6 Iconic Photos That Fooled The Whole World

Lunch Atop a Skyscraper (1932)

Eleven ironworkers eating lunch on a steel beam, 260 metres above Manhattan. It’s been sold as a candid document of Depression-era bravery. The evidence says otherwise. The photo was part of a promotional campaign for the Rockefeller Center construction project. The workers were posed, and multiple near-identical shots exist from the same session—meaning they sat there while several photographers took turns. It’s still a genuinely terrifying photo. It just wasn’t an accident.