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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Culture & entertainment fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about culture & entertainment. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

3,169 published reviews in this topic

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"The first slaves shipped to the American Colonies in 1619 were 100 white children from Ireland."

Publisher’s rating: False

Related reporting about Angola’s National Museum of Slavery says the first enslaved people to arrive in Britain’s American colonies in 1619 came from Angola—not Ireland. The report also describes the museum’s registers as showing enslaved people sent to places that would become Southern states, as well as New York and Rhode Island. This contradicts the claim’s description of the 1619 arrivals as white Irish children. The article gives no figure of 100 and does not describe the arrivals as children. A separate history passage in a review of a book about British monarchy and slavery likewise identifies the 1619 arrival as African: it says the privateer White Lion brought the first African slaves to North America near Virginia. Together, these excerpts support rejecting the claim’s Irish and white-child description, while not independently establishing a precise count of people aboard the ship.