What was claimed
In 39 days the sun will set in the UK at 7pm.
Our verdict
A 7pm sunset in the UK won’t be until late March, or 72 days away.
A 7pm sunset in the UK is more than 39 days away
13 January 2023
Several posts on Facebook have claimed in 39 days’ time the sun will set at 7pm. This is wrong for the UK. Though the exact time to the minute depends on where exactly you are, in London, it won’t be after 7pm until 26 March 2023, when the clocks go forward.
One Facebook post making this claim was published on 4 January and the other on the 10th. Both users appear to be located in the UK.
Thirty-nine days following these dates would be 12 February and 18 February respectively. Sunset on those dates in the UK would be far from 7pm. In mid-February, sunset will vary between 16:54 and 17:28 depending on where exactly you are in the UK.
So at the time of writing, a post-7pm sunset in London is 72 days away.
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Where did the claim come from?
The day before the first of these Facebook posts was published, actor Julian Knight posted a video on TikTok in which he said: “I don’t know who needs to hear this but in 39 days, the sun will set at 7pm.”
This video has 1.1 million views and several comments pointing out it’s wrong. The next day, he posted a tongue-in-cheek video in which he plays an MP apologising for spreading misinformation.
A screenshot appears in the video, apparently from the Instagram account @secret.london (which doesn’t appear on their feed) of a tweet with the same claim from 2 January. This Twitter account claims to be based in Honolulu, but the claim isn’t true for Hawaii either.
Image courtesy of The Lone Explorer
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the sun won’t set after 7pm until late March, closer to 72 days away.