Most Americans,

and people of many of other Nationalities will remember this date,

 November 22, 1963 the day JFK died, but also in the news that day was the Staten Island Ferry Disaster, where 400 souls perished, 

 the monument, which is located in Battery Park, Manhattan, was created by artist Joe Reginella and honours the 400 victims who perished during a giant octopus attack of a Staten Island ferry named the Cornelius G. Kolff on November 22, 1963, the same day as the assassination of JFK.

the elaborate hoax was six months in the making, and is also seen by Reginella as a multimedia art project and social experiment, the website, and fliers distributed around Manhattan by his team, give a false location for a museum, ironically a place you must get to by ferry, you can see more tourist reactions and find real information about the fake event on the Staten Island Ferry Octopus Disaster Memorial Museum’s Facebook page, but is it art? and should another date have been used, say 1st. April?

If You Are American,

and happen to live or have lived in New York,

 you may be familiar with or heard of Mayor Ed Koch, if not, in case you have not heard of him, 1978, Ed Koch assumed control of a city plagued by filth, crime, bankruptcy, and racial tensions, he brought in a number of, at the time revolutionary schemes, some of which have come back to literally bite New Yorkers, this one in particular, 

 that now has a memorial to it, every year, tourists go missing from New York City, that's because Mayor Ed Koch (r. 1978-1989) released wild wolves into the subway tunnels to check the threat of graffiti vandalism, unfortunately, the wolves thrived in their subterranean environment, bred, and now stray outside of the subway system at night to hunt in packs, 

in memory to those eaten New Yorkers and tourists, 

and according to the Ed Koch Wolf Foundation the creatures are still the reason behind missing tourists in the Big Apple, “Captured from upstate New York and set loose in various borough depots, the wolves successfully kept taggers at bay until anti-graffiti technology eliminated the need for the animals,” the foundation’s site says. “At that point, the wolves migrated underground. Since then, wolf packs have survived and even thrived in New York’s labyrinthine tunnels, emerging in local parks only on occasion to hunt in the moonlight for live prey. In fact, the NYPD chalks up the majority of missing tourist reports each year to the city’s subterranean canine inhabitants.”

just a slight confession here, this is just an urban legend, it did in fact begin as a joke that Mayor Koch made when he was asked for a solution to the subway graffiti problem, artist Joe Reginella has played with that urban legend by creating fake monuments to the fallen tourists and placed them around New York City, and guess what we have featured his work on the blog a couple of times before, the monument is to remind people that all city parks close at dusk, tourists who choose to remain in parks after dark do so at their own risk, and you thought the wolves were really there, just like the subway alligators!

We Have Seen The,

Staten Island ferry,

 sometimes used in films, but had no idea it was so dangerous, until now, I never knew it had an encounter with an octopus! and there is a statue to mark the event,

 put there by New York sculptor Joe Reginella, titled  the Staten Island Ferry encounter, 

 from the ferry disaster site: “It was close to 4am on the quiet morning of November 22, 1963 when the Steam Ferry Cornelius G. Kolff vanished without a trace. On its way with nearly 400 hundred people, mostly on their way to work, the disappearance of the Cornelius G. Kolff remains both one of New York’s most horrific maritime tragedies and perhaps its most intriguing mystery. Eye witness accounts describe “large tentacles” which “pulled” the ferry beneath the surface only a short distance from its destination at Whitehall Terminal in Lower Manhattan.”

 a New York Harbor UFO encounter, is another featured by the artist, 

of course countless tourists have been fooled with his statues scattered across the city, marking events that never actually happened, 

each statue has its own website, with a backstory, souvenir shop, and tour offers in tow, so if you have been a visitor to New York, were you fooled?