'STRANGEST MISSION'

Photo: Private Collection

SS Amazone

On Aug. 24, 1939, the steamship Amazone radioed the U.S. Coast Guard "that a lion was loose on board, and that guns were required," according to the official Coast Guard Bulletin, August 1939.

The ship was off the Delaware Capes with a cargo of zoo animals and changed course to meet a patrol boat sent from Cape May, New Jersey.

"The Coast Guard crew on their arrival, having no means of subduing the beast, shot it," the Bulletin said. The next day's New York Times called it "the strangest mission ever recorded in the annals of the Coast Guard."