There are many characters in our society we are familiar with whether from books and comic books or television and movies. One of the characters we know from a variety of media is Conan the Barbarian but little is known about how he came into being. Conan is a character from the sword and sorcery genre created by a writer from Texas named Robert E. Howard in 1932. Howard’s Conan stories began as a series of articles submitted to the fantasy magazine Weird Tales. Howard’s influences ranged from the Greek writer Plutarch to the mythology works of Thomas Bulfinch. Howard wrote many more Conan stories over the next 4 year completing 21 stories. 
Conan books have been written and published by various different authors over the last 50 years, many of them trying to imitate the style of Robert E. Howard. The original Conan stories written by Howard were allowed to go out of print and were unavailable in their original form. In 2003 the original Howard stories were collected and printed by British Publisher Wandering Star and were republished in the U.S. by Ballantine. These volumes included Howard’s original stories but expanded on them by offering his notes and letters on the setting and for the world of Conan which provided a more complete look at the history of Howard’s ideas and the genesis of the character. Regardless of the history of the character the books, comic books, and the movies of the 80s have kept the Conan character alive and well in the imagination of society since he was first put into print in the 1930s by Robert E. Howard. 
We’ve all heard the longstanding tales of alligators running rampant in the sewers of New York City. The logic goes that baby gators were purchased as pets, either in local pet stores or by tourists vacationing in Florida. After quickly outgrowing the confines of their owners’ apartments, they were flushed down toilets and into the sewer system, where they soon bred and infested the labyrinthine network of pipes tunnels beneath Manhattan.
What isn’t largely known, however, is the origin of this famed urban legend, as recorded in the 1920s and 30s by – of all sources — the New York Times. Between 1927 and 1942, the paper ran twelve articles concerning alligator sightings – though in most instances they were in outlying areas beyond the city proper, such as Westchester County and New Jersey, and spotted in rivers or lakes, rather than drainpipes.
The craze got its first shot in the arm on June 28, 1932 when “swarms” of alligators were seen swimming in Bronx River. It was, however, later decided that the witnesses had in fact seen snakes or lizards –- but only after police had reportedly conducted a farcical search involving large quantities of beef liver and butterfly nets.
The sewer component first entered into the myth three years later, after a gang of teenage boys spotted a moving shape beneath them as they shoveled snow into an open manhole cover near the Harlem River. Using a makeshift lasso, they were able to snag the animal’s neck and haul it to surface – where they quickly realized they caught a live alligator. The gator lunged and, in response, the boys beat it to death with their shovels. After dragging the carcass to nearby garage, it was determined that the beast weighed 125 pounds and measured some seven-and-a-half feet in length.
Such up close and personal encounters, however, were few and far between. The legend broke wide in 1959 after the release of Robert Daley’s The World Beneath the City, which detailed the history of New York’s subterranean plumbing and electrical systems. A brief portion of the book recounted the story of Teddy May, the former superintendent of the city’s sewers. According to Mays’s account, after receiving numerous reports of sewer alligators – which he and others believed to be false – he commissioned an investigation in 1935 to squash the stories once and for all.
When no gators turned up, May decided to take a look for himself. Upon visiting an undisclosed location somewhere in the five boroughs, he stumbled upon a so-called “colony” of the creatures – which measured roughly two feet apiece — living in the sewers’ shallow waters. Highly distressed by his discovery, May claimed that he had all of the animals exterminated, though no corroborating account as ever emerged to verify his story.
From then on, embellished stories of an alligator infestation in New York City’s sewers have been propagated far and wide, turning up everywhere from Thomas Pynchon’s 1963 novel V. to a B-side released by British band Radiohead in 2001. Biologists, however, generally doubt the reptiles’ ability to survive a New York City winter and no sewer employee in recent memory has ever reported an encounter with the one of the elusive beasts.
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Tags: 1927, 1930s, 1932, 1935, 1942, 1963, 2001, alligators in Manhattan, Alligators in New York City, Alligators in sewers myth, Bronx River, Harlem River, History DVDs, History Store, June 28, Radiohead, replica guns, Replica Swords, Robert Daley, scale model kits, Teddy May, the novel V, The World Beneath the City, Thomas Pynchon, urban legends
Superheroes have gone mainstream over the last few years and are as popular as ever. The characters once confined largely to comic books have reached a global audience with a wide variety of products and movies. One of the most recognizable superheroes in the world is Superman with his trademark costume and high moral compass. He has been in all media from comics and TV to motion pictures and animated shows. Although most people are familiar with the Superman of the past couple of decades the beginnings of the character are not commonly known. Superman was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in 1932 and was conceived as a newspaper comic strip character. The guys worked on the character for several years with little success. They authored a variety of short stories for comic books such as “Doctor Occult” and “Radio Squad” but they always loved the Superman character they had created which had been shelved after submitting it to National Comics in New York.
The Adventures of Superman began broadcast in 1952 running for 102 episodes and became a wild success with appeal to the whole family. Over the years Superman was a central character in animated shows such as the 1966 title “The New Adventures of Superman”, “The Super Friends” (1973-84). There have been a number of Superman television shows over the years but the Christopher Reeve movies that began in 1978 are among the best known versions of the character. The Smallville series started in 2001 and represents the teen and young adult life of the Clark Kent/Superman persona. Regardless of the media, Superman has become a worldwide phenomenon and his ideals of truth, justice, and the American way have become ingrained in our society as the ideals to which we should all aspire.
