wrote this about Jane Fonda [...] The post details allegations against Fonda that other fact-checkers have looked into. But it begins by claiming that Barbara Walters wrote it. Featured Fact-check "Barbara Walters writes: Unfortunately, many have forgotten and still countless others have never known how Ms. Fonda betrayed not only the idea of our country but specific men who served and sacrificed during the Vietnam War."
Claim: Claims that Barbara Walters wrote long statement criticizing Jane Fonda for visiting North Vietnam (Viral Quote, 2019-08-13)
Evidence (2023-05-12): Although Fonda's actions in visiting North Vietnam were sufficient to earn her the wrath of many Americans, in the years since those events took place they have been embellished to the point that the one tale most commonly associated with her Vietnam trip is an incident that never took place — a tale about U.S. POWs who furtively slipped messages to Fonda while she was meeting with them and whom Fonda promptly betrayed by turning those messages over to the POWs' North Vietnamese captors (resulting in several of those prisoners' being beaten, tortured, or killed): [...] The facts are that while in North Vietnam, Fonda met with only a single group of seven U.S POWs: all seven of those POWs agreed to meet with her, no POWs were tortured for declining to meet with her (or for behaving inappropriately during the meeting), and no POWs secretly slipped Fonda messages which she turned over to the North Vietnamese. The persons named in inflammatory claims about this alleged incident have repeatedly and categorically denied the events they supposedly were part of.
Claim: Claims that Barbara Walters wrote long statement criticizing Jane Fonda for visiting North Vietnam (Viral Quote, 2019-08-13)
Evidence (2010-12-03): It is true that Fonda, an actress and activist, traveled to Hanoi, North Vietnam, in 1972 to protest U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. [...] But whatever one may think of Fonda’s visit to Hanoi, she did not do some of the things claimed in this e-mail message. In fact, some of the claims were debunked years ago by some of the very people named in the e-mail. It is not true, as this e-mail claims, that Jerry Driscoll, a former POW in Vietnam, suffered career-ending double vision from a beating he allegedly received from his captors after Fonda visited. Driscoll, who has said he never met Fonda, has denied for years that the scenario described in the e-mail ever happened. In 2005, the Star Tribune of Minneapolis reported him saying:
Claim: Claims that Barbara Walters wrote long statement criticizing Jane Fonda for visiting North Vietnam (Viral Quote, 2019-08-13)
Evidence (2011-01-16): What is true: The actress/fitness guru/activist did travel to Hanoi, North Vietnam, in 1972 to protest the Vietnam War. [...] Fonda has apologized a number of times for the photograph with North Vietnamese soldiers. In 1988, she met with Vietnam veterans in a nationally televised apology in which she said she was "thoughtless and careless," according to Snopes.com, which quotes an Associated Press article. Snopes.com is a well-respected nonpartisan website that confirms or debunks rumors and urban legends. [...] Almost 40 years after her North Vietnam visit, veterans and other Americans still harbor contempt for Fonda. Some of them note that her apologies only came when she was promoting a film or book project.
Claim: Claims that Barbara Walters wrote long statement criticizing Jane Fonda for visiting North Vietnam (Viral Quote, 2019-08-13)
Evidence (2018-07-27): BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Jane Fonda said she’s still confronted by Vietnam War veterans over her 1970s anti-war activism and welcomes the encounters. [...] The actress drew bitter criticism after being photographed atop an anti-aircraft gun during a controversial 1972 visit to North Vietnam. Meeting with TV critics Wednesday to discuss a new HBO documentary on her life, she expressed regret for that moment.
Claim: Claims that Barbara Walters wrote long statement criticizing Jane Fonda for visiting North Vietnam (Viral Quote, 2019-08-13)
Evidence (2024-05-15): "To elevate Hanoi Jane over the Vietnamese Community, Americans who sacrificed their lives, and the loved ones they lost to communism, is deeply offensive to the freedom-loving Vietnamese Americans who bear such tragic and painful memories of the Vietnam War," Steel said in a statement, using a pejorative nickname for Fonda that circulated following her protest of the war. [...] Although the Academy Award-winning actress has been lauded for her climate work, Fonda was sharply criticized after she went to Hanoi during the Vietnam War to oppose U.S. involvement in the conflict. During a visit in 1972, she was photographed wearing a helmet and sitting in the gunner’s seat of a North Vietnamese antiaircraft gun. Fonda told Barbara Walters during an interview in 1988 that sitting on the gun was "a thoughtless and careless thing to have done." She apologized to Vietnam War veterans and their families at the time.
Claim: Claims that Barbara Walters wrote long statement criticizing Jane Fonda for visiting North Vietnam (Viral Quote, 2019-08-13)
Evidence (2011-05-09): During the trip, Fonda was photographed sitting on the seat of a Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun. The response to the image back home was virulent, earning her the nickname Hanoi Jane. After she returned, a man representing what he called the American Liberty League threatened to assassinate her as a "traitor to the U.S." She was publicly denounced by a Maryland state legislator, William J. Burkhead, and in Colorado a state representative, Michael Strang, called her a "foulmouthed, offensive little Vassar dropout." As Mary Hershberger observes, in her book "Jane Fonda’s War" (2005), "Almost all of the columnists and reporters who wrote contemptuous reports were male. They usually focused on what she looked like, and seldom on her ideas or the issues she raised. . . . She ‘harangued,’ she talked too fast . . . she didn’t smile enough, she didn’t have a sense of humor." Fonda attributes the vehemence of the response to both gender and class. "I was Henry Fonda’s daughter. I was privileged. I was Barbarella. They had my posters in their locker rooms. So I betrayed class, I betrayed gender, and I betrayed, you know—you’re a pinup girl, you’re not supposed to speak.
Claim: Claims that Barbara Walters wrote long statement criticizing Jane Fonda for visiting North Vietnam (Viral Quote, 2019-08-13)
Evidence (2008-10-14): Jane Fonda, actress and daughter of actor Henry Fonda, became involved in the anti-war movement during the 1960s. Some of her actions and statements during a visit to North vietnam in 1972 inspired widespread outrage. In addition to the works listed here, see also the book by Holly Near below, and the House Internal Security Committee investigation of Fonda's trip to Hanoi in 1972. [...] Christopher Anderson, Citizen Jane: The Turbulent Life of Jane Fonda. New York: Holt, 1990. 389 pp. In his hostility to Fonda, Anderson is sometimes careless about the facts. See for example p. 10, where he writes that "John McCain . . . was a prisoner of war in May 1972 when his captors informed him that Fonda was in Hanoi. The North Vietnamese ordered McCain to have his picture taken with her and make statements condemning the war. When he refused, both his arms were broken and he was confined to a six-by-three foot box for five months." This story is entirely false (see Chapter 26 of McCain's memoir Faith of My Fathers for what actually happened to McCain during this period of his imprisonment in Hanoi). [...] Henry Mark Holzer and Erika Holzer, "Aid and Comfort": Jane Fonda in North Vietnam. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002. x, 206 pp. The authors believe Fonda should have been prosecuted for treason for her actions during her 1972 trip to North Vietnam.
Claim: Claims that Barbara Walters wrote long statement criticizing Jane Fonda for visiting North Vietnam (Viral Quote, 2019-08-13)
Evidence (2018-03-17): July-August 1972: Actress and anti-war activist Jane Fonda visits Hanoi, where she advocates opposition to the war. Her detractors label her "Hanoi Jane", comparing her to war propagandists Tokyo Rose and Hanoi Hannah. [See also Fonda, 1988] [...] June 17, 1988: Jane Fonda is interviewed by Barbara Walters on the television show 20/20 and apologizes for her actions during the War: "I would like to say something, not just to Vietnam veterans in New England, but to men who were in Vietnam, who I hurt, or whose pain I caused to deepen because of things that I said or did," she began. "I was trying to help end the killing and the war, but there were times when I was thoughtless and careless about it and I'm . . . very sorry that I hurt them. And I want to apologize to them and their families." [...] July 2011: TV shopping network QVC cancels a scheduled appearance by Jane Fonda after viewers complain about Fonda's political statements during the Vietnam War. [LAT, 7/19/11]