Since it's easier to start again with a trifle than a weighty tome... My friend Dave found the Wikipedia article of the week:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_Park

It is written in the slightly tongue-in-cheek style of a Wiki article that hasn't been found by the deletionist hordes yet, interspersing slight anecdotes with factual information. Knowledge doesn't have to be boring.

This New Jersey water park, a more extreme version of Ireland's Clara Lara, opened in the late 70s and closed in the late 90s. But it lives on, on the internet, where the history of each incredibly dangerous ride becomes more and more vivid.

Kids who grew up in New Jersey still talk about Action Park today, and reminisce about the thrill of danger, especially of the almost legendary looping waterslide.

Some choice quotes from the Wikipedia article:

For the remainder of the park's existence, it remained visible near the entrance of Waterworld, tempting visitors with the possibility of the thrilling ride it might have offered yet tempering it with the high potential for injury that was just as obvious from looking at it.

A rider also reportedly got stuck at the top of the loop due to insufficient water pressure, and a hatch had to be built at the bottom of the slope to allow for future extractions

As with the Super Speedboats mentioned below, the bumper boats pond was infested with snakes, and the boats themselves were notoriously difficult to maneuver, so much so that the employees who worked there in 1990 were reduced to shouting "Skee-Da-Va", "Squeeze The Wheeze", and other nonsense.

The director of the emergency room at a nearby hospital said they treated from five to ten victims of park accidents on some of the busiest days, and the park eventually bought the township of Vernon extra ambulances to keep up with the volume.

Read it all, and enjoy the strange sensation that you are watching a 1980s Australian comedy.

Further reading:

• Remembering Action Park
  With great photos and PDFs of the plans for the park
• Weird N.J.'s article
• Flickr album of a 1994 visit
  Delicously 90s nostalgia

Jean Medécin,

who had a son who was also mayor for a long time,

Jacques Medécin

who, unlike his father, was fond of

Gaullism,

the French political ideology which espouses national independence, including the

Force de frappe,

the tactical and strategic framework for

France's weapons of mass destruction,

which were mostly tested in her colonies and had some costly accidents including the

Beryl incident,

when some soldiers and officials were exposed to radiation, including another Gaullist,

Gaston Paleweski,

long-time lover of English novelist Nancy Mitford, one of the

Mitford sisters,

another of whom married

Oswald Mosley

a notable British proponent of

fascism.

My Father's Kodachrome and B&W Contributions

This Wikipedia user has scanned and uploaded some of his father's old photographs, from America and Europe, seemingly from the 1960s. What strikes me is the difference that still existed between places, a far cry from the homogenous urban and suburban landscapes of today.

What attracted me most was the comparison I could draw between London and Chicago at the time.