According to Mark Reeder, "It is widely known that without the help of Reeder, Paul van Dyk would not have reached his superstar status now."

Here are the 5 news mentions ever that might support that claim.

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According to Velupillai Prabhakaran, "Little is known of Prabhakaran's personal life, either from his interviews or from cited media sources, although it is widely known that he was married to Mathivathani Erambu on October 1, 1984.[18][not in citation given] They had a daughter (Duvaraga) and two sons, Charles Anthony and Balachandran. Their whereabouts were not known, but it was widely believed that they were not in Sri Lanka.[18][not in citation given]"

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According to ATV (Hungarian TV-channel), "It is widely known that the channel supports left-wing/liberal parties of Hungary[1]."

The link provided as the "reliable source" points to a page that reads (translated to English):

Error 404

We're sorry, but we can not find the page you requested on our server.
Go Back

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According to Heteroscedasticity, "It is widely known that, under certain conditions, the OLS estimator has a normal asymptotic distribution when properly normalized and centered..."

However, all of Google's Books can be searched for this well-known principle, and you will come up empty-handed.

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According to The Fanjul Brothers, "It is widely known that sugar costs about two-three times (sic) as much in the U.S. as it does on the world market."

There is an interesting take on this subject, if you compare newspaper sources. The St. Louis Post Dispatch says that sugar in 2004 costs more than 3.5 times more in the United States than it does in "the rest of the world"; however, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune says that Americans pay "20 percent less" for sugar than other world consumers.

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According to Wong (supermarket), "It is widely known that Wong treats its employees (and customers too) very well. For example, instead of calling them 'workers', they call them 'collaborators'. Therefore, it has earned several awards for the excellence of its service."

Of course, if you look at the Wong website, you see they use the Spanish word (as they are a Peruvian firm) colaboradores to describe employees, which is often translated as "associates" or "partners".

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According to Vince Bartram, the former goalkeeper, "It is widely known that he is quite funny."

Google News seems to be unaware of this widely-known fact.

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It is widely known that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia.

And it's widely known that this is widely known.

Interestingly enough both the date of his marriage and the fact that his wife and kids are not presently in Sri Lanka is in fact in the article cited..... (they don't say "widely believed" obviously they just state it) If you have to use widely believed you just scream for a problem... though whether the website itself is reliable is still up in the air... (not to mention the fact that the "Asian Tribune consulted various reliable sources to put this file together")

Widely as in 'wide of the mark'?

Take it away Bing ...