The Ark 'unveiling' that never happened
In June 2009 an Italian news agency reported that Patriarch Abune Paulos of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church would reveal the Ark of the Covenant to the world at a Rome hotel; no such event took place.
2009 CE · 41.92, 12.49 · status: claim
The account
Adnkronos reported that the patriarch, in Rome to meet Pope Benedict XVI, would make the announcement on 26 June 2009 at the Hotel Aldrovandi. The story went round the world. At a press conference the patriarch said he had been misquoted, called the reports a fabrication, and repeated only the church's long-standing teaching that the Ark is in Ethiopia. The point is at the Rome hotel; the Ark tradition itself belongs to Aksum.
The sceptical view
A case of a press report outrunning its source: nothing was ever planned to be shown.