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Caution: The Unknown Soldiers Photo May Not Be Real!
As conditions relating to Hurricane Sandy worsen along the East Coast, Soldiers of the
third Infantry Regiment will continue to guard the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Virginia's
Arlington National Cemetery throughout,- although they won't be exposed to the elements during
the worst of the storm. The tomb, which was erected following World
War I and honors the memory of unidentified soldiers killed in any war, has been guarded
continuously by members of the third Infantry's Honor Guard since 1948.
Earlier today, a photo circulated on Twitter and Facebook showing three soldiers standing
guard in front of the tomb amid a torrential downpour. That photo, as it turned out, was
not from today. But the above photo depicts Spc. Brett Hyde, Tomb Sentinel, third U.S.
Infantry Regiment, keeping guard over the Tomb earlier today during Hurricane Sandy
at Arlington National Cemetery.
According to the third U.S. Infantry Regiment, soldiers aren't necessarily guarding the tomb
in the open air after the cemetery closes for extreme weather, which it has done due
to Sandy. Instead, they wear camouflage and keep guard from a protected area.
With the rise of social media and monster storms, every major weather event these days
brings fake images — often from other locations or other years — that go viral on the web,
and Hurricane Sandy is no exception. This is actually a photo from a 2011 thunderstorm
in the New York region that appeared first in The Wall Street Journal.
Certain blog has a good roundup of fake photos gone viral, and Buzzfeed even felt the need
to make an interactive quiz testing online users knowledge of whether widely shared photos
purportedly from Hurricane Sandy are real or fake.
And it’s not only plausible-looking photos from storms past that are fooling people.
Big weather events bring out the pranksters, and a widely shared photoshop job plus a still
from the apocalytic movie “The Day After Tomorrow” are also making the rounds.
So how to know whether a storm photo is legitimate? Here are a few online tricks:
First, click through to see if you can find the original source of the photo. Ask the
person who shared the photo where they found it.
Do a reverse image search on Tineye to see if the photo has been used online in the past.
Or, download Google’s reverse image search plugin to see if that photo was posted online
in another context. Amid the fake photos, there are some legitimately
stunning images being shared on social media. The Wall Street Journal is verifying and publishing
Hurricane Sandy photos posted on social media (you can share your photos with us by posting
them on Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #stormwsj). And as All Things D reports,Instagram
is having a moment — it’s home to some legitimate photos, including an image of a
crane that fell onto 57th St. in Manhattan.