By Srijit Das
A montage of visuals showing a small rocket being lit inside a church and intercut with footage from a concert is circulating with the false claim that it shows the Olympic torch was lit in Paris, France.
BOOM found that the video features visuals from two unrelated events: a traditional Easter ceremony in Italy and a glimpse from a concert by the German band Rammstein, neither of which are related to the Olympic torch lighting ceremony.
On April 16, 2024, the torch for the Paris 2024 Olympic Gameswas ignited in ancient Olympia following a traditional ceremony. Due to cloudy skies, Greek actress Mary Mina, who played the role of the high priestess, lit the torch with a backup flame instead of a parabolic mirror, to begin a relay in Greece and France. The Paris 2024 Olympic Games will be held from July 26 to August 11, 2024.
The video is being shared with a caption, "Lighting of the olympic torch, from a París church. Spectacular !!!!"
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
Another X user shared the video and wrote, "The lighting of the Olympic torch from a church in France. Spectacular! Just imagine, had this been done in a Brihadeshwara temple or the Ram mandir, all hell would have broken loose by the seculars, liberals, wokes and dot dot.. Suprabatham".
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
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Fact Check
BOOM went through the live stream of the Paris 2024 Olympic flame lighting ceremony from the official Olympic YouTube channel on April 16, 2024, but did not observe the same visuals shown in the viral video.
We also found that the viral video contains visuals from two separate events which happened in different places.
Video 1
We ran a reverse image search on keyframes from the viral video and found multiple posts from 2023 indicating that the video shows a Florentine Easter tradition that occurred on April 9, 2023.
Click here to view the post.
According to a Huffington Post report published on April 9, 2023, featuring a screengrab of the event, every Easter Sunday, the Explosion of the Chariot and the Flight of the Dove take place in Florence. The report states that this tradition involves a metal dove with a lit fuse sliding along a cable that connects the altar of the Cathedral to the carriage. The dove is intended to cross the Cathedral, ignite the Chariot, and then return to the starting point.
Video 2
By performing a reverse image search on the keyframes from the video, we found multiple Instagram posts with similar visuals, mentioning them as scenes from concerts by the German music band Rammstein. One such post is shown below.
Click here to view the post.
We then went through the posts from Rammstein's official Instagram account and found multiple photos matching the visuals from the video. Additionally, we found that the Rammstein logo appears during the fireworks in the viral video, similar to the band's signature concert style.
Click here to view the post. Below is a comparison between the symbol seen in the viral video and the Rammstein logo displayed at one of their concerts.
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