New York City officials are planning for a Dunkirk-like evacuation of Manhattan island in the case of an emergency. In the early days of World War II, a "bathtub navy" was assembled between Dunkirk, France and Dover, England, in order to move hundreds of thousands of soldiers from the Continent to safer ground as the Nazis advanced across France. Hundreds of small craft were sent across the English Channel to ferry stranded and cornered British......

The East River is legendarily disgusting (for starters, during the 2003 blackout, 30 million gallons of "untreated human waste" were dumped into it), so Gothamist is impressed with anyone who can swim in it. The Manhattan Island Club had its first Brooklyn Bridge Swim, where the intrepid swim from Manhattan under the Brooklyn Bridge over to the Brooklyn side near the Manhattan Bridge. Newsday spoke to some swimmers, who were pretty amusing:"There comes a point......

We like records. True, we like the kind they call LP's that are the format of choice for old jazz recordings, and good white label grooves, but we also like records of the "unsurpassed measurement" type (thank you dictionary.com). The most recent local records of note that were broken according to our local NOAA office in Upton, NY Central Park: May 15, 2004 - A record rainfall of 1.16 inches was recorded breaking the old......