A photo is being shared widely on social media with a claim that ‘a truck loaded with thousands of copies of Roget’s Thesaurus spilled its load leaving New York’. Let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Photo shows thousands of copies of Roget’s Thesaurus spilled on a road in New York.
Fact: The posted photo is an old one that was taken near Glendale (Arizona), not in New York. Also, the spilled objects are phone books, not copies of Roget’s Thesaurus. Hence the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
When the photo was run through Google Reverse Image Search, the same photo was found in an article published by ‘azcentral’ in 2016. The title of the article is – “Phone books spill onto Loop 101 near Glendale”. So, the posted photo is an old one that was taken near Glendale (Arizona), not in New York.
Also, the spilled objects are phone books, not copies of Roget’s Thesaurus. The tweets made by the Arizona Department of Transportation regarding the incident can be seen here and here.
To sum it up, the posted photo shows spilled phone books near Glendale (Arizona), not copies of Roget’s Thesaurus in New York.
