It's not an insult to anyone to corroborate sources and check facts. It's just due dilligence. This topic is important because I think this message board is important, and there must be a free flow of information, and people should not be surprised - even less, insulted - when their personally provided historical information is cross referenced, or when others perhaps have different information or different memories. It won't happen often, but there shouldn't be a chilling silence that stifles historical information coming out.
Getting really theoretical, but both eyewitness testimony and historical sources can be very wrong. Just because someone saw something doesn't mean it happened the way they remember it. Just because it's written down doesn't mean it's fact. Read O'Connor's "The Last Book" for a long dissertation on the amusing things that happen to both memory and the written record as the years roll by.
