The Greta Thunberg Time Traveling Meme exploded in popularity when an 1898 photograph from the University of Washington Libraries's Special Collections showed a young woman who looked eerily similar to climate activist Greta Thunberg. ^{[1] [2][9]}

On November 21st 2019, a photograph from 1898 began circulating which showed a young Klondike goldminer who closely resembles climate activist Greta Thunberg. The photograph was found in the University of Washington Libraries's Special Collections and portrays three children operating a rocker at a gold mine in Dominion Creek, Yukon Territory. The photographs were taken by a Swedish American photographer named Eric A. Hegg. Previously, his most famous photograph was titled "Klondikers ascending to the summit of Chilkoot Pass, Alaska, 1898". ^[2][3][5]

Hegg’s negatives and photographs were sold to a Seattle, Washington firm of Webster and Stevens in 1902. They removed the Hegg's watermark from the negatives and sold them as products of their own studio. The remaining assets of the Skagway studio were absorbed by Dedman’s Photo Shop. While it has been confirmed that the picture is authentic, it's impossible to trace exactly where the image came from. ^[4]

The Guardian suggests that the young miner’s face might have been picked up by facial recognition software while searching for Greta Thunberg. However, the truth is that a copy of Hegg's picture was hanging at a Seattle diner and a Greta Thunberg fan happened to see and share it. ^[1]

Author Jack Strange was the first to pose the time-travelling theory in a tweet that garnered a lot of attention. He followed it up with a blog post titled "Greta Thunberg is a Time Traveller: and Here’s Why". In the blog post, Jack Strange elucidates his reasoning in an obviously tongue-in-cheek manner. He suggests that she was only in the Yukon in 1898 so she could track down the inventor of plastic, Leo Baekeland, and stop his invention. He suggests Greta was speaking literally when she told the public "You have stolen my future". ^[6][7]

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