Happy Alligators in the Sewer Day!

Yes, it's a real day! Seventy-five years ago today, a teenager discovered an 8-foot alligator at the bottom of a manhole in Harlem. The event was even written up in the New York Times (see below).

According to a former superintendent of New York sewers (a man once known as the King of the Sewers), that 8-footer wasn't alone. When the man went down into the sewers see for himself what was there, he found . . .

Alligators serenely paddling around in his sewers. The beam of his own flashlight had spotlighted alligators whose length, on the average, was about two feet. Some may have been longer. Avoiding the swift current of the trunk lines under major avenues, the beasts had wormed up the smaller pipes under less important neighborhoods, and there Teddy had found them. The colony appeared to have settled contentedly under the very streets of the busiest city in the world.

Is the story true? Only the King of the Sewers knows. (And I don't think he's taking questions any more.)

Read more here.