Ed Driscoll has that and other Pallywood fauxtography stories.
[T]he image of the burning river that purportedly catalyzed Earth Day and the modern environmental movement was actually taken in 1952, not 1969, because the “historic” latter fire didn’t even burn long enough to be photographed. (…)
By the 1969 river fire, the image was far more threatening than the actual event. (…) the dependence upon visual imagery is a kind of nostalgia masquerading as political strategy. And like almost all expressions of nostalgia, it is reductive and simplifies a much more complex picture…
