Get a first hand view of Jersey Shore history, as the Jacques Cousteau National Estuarine Research Reserve and Tuckerton Seaport host a Lunch n' Learn Program this Wednesday about the shark attacks of 1916. Those attacks changed our perception of sharks and even inspired a little movie you may have heard of...JAWS.
Everyone, it seems, has seen the 1975 film JAWS. The story is said to take place in a quaint New England town called Amity Island. Replace the name Amity Island with the Jersey Shore, and the events of the movie and book are mirrored in the historical records of the Jersey Shore.
In just 12 days, July 1 through July 12, 1916, a shark or sharks killed four people and mauled 7 others along the Jersey Shore. People were in a panic because just a year earlier, the New York Times had said that sharks didn't seem to be dangerous in U.S. waters. The panic was so widespread U.S. President Woodrow Wilson had to handle the crisis. Wilson held special meetings with his Cabinet and dispatched the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard to get rid of these menaces of the sea.
The appeal of both the real story and the fictionalized JAWS seems to be the element of the unexpected and the unknown. These shark attack stories scare us because one minute you're minding your own business, swimming along, and the next minute, you've lost a leg...and I always thought it was the music!
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The Shark
Attacks of 1916, Lunch n' Learn Program is scheduled at the Tuckerton
Seaport on Wednesday November 10th from 12:30pm to 1:30pm.
The cost is $2 if you bring your own lunch or $6 if you buy
lunch. You can pay at the door, but must register
by calling 609-296-8868.
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