Agey-pagey binny-winny thing

Fake news does not get less fake simply because it is several thousand years old, and to say “The imperial family [of Japan] can trace its first emperor to Jimmu in 660 BC” is fake news. Jimmu is legendary, not historic; he was not, in any case, an emperor (“Tenno”); he did not, should he have existed, rule over much of Japan; his line, undeniably, has not been unbroken, except to the extent that every Japanese citizen, the bulk of Asia, and most people in the world also share genes with him.   And while I’m at it, they did not rescue Jesus’s crown of thorns from the Notre Dame fire, either. Has nobody on the newspaper ever heard of the word “allegedly”?