Aug 30, 2021
If you were a corrupt or incompetent official in 19th century New York City, Philip Merkle was your worst nightmare: an idealistic German immigrant with subpoena power. As city coroner from 1881-1885, he investigated murders, suicides, and gruesome accidents, seeking to right every wrong and improve every aspect of the...
Mar 8, 2017
George Munkenbeck, Islip Town Historian, discusses the history of the town from it's possibly piratical origins to its surprising connections to WW I and the Suffragist movement.
Jul 11, 2016
Women in most states could still not vote at the turn of the last century. The suffrage movement was stalled and icons such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were dead. So what turned things around? How did the movement revitalize itself to the point that, by 1920, the 19th Amendment was passed and...
Mar 10, 2016
We return to our conversation with investigative journalist Karl Grossman, picking up his career after the memorable fight against the Fire Island road in the 1960s. For a journalist, what story could top that?
Cut to: Shoreham Nuclear Power Station #1. It’s the 1970s and the Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO) is...
Feb 24, 2016
It’s 1962 and a Nor’easter has just torn through Long Island. In its wake is another storm, Long Island Parks Commissioner Robert Moses with his plan to build a road down the middle of Fire Island. It will stabilize the beach, he says. It will provide beauty and ease to the motorist, he says.
But local builder...