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No topic in the history of snopes.com has elicitedmore fact check queries than the life and presidency ofBarack Obama, about whom, at last count,we had posted more than 300 articles since he declared his candidacy in 2007. During his two termsin office notan aspect of Obama's lifewent untainted by rumor and gossip, from his religious beliefs to his citizenshipto his allegiance to his country. These were the most popular of all the Obamafact checks we completed:

False In August 2016, at the height of that year's U.S. presidential campaign, a satiricalnews site posteda spoof declaring that President Obama was seriously considering moving to Canada if Donald Trump won the election. All it took was a fewright-leaning websites reposting it without a "satire" disclaimer to prompt an all-out sharing frenzy.Read the full report here.

False Ironically, the same fake news sitethat managed to convince thousands that Obama mightflee to Canada racked up even more hitsthe followingmonth by claiminghe would refuse to leave office if Trump were elected. Doubly ironic was the fact that the same constituency that bought into the former bought into the latter, and made it go viral.Read the full report here.

False Two different fake newsarticles from two different web sites made the precisely same false claim in July 2013: that President Obama was on the verge of being impeached by Congress. The fact that not a single mainstream news source reported any such thingdid not discourage enthusiastic sharers; if anything, it had the opposite effect. Read the full report here.

False Groundless skepticism about the legitimacy of Obama's U.S. citizenship gave riseto "birtherism," a labyrinthine conspiracy theory holdingthat he was born onforeign soil, lied about being born in Hawaii, and produced forged documents when asked to release his birth certificate. None of these claims were supported by evidence. Read the full report here.

False Allmodern U.S. presidents have made prodigious use of the official directives known as executive orders to furthertheir agendas. By the end of his two terms, President Obama had issued fewer executive orders (279) than either George W. Bush (291) or Bill Clinton (308), but rumor nonetheless had it that the number topped 900 within Obama's first three years. Read the full report here.

False Hyperpartisan web sites managed to conflate separate news items about a 2015 Veterans Affairs budget shortfall in Congress and the funding of humanitarian relief efforts on behalf ofSyrian refugees scattered around the Middle East into a bogusreport accusing Obama of cutting billions from veterans programs and giving the money to Syrian immigrants inthe U.S. Read the full report here.

False Not ayear went by duringObama's term of office in whichrumors didn't circulatedthat he had canceled the National Day of Prayer, an official observance held every year since 1952. The rumors were baseless. Like his predecessors, Obama issueda public proclamation each year on the National Day of Prayer, though he observed the occasion privately. Read the full report here.

False As if by a miracle, a decades-old Columbia University student ID card cropped up in 2012 that seemed to prove what every "birther" had been saying for years: that President Obama was born outside the United States. Emblazoned on the card with Obama'sphoto were the words "foreign student." It was, of course, a Photoshop hoax. Read the full report here.

False As the first sitting president to visit Hiroshima, the site of anatomic bomb dropped by the U.S. on Japan in World War II, Barack Obama offered condolences for those who died. Social media users immediately condemned Obama for "apologizing" for the bomb something Obama did not do. Read the full report here.

False There is no better testament tothe awesome viralityof fake news than the fact that the most-accessed Obama fact check on snopes.com during his entire presidencywas arecurring spoofreporting that he banned the Pledge of Allegiance in schools. Why would he do such a thing? You'll have to ask the thousands who apparently believed this false story was true.Read the full report here.

Originally published: 01 February 2017

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Top Ten Barack Obama Fact Checks - snopes.com