American Apparel apologizes for posting Challenger explosion photo

The day before the Fourth of July, the brand’s Tumblr reblogged a famous image of the space shuttle exploding with the tags “#smoke” and “#clouds.”

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In the realm of social media offenses, American Apparel may have committed one of the absolute worst over the weekend.

On the afternoon of July 3, the brand’s Tumblr reblogged an image of the space shuttle Challenger exploding. The tags “#smoke” and “#clouds” were appended, and someone had changed the background from a blue sky to a bright red field. It was clearly supposed to be a celebratory Fourth of July post.

Quite a few observers on Twitter and Tumblr immediately recognized the photo of the 1986 tragedy that killed seven astronauts.

Pls tell @americanapparel that this isn’t a “cool tumblr photo” of clouds. h/t @slarkpope http://t.co/uwoSR9MwwK pic.twitter.com/SzIsisnz8y

— kenyatta cheese (@kenyatta) July 3, 2014

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