Wikipedia:Today's featured article/September 6, 2007



The Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916 were a series of shark attacks along the coast of New Jersey in which four people were killed and one injured. The attacks occurred between July 1 and July 12, 1916, during a deadly summer heat wave and polio epidemic in the northeastern United States that drove thousands of people to the seaside resorts of the Jersey Shore. Shark attacks on the Atlantic Coast of the United States outside the semitropical states of Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas were rare, but scholars believe that the increased presence of sharks and humans in the water led to the attacks in 1916. Local and national reaction to the attacks involved a wave of panic that led to shark hunts aimed at eradicating "man-eating" sharks and protecting the economies of New Jersey's seaside communities. The Jersey Shore attacks immediately entered into American popular culture, where sharks became caricatures in editorial cartoons representing danger. The attacks inspired Peter Benchley's novel Jaws which was later made into an influential film in 1975 by Steven Spielberg. (more...)

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