I have heard about the 1969 fire that burned on the Cuyahoga River. I once lived in Ohio and the river ran by about a half mile from my house. It made Cleveland a laughing stock and helped the environmental movement push the Clean Water Act of 1972.

Here is something I didn’t know (LINK):

In fact, the Cuyahoga had burned at least nine times since the late 1860s.

The river was increasingly filled with flammable liquids as it drained Cleveland industrial byproducts into an equally polluted Lake Erie.

Oil slicks on the river surface burned much worse in the past. Among them: A 1912 fire had killed five dock workers when the blaze spread to the shipyards and a 1952 fire caused an estimated $1.5 million in damage.

…

But two months later, when Time magazine ran a brief essay mentioning the Cuyahoga River fire, its editors instead published a Plain Dealer photo from the 1952 fire showing a towering blaze and firefighters dousing the conflagration as it engulfed a tugboat.

In today’s internet vernacular, you might say that the fiery (if misleading) photo “went viral,” showing up on news broadcasts nationwide and likely worldwide, the historians say.

“I will never forget a photograph of flames, fire, shooting right out of the water in downtown Cleveland,” former EPA Administrator Carol Browner said in a later interview, apparently referring to that 1952 image. “It was the summer of 1969 and the Cuyahoga River was burning.”

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