I went down a manhole

Seriously. I climbed down a manhole in the middle of a busy intersection in Brooklyn and it was awesome.

Apparently, back in the early 1800's when trains would arrive in Brooklyn carrying freight from Boston, they kept running over pedestrians because trains didn't have brakes back then. The solution was to build an underground tunnel (the world's first) where the train could run out of steam in a safer manner.

Cut to the mid 1800's and there were politics and development and something about the pine barrens, and the tunnel was supposed to have been filled in and closed forever. But the owner went for a short cut and just sealed off both ends.

For the past 150 some years there have been rumours aplenty about said tunnel. The mob was storing dead bodies down there and the FBI even went down during World War I when they thought the germans were manufacturing mustard gas down there.

It's location wasn't publicly known but endlessly searched for for years until some dude found it in the 80's. Now he does tours down there and learns you all the stuff I write above and more. It was really really cool.

I had pics that were supposed to go with this, but they got deleted. Bummer.