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Social media and some news websites are reporting that there was a helicopter crash in Iraq that killed 30 U.S. Marines over the weekend of 24-27 January 2020.

From Google, found when googling "helicopter crash iraq 2020"

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This link goes to a Fox44 News article that has since been taken down, and the Internet Wayback Machine does not have an archive.

Some websites are reporting this as an incident that happened 15 years ago to the day of Kobe Bryant's helicopter crash, but others (Like Fox44 and some posts on Facebook) are saying a crash happened today.

Facebook

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Twitter

Twitter Example

Did this incident happen over the weekend, or are people being misled?

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DenisS
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    The description in the Fox44 excerpt (which is missing too much context to see whether the year was given as 2005) exactly matches the events from 2005. There is no new crash. Social media posting old news without the date, and then people repeating it as if it were new is not notable. – Ben Voigt Jan 27 '20 at 19:24
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    If enough people believe it, then it's notable. I found two examples just on my own facebook feed, and just heard a caller into WFAN-NY complain that no one is talking about the crash. – DenisS Jan 27 '20 at 19:26
  • For every two examples of this on your feed, there are several hundred examples of other news stories removed from important context (like the date it happened). You would need enough people having a special-in-some-way belief about this to make it notable, if it's the same horde of gullible people having the same knee-jerk reaction they have to every other post, it's not special and not notable. – Ben Voigt Jan 27 '20 at 19:29
  • It doesn't matter if the majority don't believe it, it matters that some do. Something being widespread on social media is considered notable on this site. But if the community agrees with you this will get flagged and closed. – DenisS Jan 27 '20 at 19:49
  • I've added a screenshot from Twitter search for "helicopter crash iraq" which is just overloaded with people claiming this. At this point I'm pretty sure I know the answer, but having this up will still help others who are unsure. – DenisS Jan 27 '20 at 19:53
  • Some of your twitter results look completely valid if dated 2005... but you've managed to blur the dates out along with the poster names :( – Ben Voigt Jan 27 '20 at 22:03
  • @BenVoigt yeah I made that mistake, you can kinda tell in the second and third result that it says "20h" for the post time – DenisS Jan 27 '20 at 22:05
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    @BenVoigt: Twitter was created in 2006, so they would not look valid if dated 2005! – jwodder Jan 28 '20 at 00:52
  • @jwodder: Do you know if twitter auto-excerpts from linked documents? In the third case, there's a link to a Navy page (which is almost certainly dated correctly) and it seems credible that the first 140 characters of that page might use "Jan. 26" separately from the year, resulting in this out-of-context quote? The other two tweets are of course totally wrong. – Ben Voigt Jan 28 '20 at 19:23

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It is completely certain that there was no helicopter crash in 2020 like the one described. The crash in 2005 matches the descriptions above exactly, and received extensive news coverage worldwide as well as official announcements. There is no such coverage in 2020. The exactness of the matchup makes it an unbelieveable coincidence for two identical crashes to happen in the same place on the same day of the year.

Fox44 and combataircraft.com both posted reports dated 2020, but have taken them down.

DJClayworth
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    And from what we have of the Fox44 page, it's impossible to tell if the 2020 date was even for the portion talking about the helicopter crash, or some other portion of the same page (e.g. "Today in History" sidebar) – Ben Voigt Jan 27 '20 at 22:05