Fact Check

Were 16 Girls Impregnated After a Teenager Ejaculated in a Pool?

The story of a girl becoming pregnant in a shared swimming pool is an old urban legend, but this particular version of it originated with a fake news site.

Published Feb. 11, 2016

Claim:
Sixteen girls were impregnated after a boy ejaculated in a swimming pool.

In February 2016, several fake news web sites published articles reporting that sixteen girls had become pregnant after a boy accidentally ejaculated into the water of a pool in which they were swimming:

16 young teenage girls between the age of 13 and 17 years of age have become pregnant after a pool party went terribly wrong, reports the Tallahassee Herald this morning.

A simple weekend pool party turned to tragedy when one of the young men (Tommy Coulter) attending the birthday celebration ejaculated in the pool without warning the house guests, accidentally ending up impregnating half of the girls present at the celebration.

"I'm glad I didn't have my swimsuit that day," remembers Daliah Jennings, present during the celebration. "It was a surprise party to celebrate my 15th birthday, let's just say that a baby in my womb is the kind of present I'm glad I didn’t get" she acknowledges, visibly relieved of not getting pregnant.

Setting aside the obvious physical improbability of this story (and the notion that a boy would "warn" people that he was about to ejaculate into a swimming pool), we know this story is completely false because it originated with a web site that specializes in clickbait fake news articles.

This particular fake news item was originally posted on 26 January 2016 by the fake news site World News Daily Report. It was subsequently picked up by several similar sites, including Huzlers, Nigerian Info and Not Allowed To.

This isn't the first time that a false rumor concerning a woman getting impregnated by sperm in a swimming pool has been an item of gossip. It's a common urban legend that nearly adolescent has heard, almost invariably involving a "friend of a friend."

Dan Evon is a former writer for Snopes.