GILL, Mass. — The photograph, nearly 50 years old, is a social media favorite, a perennial entry on top-10 lists of strange-but-true sports images. And it is certainly strange. Fans watch a football game as a building burns right behind them, failing to look even mildly alarmed at the flames shooting out and black smoke billowing into the sky.
Even at the time, when the photograph was reprinted around the world, people thought it was too weird to be real. “My colleagues maintain it is a real picture, but I believe it is of the April fool type,” wrote Phil F.