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On 5 December 2014, the website World News Daily Report published an article reporting that a dairy farmer had found a whale carcass in a field in Farmington, Utah: The fictitious story quickly gained traction on social media. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, several people even called local authorities to inquire about the beached (or rather, fielded) whale: A Davis County dispatcher confirmed to The Salt Lake Tribune that, no, there was no whale. But they did receive a bunch of calls from people who saw the story. World News Daily Report is an junk news website that publishes fictional articles. While there was no truth to this particular story, the report did borrow a genuine photograph of a whale carcass lying in a field: In September 2011, a female Sei whale was found 800 yards from the shore at the Humber estuary at Skeffling, East Riding of Yorkshire, England. While some publications speculated the whale had been dropped off by a UFO, Kirsten Smith, North Seas manager at Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, said the whale probably made its way inland during high tide and then got stuck when the waters receded:
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