The Strange File — new files

The astronaut who took the first confirmed photograph of the Great Wall from orbit could not see the wall — False

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Verdict: False. The claim is demonstrably untrue, and the evidence against it is clear.

The Great Wall of China is routinely described as the only human structure visible from space, and sometimes as visible from the Moon. NASA has addressed this directly and the claim fails twice: it is not the only such structure, and the Wall is among the harder ones to pick out because it is built from the ground it crosses. The first confirmed orbital photograph of it was taken in 2004 with a 180 mm telephoto lens — by an astronaut who did not see the Wall with his own eyes and was unsure the frame contained it.

The claim, as it circulates: "The Great Wall of China is the only man-made object you can see from space with the naked eye — astronauts say it’s the only sign of humanity from up there."

Based on 2 primary or authoritative sources.

The stones that move across Death Valley were filmed doing it in 2013 — Misleading

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Verdict: Misleading. The individual facts may check out, but the way they are framed leads to a false conclusion.

On the floor of Racetrack Playa in Death Valley, rocks weighing up to fifteen kilograms sit at the end of trails hundreds of metres long. For decades the movement was never witnessed, and the phenomenon became a fixture of “unexplained mysteries” lists. In 2013 a research team with GPS-instrumented rocks and a weather station recorded the rocks moving, photographed the mechanism, and published it. The stones are pushed by floating panels of thin ice. The posts saying nobody knows are twelve years out of date.

The claim, as it circulates: “In Death Valley there are rocks that move across the desert on their own, leaving trails behind them. No one has ever seen them move and scientists still can’t explain it.”

Based on 2 primary or authoritative sources.

NASA photographed the “Black Knight” satellite — and catalogues it as space debris — False

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Verdict: False. The claim is demonstrably untrue, and the evidence against it is clear.

In December 1998 a Space Shuttle crew photographed a dark, irregular object in low Earth orbit. The photograph is authentic, unretouched, and still in NASA’s public archive. It has circulated ever since as proof of the “Black Knight” — an alien satellite said to have orbited Earth for thirteen thousand years. The catalogue record NASA created for that frame classifies its subject as space debris, in a public database anyone can query.

The claim, as it circulates: “NASA accidentally photographed the Black Knight satellite in 1998 — a 13,000-year-old alien craft in polar orbit — and has never given an explanation for what it is.”

Based on 1 primary or authoritative sources.