The beast, thrashing about in the icy sewer, seemed to be trying to free itself. Other boys with him confirmed the sighting, and soon a plan was hatched to lasso the animal and drag it from the depths.
Condulucci, “an expert on Western movies,” as The New York Times reported the episode on Feb. 10, 1935, “dangled the noose in the sewer, and after several tantalizing near-catches, looped it about the ‘gators neck.” He pulled. The animal was dragged from the sewer and, probably terrified, snapped at the boys; they pummeled it to death with shovels.
On Monday, the city celebrates the episode and other urban legends with Alligators in the Sewer Day, created by Manhattan Borough Historian Michael Miscione. In an interview last week, he explained why this alligator tale — and not so many others that came before it — deserved to be believed.
“The story contains so many easily verifiable names and addresses that it would be impossible to put this out there as a hoax, as untrue,” he said. “We don't have any carcass. We don't have any photographs. But it has the makings of a true story.”
Are there alligators in the sewer today? City officials have been dismissing the idea for years now, saying it would be impossible for the reptiles to survive in the sewers. The theory behind the 1935 episode was that the beast had hitchhiked on a steamer from the Everglades and simply got swept into the sewer.
Still, the urban legend endures — as do many others, some half-truths while others are outright tall tales.
Miscione said there’s a good reason for that in a big city like ours. “So many true things happen that seem unbelievable. Great inventions have happened here. Great events have happened here. Sometimes you can slip something in the cracks that may not be true,” Miscione said. “Plus there's so many people here. You can find so many people who are gullible.”
With his help, we’ve rounded up five more urban legends and hoaxes that rightly or wrongly deserve New Yorkers’ inbred skepticism.
1. Fake New York Times declares the end of the Iraq War
On July 4, 2009, dozens of copies of what looked like authentic copies of The New York Times were distributed to the public with the screaming headline, “IRAQ WAR ENDS.” The typefaces, design and even paper stock were so accurate to the actual New York Times that it’s not difficult to imagine someone who didn’t take the time to read it thinking it was the real thing.
But lefty headlines like “Maximum Wage Law Succeeds” and “Nationalized Oil To Fund Climate Change Efforts” gave away the ruse. The hoax was the work of activists The Yes Men, who revel in hijinks as a way to attract attention to their causes.
According to The Yes Men, who issued a statement about the prank, pulling it off required six months of planning and thousands of volunteers to distribute the 1.2 million copies that were printed.
“This is obviously a fake issue of the Times,” Times spokeswoman Catherine J. Mathis said when the issue came out.
2. Aliens invade New York
Orson Welles took the power of the media to a whole new level on Oct. 30, 1938, when his dramatization of H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds” was broadcast to thousands of radio listeners.
So effective were the scares in the show that New Yorkers actually left their homes to find shelter in parks. Thousands of other people called the police, newspapers and radio station.
The radio broadcast attempted to make clear that the broadcast was a dramatization, but listeners did not take the hints, instead convinced by Welles’ radio alchemy that made the story unravel as an almost simulated broadcast. While not intended as a hoax, it certainly ended up being one with real world consequences.
3. Wild animals break loose from Central Park; New Yorkers mutilated
With the headline “AWFUL CALAMITY,” The New York Herald published a front-page story on Nov. 9, 1874, describing how the “wild animals” of the Central Park Zoo had broken free and run viciously rampant through the city. At least 49 people were dead, and the “list of mutilated, trampled and injured in various ways must reach nearly 200 persons of all ages.”
The story, thousands of words long, went into detail about the rampage of the beasts, including Pete, the rhinoceros, who mangled the body of a zoo keeper and “plunged his horrid horn into the dead keeper.” A proclamation, supposedly from the mayor, called on citizens to stay within their homes.
It wasn’t until the very last paragraph that the author stated, “Of course the entire story given above is a pure fabrication.”
4. New York won Staten Island in a boat race
In 1668, the Duke of New York was interested in determining the ownership of Staten Island, which was disputed by both New York and New Jersey. So he ordered that whoever could circumnavigate the island in 24 hours would help settle the matter for New York and tasked Captain Christopher Billop to do so in his ship, the Bentley.
Billop did, in 23 hours, and was bestowed a large track of land on Staten Island. Anyway, that’s how the urban legend has been told for generations.
But, according to historians, much of the details in the story cannot be verified. “There is little circumstantial evidence,” Miscione said.
The actual details of how Staten Island finally became part of New York appears to have been more convoluted, as New Jersey for years attempted to claim jurisdiction over the island following Billop’s circumnavigation.
According to James Connelly, a historian who delivered a paper to the New Jersey Historical Society, it wasn’t until after the colonies had been established that the ownership of Staten Island was settled. This came in the form of a treaty approved by Congress on June 28, 1834, creating a dividing line in the Harbor between the neighboring states.
5. Manhattan was purchased from Native Americans for $24 U.S. dollars
First of all, the island was definitely not purchased with $24 dollars. This was in 1626, so that would have been impossible unless a time machine was somehow involved. Instead, the currency involved was 60 guilders. That was later converted in the 1800s to being $24 dollars.
But even if money was exchanged, did it really entitle the Dutch to ownership of the entire island of Manhattan? And which tribe was involved?
Mental Floss sought to unravel the myth, pointing out that the primary document referring to the Manhattan sale was written by a Dutch merchant, Pieter Schage, on Nov. 5, 1626, to the West India Company. In it, he writes, “They have purchased the island of Manhattes from the savages for the value of 60 guilders.” But nowhere does he mention in the letter from whom and the deed for the land is long gone.
Source
No comments:
Post a Comment