Few New Yorkers remember the night when firemen, in tuxedos and top
hats, were dragged from a ball to extinguish a Waterloo blaze, or the
typographical error that reported Theodore Roosevelt taking a bath?
instead of his presidential oath.? Still fewer remember Cephas Bennett,
a missionary from Utica and printer of the first Burmese Bible, or H.L.
Mencken's humorous article on the history of the bathtub, still quoted
today as factual although entirely invented. Seasoned storyteller
Melanie Zimmer seamlessly weaves together these hard-to-believe, yet
entirely true, tales. From the monster of Seneca Lake to the man who
inspired the American icon Uncle Sam, discover the lost secrets of the
Empire State.