Atlantic City’s Playground: An ambitious idea that just didn’t work
Had it not been for the entrepreneurs, the business people, the visionaries, the politicos, the dreamers, the inventors and the investors, there would be no Atlantic City as we know it. Think about it. The Atlantic City Boardwalk was the 1870 brainchild of a train...
September 4: The day to remember Richard Somers of Somers Point
On Sept. 4, 1804, Richard Somers died in Tripoli, North Africa. He was 5,000 miles away from his home in Somers Point, N.J. He is still remembered here. There is a park named for him on Shore Road next to the library. It contains a statue of him and a monument with...
Rita Jenrette: The infamous Playboy model who covered the Miss America Pageant
In 1981 a political researcher named Rita Jenrette made big news. For several years prior, Rita Carpenter – her maiden name – had been gradually making a name for herself in political circles as director of research for the Texas Republican Party, as an aide to Sens....
The origin of the silver three-cent coin
The late 1840s and early 1850s saw problems developing in our system of coinage, which had been created under the premise that a coin had its value in the metal it contained. That is, a silver dollar coin contained one dollars’ worth of silver and a five-dollar gold...
The first Miss America pageant
A Look Back at Ocean City One hundred and four years ago, September 8, 1921, the first Miss America pageant was won by Margaret Gorman of Washington, D.C. She was named “America’s Most Beautiful Bathing Girl” (a year later, her title was shortened to...
