This is the part of Manhattan that allegedly needed to be sawed off, fifty years after the hoax.  Note that it still hasn't sunk by this point. One of the better known hoaxes in the history of New York City is the famous “sawing off” of the lower end of Manhattan.  The story goes that a ship’s carpenter, a man known simply as Lozier, got to talking with a number of lower Manhattan tradesmen one day in 1824 about how built-up the island was getting.  The story goes that it was widely feared that lower Manhattan would get so heavy with buildings that it would tip over and sink into the harbor.  A solution was proposed: cut the lower part of the island off, float it out into the harbor, spin it around 180 degrees, and reattach it, thus balancing out Manhattan and preventing it from sinking.  Lozier gathered a number of workers who met at where the Bowery and Broadway split, and another group to meet at the corner of the Bowery and Spring Street.  They were to be ready to wo

Ah, crab Rangoon!  Staple of Chinese menus everywhere!  Well, maybe not everywhere.  Maybe just everywhere from Maine to Hawaii.  Crab Rangoon appears on the menu at pretty much any Chinese restaurant these days.  Well, in any American Chinese restaurant, anyway.  You’re not likely to find this ancient staple of Chinese cuisine in any part of China itself.  If the Chinese are missing out, they don’t seem to mind. Crab Rangoon is a side dish, not an entrée.  In case you’re not familiar, it’s a pretty simple invention.  It’s a wonton wrapped around cream cheese, crab meat (or imitation crab meat), scallions, onions and garlic.  All this is folded into either three leaves or four, then deep fried in oil, looking like a crispy, tan flower.  There’s nothing more to it: it’s another wonderful, fried part of the American culinary landscape. In case you think I need to apologize to the Chinese for assigning this delicacy to the United States, let me clear a few things up, and tell you wh