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The tale of Topsy the Elephant is sad and cruel, and today marks the 110th year since her grisly demise at the hands of Thomas Edison’s staged electrocution on Coney Island at Luna Park.

Topsy was a female circus elephant who never was comfortable with her captivity. Over her 28-year lifespan, she killed three men including a sadistic and abusive trainer who tried to feed Topsy lit cigarettes as food. Because of Topsy’s infractions towards her brutal masters, she was deemed too dangerous to live.

Originally, Topsy’s Luna Park owners wanted to kill her by hanging, but according to Wikipedia, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals stepped in and prevented that from happening. Although, quite frankly, in today’s world the logistics of hanging an elephant seem far more amazing than any of the alternatives.

But that’s today’s world. One hundred years ago, the alternative offered by famed inventor Thomas Edison was nearly magical. Edison stepped up and had the bright idea of electrocuting Topsy to death. Why that wasn’t considered cruel is beyond me, but everyone was willing to go along with it. It was just that kind of world.

Edison’s motives were to use poor Topsy as a prop in his ongoing war against Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla’s far superior Alternating Current electrical system. Edison, the inventor of the clearly inferior Direct Current method, juiced Topsy with 6,600 volts of Tesla’s AC, dropping her in seconds.

More than 1,500 spectators gathered at Luna Park on January 4, 1903, to witness the grim spectacle, and Edison filmed the execution as “evidence” of AC’s unsafe nature.

Edison distributed his short film throughout the United States, providing one of the earliest examples of filmed corporate propaganda. Ultimately, DC won the battle for America’s infrastructure in large part because of this flick.

While Topsy’s fate was tragic, her memory lives on in the form of a memorial erected at the Coney Island Museum on July 20, 2003.

Charles Denson and Keith Suber at 2011 Coney Island Film Festival. Photo © Norman Blake

Keith Suber is the type of guy who can give you hope for a better world. An original Rollin’ 60’s Crip gang member, who led a perilous life of crime most of us cannot begin to imagine, Suber stars in “The Last Immortal,” a Charles Denson documentary, which originally premiered at the Coney Island Film Festival and was awarded Best Documentary Feature.

There will be a free screening of the award-winning film, presented by the Coney Island History Project, November 5, 7:00 p.m. in the auditorium at Liberation High School, 2865 West 19th Street at Mermaid Avenue.

Suber is a forty-five year old reformed Coney Island gang leader. After having been shot four times and paying a 10-year debt to society in a federal penitentiary, the 45-year-old Suber has turned his life around by founding an organization in Coney whose mission it is to put an end to deadly gun violence in his community.

According to the release:

Keith’s brothers “Blue” and the “Colonel” ran one of the 1970’s Coney gangs that the movie “The Warriors” was based on. This film, shot on the streets of Coney Island, shows the reality of gang violence, its influence on the Coney Island community, and Suber’s efforts at saving lives through youth mentorship, job training, and intervention.

After the 90-minute film, a question and answer session with Denson and Suber will follow. For more, go here, or to www.coneyislandhistory.org.

Last year's Coney Island Film Festival. Source: Norman Blake / Coney Island Film Festival

Sorry for the short notice on this one — the 11th Annual Coney Island Film Festival is happening today and through the weekend, September 23-25 at the Sideshows By The Seashore, Coney Island Museum and New York Aquarium in Coney Island.

You can purchase tickets at the Coney Island USA Gift Shop, 1208 Surf Avenue, September 23 from 6:00 to 11:00 p.m., September 24 from 12:00 to 11:00 p.m. and September 25 from 12:00 to 6:00 p.m. It should be noted when you purchase your tickets that Programs 1, 2, 14 and the Sunday Screening Pass have sold out. All other programs and parties have tickets available.

For a comprehensive schedule of programming, including dates, times and event descriptions, go to the Coney Island Film Festival’s website.

An artifact from the Congress of Curious Peoples exhibit (Source: Coney Island USA)

If you think Coney Island is all sorts of wild now, you should have seen it 100 years ago. Coney Island was once a place filled with unforgettable freak shows and spectacles that would be controversial today.

A typical day in Coney Island between 1890 and 1915 would mean seeing shows that included everything from live fires to hundreds of midgets to real premature babies. A year long series of exhibitions, performances and lectures hope to capture everything that Coney Island was back then.

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2009 Mermaid Parade - Photo courtesy of Whiskeygonebad via Flickr

Dick Zigun, the Officially Unelected Mayor of Coney Island, will give his annual overview of the current state of affairs in America’s Playground this Sunday, May 30. Zigun is expected to highlight the launch of the New Luna Park, the excitement of the long-anticipated “rebirth” of the amusement area, and the remaining questions about the future of the important historic structures that remain intact in Coney Island’s historic district. The proposal for Peace Talks and New Strategies for Amusements will be put forth. The event takes place at 4:30 p.m. at the Coney Island Museum (1208 Surf Avenue, between Stillwell Avenue and West 12th Street).

The speech comes ahead of the 2010 Mermaid Parade, the nation’s largest art parade that ushers in the freak spirit for Coney Island’s summer. This year, legendary musician and Brooklyn native Lou Reed of Velvet Underground will be crowned King Neptune, alongside Queen Mermaid Laurie Anderson – Reed’s wife and fellow musician. The parade takes place on June 19 at 2 p.m. Marching begins on Surf Avenue at West 21st Street.