Coney Island Facts

Martin Couney ran a Coney Island sideshow. Visitors paid 25 cents to watch premature babies living in incubators. Hospitals were turning preemies away as weaklings. Couney's exhibit gave them state-of-the-art care for free. Parents paid nothing. Over 40 years, roughly 6,500 of the 8,000 babies in his care went home. He wasn't even a licensed doctor.

The Coney Island Cyclone is a wooden roller coaster that has run since 1927. In 1972, the city planned to bulldoze it to expand the aquarium next door. Fans and a local park owner fought back with a campaign called Save the Cyclone. It worked. New owners reopened the ride in 1975. You can still ride it every summer, dropping 58 degrees at 60 miles an hour.