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On an ominously grey Sunday morning, I stood in line against the Trader Joe's on Atlantic Avenue with a handful of hungover friends and dozens of strangers, waiting my turn to climb down a manhole at the intersection of Atlantic and Court Street. The oldest subway tunnel in the world runs beneath Atlantic Avenue near downtown Brooklyn. Though in existence since the 1840s, it was no more than a myth until Bob Diamond shimmied through a tiny crawlspace nearly 30 years ago and rediscovered the presumed-destroyed tunnel.

Bob, an affable fount of historical knowledge on all things tunnel, Brooklyn, and transportation, guides tourists on monthly or bi-monthly tours of the tunnel to which he's dedicated much study and his non-profit organization, the Brooklyn Historic Railway Association. In the cavernous brick and earth tunnel dating from the 1840s, he uncovers political corruption, scandals, and rumors of the past 150 years. The stories are stunning, and the (mostly local) tourists hang on Bob's every word. Historical education in a sealed-off tunnel several stories below Brooklyn? Best Sunday ever.