The Library of Congress’ Veterans History Project, which for the past seven years has been collecting oral and written histories of veterans’ war experiences, contains 24 entries for Medal of Honor recipients that are false, according to official records.

Of the 49 purported recipients of the nation’s highest award for combat valor who have participated in the nationwide project by telling their story for posterity, only 25 appear on the official Medal of Honor registry mandated by Congress in 1916, which includes 3,463 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who have earned the medal since its inception.

The false entries came to light based on a review of Veterans History Project records by Doug Sterner, who maintains an extensive, yet unofficial, online database of valor award recipients, and Mary Schantag, who runs the POW Network, a Web site listing U.S. prisoners of war.