A Boat Ride, Amusements, Disasters & the Drinking Age

Today in New Jersey history:

June 10. 1809: The steamship Phoenix left Hoboken on a trip down the New Jersey coast and then up the Delaware River to Philadelphia. It was the first steamship to make an ocean voyage.

June 10, 1892: Eldorado Amusement Park in Weehawken opened to much praise in the New York Times. Over 7,000 people visited the park, entertained by a sound and light show entitled “Egypt Through the Ages.”

June 10, 1933: An explosion in the celluloid recycling plant of the American Pyroloxion Waste Company in North Arlington showered flaming bits of celluloid over several hundred bathers in the Passaic River (imagine that) and over a residential section of the town, and left a toll of nine known dead and 175 persons injured.

June 10, 1956: A hailstorm wreaked havoc in Hunterdon and Warren Counties, causing extensive damage to crops, houses, trees and automobiles. Hailstones varying in size from mothballs to golf balls were sighted and, in some places, were piled four to five inches high. 

June 10, 1982: The New Jersey state senate voted to approve a law to raise the state’s drinking age from nineteen to twenty-one. It had been lowered from twenty-one to eighteen in 1973, and then raised to nineteen in 1980. Governor Thomas Kean stated that he would sign the bill once it passed both houses of the legislature. He did.