This Day in Halloween: Peter Benchley, author of "Jaws," "The Deep," "The Island" and "Beast," is born in New York City in 1940. / Illustration by Haley Underwood
Peter Benchley is born in New York City in 1940. The author of Jaws, The Deep, The Island and Beast, as well as co-scriptwriter for Jaws, later regretted the fear his classic book and film inflamed about sharks and he became a marine conservationist. Benchley died in 2006.
