NOT REAL NEWS: A look at what didn't happen this week

A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were shared widely on social media. The Associated Press checked them out.

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Video from 2022 misrepresented as footage of Baltimore bridge collapse

CLAIM: A video taken on Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge shows a large explosion that occurred before the structure fell into the water below.

THE FACTS: The video is not related to the Key Bridge collapse. It circulated online in 2022, identified as showing security footage of an explosion that caused the partial collapse of the Kerch Bridge, which links the Crimean Peninsula with Russia. It was shared at the time on Russian Telegram channels and by majormediaoutlets.

After the container ship Dali lost power and rammed into the Key Bridge causing it to collapse early Tuesday, social media users shared the old video, falsely representing it as footage from the bridge before it fell into the Patapsco River.

The 15-second clip shows vehicles driving over an arching bridge lit up at night. An enormous fireball then suddenly engulfs the structure. «Alternate angle on Francis Scott Key bridge shows a large explosion,” reads one tweet that had received approximately 7,500 likes and 3,800 shares as of Tuesday afternoon.

A Facebook post that shared the video, referring to the incident as the “#FrancesScottKeyBridge explosion,” had been viewed more than 278,000 times by Friday.

But the video is unrelated to what happened with the Key Bridge.

It was first shared in 2022 on Russian Telegram channels and by majormediaoutlets, where it was identified as security footage of the moment an explosion damaged the Kerch Bridge, an important supply