No, this is not a photo of an Indian soldier in sub-zero temperatures
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on January 14, 2019 at 06:00
- Updated on January 29, 2019 at 02:54
- 2 min read
- By AFP India
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The Facebook posts, for example this one which has been shared more than 5,000 times since it was posted January 6, 2019, have a caption in Hindi which says: “Our soldiers fulfill their duties in minus 5 degree temperature while we sleep peacefully, they save our country. Long live India.”
The misleading claim has been shared by other Facebook users, for example here and here.
The image has been taken from a video posted on YouTube on December 25, 2017 by Jerry Mills.
The video’s description says: “Today's Jerryism brings you each a Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas greeting from a VERY COLD and windy Lake Superior at Presque Isle Park in Marquette, MI. I thought I was cold until I chatted with Daniel Schetter, one of our local winter surfers (You'll LOVE his beard!) I even ran into our local running Santa, Bill Sved. Enjoy!”
Here is a side-by-side comparison of a screenshot from the original video taken at 00:28 seconds and the image used in the misleading Facebook post:
Lake Superior is the largest of the Great Lakes of North America and it situated in the US state of Michigan near the Canadian border.
The man featured in the YouTube video is American Daniel Schetter, and photographs of him surfing in sub-zero temperatures have been carried in multiple media reports, for example here and here.
Photographer Devon Hains, who took the images used in the media reports, posted an image of Schetter surfing in winter on Instagram here in 2017.
In 2018, Schetter's sub-zero surfing was featured on the official Olympics Channel Facebook page.
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