1613 – Juan (Jan) Rodriguez[1][2][3] became the first documented non-Native American to live on Manhattan Island.[4] He is considered the first immigrant, the first person of African heritage, the first person of European heritage, the first merchant, the first Latino, and the first Dominican to settle in Manhattan.[5]
1624 – New Amsterdam is founded by the Dutch West India Company. In May 1624, the first settlers in New Netherland arrived on Noten Eylandt (Nut or Nutten Island, now Governors Island).
1626 – Chattel slavery introduced to North America with the unloading of 11 Africans.
1639 – Jonas Bronck, a Swedish settler bought 500 acres of land from the Lenape tribe, creating a settlement called "Bronck's Land", soon after this settlement would be known as The Bronx.
1643 – Kieft's War between Lenape or Wappinger and Dutch colonists. Events partially took place within what would become the five boroughs.
1648 – First fire wardens (Martin Krieger, Thomas Hall, Adrian Wyser, and George Woolsey) appointed by Peter Stuyvesant
1775 – Bowne & Co. printers, founded by descendants of John Bowne of the Flushing Remonstrance, established at 39 Pearl Street. Until 2010 it was the oldest publicly traded company in the United States.
September 15: American troops stand off British troops in Battle of Harlem Heights in northern Manhattan.
September 21: Approximately 1000 houses, a quarter of the city, are destroyed in the Great Fire of 1776 a week after British troops captured the city during the American Revolution. Arson is speculated (with Gen. George Washington and the British being among those blamed) and, during a round-up of suspicious persons by British forces, Nathan Hale is arrested.[24]
September 22: Execution of Nathan Hale by the British as a spy.
November 16: Battle of Fort Washington, as Royal Navy warships sail north up the Hudson River and attack Forts Washington and Lee; British now controlling the river and in power in the area.
1778 – August 3: Fire near Cruger's Wharf destroys 64 homes.[25]
1780 – Black population reaches 10,000; New York becomes the center of free Black life in North America.
1783 – November 25: British troops depart;[12] New Yorkers celebrate Evacuation Day, the day Gen. George Washington returned to the city with his Continental Army and the last British forces left the newly recognized independent United States. War veteran John Van Arsdale climbs up a greased pole to remove the Union Jack left in defiance by the British, replacing it with the Stars and Stripes.
September 3: Norfolk and Long Island Hurricane causes a storm surge of 13 ft in one hour, leading to widespread flooding south of Canal Street, but few deaths are reported. The hurricane is estimated to have been a Category 3 event and to have made landfall at Jamaica Bay.
May 15: The boiler of steamship Aetna explodes as the ship is en route in New York Harbor. At least 10 passengers are killed, and many more seriously injured.[40]
1832 – Cholerapandemic reaches North America. It breaks out in New York City on June 26, peaks at 100 deaths per day during July, and finally abates in December. More than 3500 people die in the city, many in the lower-class neighborhoods, particularly Five Points. Another 80,000 people, one third of the population, are said to have fled the city during the epidemic.[42][43]
December 16: New York Stock Exchange and hundreds of other buildings are destroyed by the Great Fire, which rages for two days in the Financial District. Efforts to stop the fire are limited by sub-zero temperatures, which freeze water in hoses, wells, and the East River. Twenty-three insurance companies are wiped out by the resulting claims.
School of Law of the University of the City of New York established.[45]
July 25: Mary Cecilia Rogers, a young woman known popularly as "The Beautiful Cigar Girl", disappeared and her dead body was found floating in the Hudson River three days later. The details surrounding the case suggested she was murdered. The death of this well-known person received national attention for weeks. The story became immortalized by Edgar Allan Poe in his story "The Mystery of Marie Roget". Despite intense media interest and an attempt to solve the enigma by Poe, the crime remains one of the most puzzling unsolved murders of New York City.
1848 pencil drawing of a side and top view of a needlefish caught in New York, N.Y., drawn by Jacques Burkhardt.1848
December: Cholera outbreak begins, its spread initially limited by winter weather. By June 1849, it reaches epidemic proportions. 5071 city residents are killed.[51]
Brooklyn Riot of 1862 occurred August 4 between the New York Metropolitan Police against a white mob attacking African American strike-breakers at a Tobacco Factory.[58]
Roman Catholics constitute nearly half of the city's population due to heavy Irish immigration. Catholic schools educate approximately 18% of the city's 100,000 school-aged children.[59]
Cholera epidemic kills "only" 1,137, its spread having been limited by the efforts of the new Metropolitan Board of Health, and enforcement of sanitation laws.[61]
December 5: A stage lamp ignites scenery and starts the Brooklyn Theater Fire during a performance of "The Two Orphans", killing at least 276 people, primarily patrons in the upper gallery.[64]
January 13: A train wreck occurs just south of Spuyten Duyvil Creek when a local train from Tarrytown crashes into the tail end of an express from Albany, which had been stopped on the tracks after someone pulled the emergency brake. Eight were killed, including a state senator.
March 12–13: Great Blizzard of 1888, or "White Hurricane", paralyzes the Eastern seaboard from Maryland to Maine; in New York City causing temperatures to fall as much as 60 degrees. About 21 inches (53 cm) of snow fall on the city, but enormous winds whip it into drifts as much as 20 feet deep. Regionally, over 400 people are said to have died in the storm's path.[69]
August 5–13: 1896 Eastern North America heat wave prostrates the city, with temperatures exceeding 90 °F for nine days both day and night, with stagnant air and oppressive humidity. In all, 420 people die, mostly in crowded tenements in areas such as the Lower East Side.
December 10: New York Aquarium opens in Castle Garden in Battery Park, the oldest continuously operated aquarium in the United States.
March 14: Fire swept through an overcrowded tenement at 105 Allen Street on the Lower East Side, killing at least twenty people and injuring numerous more.
August 9, 1910 – Reformist Mayor William Jay Gaynor is shot in Hoboken, New Jersey by former city employee James Gallagher. He eventually dies in 1913.
August 30: Prior to its departing to training ahead of World War I, 27th Infantry Division participated in a large send-off parade in New York City along 5th Avenue.
1918
The "Great Influenza Pandemic" rages across the country and worldwide. On one particularly virulent October day, 851 people died in New York City alone.
November 1: The actions of a substitute motorman filling in during a strike lead to a subway crash in Flatbush. The Malbone Street Wreck kills 97 people heading home from work and injures a hundred more.[95]
September 16: Wall Street bombing kills 38 at "the precise center, geographical as well as metaphorical, of financial America and even of the financial world". Anarchists were suspected (Sacco and Vanzetti had been indicted just days before) but no one was ever charged with the crime.
New York Giants football team (founded by original owner Tim Mara) was one of the five teams to join the NFL.
Population reaches 7,774,000, making New York City the largest in the world according to demographers Chandler & Fox. This role would be relinquished in 1965 to Tokyo.
August 6: New York Supreme Court associate justice Joseph Force Crater disappears, last seen entering a taxicab. He was declared legally dead in 1939. His mistress Sally Lou Ritz (22) disappeared a few weeks later.
March 19: The arrest of a shoplifter inflames racial tensions in Harlem and escalates to rioting and looting, with three killed, 125 injured and 100 arrested.[101]
July 4: New York Yankees celebrating Lou Gehrig appreciation day. That day, Gehrig (who was diagnosed with ALS) spoke in his farewell address by saying: "... today, I considered myself, the luckiest man on the face of the earth."
October 8: New York Yankees won their 4th consecutive World Series title, and their 8th in franchise history, by sweeping the Cincinnati Reds in 4 games.
Population: 7,454,995.[76] White non-Hispanic population peaks at 6,856,586 or 92% of the total.
1941
The first two television stations in the city signed on the air for the first time. The first was WNBT Channel 1 (now WNBC Channel 4), to signed on the air. And the second was WCBW (now WCBS-TV) Channel 2, to signed on the air.
October 6: New York Yankees won their 9th World Series championship.
August 1: Race riot erupts in Harlem after an African-American soldier is shot by the police and rumored to be killed. The incident touches off a simmering brew of racial tension, unemployment, and high prices to a day of rioting and looting. Several looters are shot dead, with blood everywhere, and about 500 persons are injured and another 500 arrested.
May 13: Holland Tunnel fire caused by exploding truck carrying eighty 55-gallon drums of carbon disulfide seriously damages the tunnel's infrastructure and injures 66, with 27 hospitalized, mostly from smoke inhalation.
October 9: New York Yankees won 12th World Series title, defeating the Brooklyn Dodgers in five games.
October 11: Channel 9 became the last VHF station in the city to sign on the air as WOR-TV (now WWOR-TV).
August 31: William O'Dwyer resigned from office as mayor, because of the city's police corruption scandal; Vincent R. Impellitteri appointed acting mayor.
November: Impellitteri elected 101st mayor, the first since the consolidation of greater New York in 1898.
March 29: A bomb that exploded in Grand Central Terminal, injuring no one, marked the end of self-imposed hiatus of George Metesky, a.k.a. the "Mad Bomber". In 1951 alone he had five bombs explode at New York City landmarks, such as the New York Public Library Main Branch.[107]
October 10: New York Yankees won their third consecutive World Series title, and 14th overall in franchise history, defeated the New York Giants in six games.
New York State law takes over from World War II era Federal laws regarding Rent control. At the time over two million rental units are impacted.
October 7: New York Yankees tied the record, winning their fourth straight World Series championship, and 15th overall in franchise history, by defeating the Brooklyn Dodgers in 7 games.
1953
October 5: New York Yankees won a record fifth consecutive World Series championship, and 16th overall in franchise history.
October 2: The "Sunday Bomber" began placing and detonating bombs on successive Sundays from October 2 through November 6, injuring dozens, killing a young teenager, and involving over 600 NYPD officers.[111][112]
December 16: Mid-air collision between TWA Flight 266 (inbound to Idlewild Airport, now JFK) and United Airlines Flight 826 (inbound to LaGuardia Airport) over Miller Field, Staten Island.[113] The TWA aircraft crashed at the site, killing all aboard, while the United aircraft continued flying for about eight miles until it crashed in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn, narrowly missing a school. All 128 aboard both aircraft died, along with six persons on the ground in Brooklyn.
October 3: 23 are killed and 94 injured when an improperly maintained and operated steam boiler explodes and rips through a New York Telephone Company building cafeteria at lunchtime in the Inwood section of Manhattan.[116]
December 11: Board of Estimate votes unanimously to reject Robert Moses's proposal to build a Lower Manhattan Expressway which would have cut through from the Williamsburg Bridge to the Holland Tunnel and dramatically changed Soho and Little Italy.
July 18: Riots break out in Harlem in protest over the killing of a 15-year-old by a white NYPD officer. One person is killed and 100 are injured in the violence.[119]
November 21: Verrazano-Narrows Bridge between Brooklyn and Staten Island opens. Bridge at the time is the longest in the world.
October: Pope Paul VI arrives as the first Catholic pope to ever visit the U.S. and gives his "war never again" speech against U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
October 8: James "Groovy" Hutchinson, 21, an East Village hippie/stoner, and Linda Fitzpatrick, 18, a newly converted flower child from a wealthy Greenwich, Connecticut family, are found bludgeoned to death at 169 Avenue B, an incident dubbed "The Groovy Murders" by the press. Two drifters later pleaded guilty to the murders.[123]
Singer Building demolished. Tallest structure ever destroyed until the World Trade Center is destroyed on September 11, 2001.
1969
January 12: Jets win their only Super Bowl Championship, beating the Baltimore Colts.
February 10:Nor'easter kills 14 and injures 68. Dubbed the "Lindsay Snowstorm", outer borough residents (especially in Queens) accuse the city of favoring Manhattan for snow removal (streets in Queens were not cleared a week after the storm). Lindsay subsequently loses the Republican primary for re-election.
June 28: A questionable police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a Greenwich Village gay bar, is resisted by the patrons and leads to a riot. The event helps inspire the founding of the modern homosexual rights movement.
November 10: Sesame Street children's television program begins broadcasting.[125]
May 21: Two NYPD officers, Waverly Jones and Joseph Piagentini, were shot by members of the Black Liberation Army in Harlem. The gunmen, Herman Bell and Anthony Bottom, still in prison as of 2017, were rearrested in jail in connection with the 1971 killing of a San Francisco police officer.[127] Bottom was released in 2020.[128]
August 22: John Wojtowicz and Salvatore Naturale held up a Brooklyn bank for 14 hours for cash to pay for Wojtowicz's wife's sex change operation. The scheme failed when the police arrived, leading to a tense 14-hour standoff. Natuarale was killed by the police at JFK Airport. The incident served as the basis for the 1975 film Dog Day Afternoon.
December 29: A bomb explodes in the baggage claim area of the TWA terminal at LaGuardia Airport, killing 11 and injuring 74. The perpetrators were never identified.[132]
July 29: David Berkowitz (aka the "Son of Sam") kills one person and seriously wounds another in the first of a series of attacks that terrorized the city for the next year.
October 10: Giants NFL team ceases playing in the city and plays its first game in the Meadowlands at the new Giants Stadium.
Battery Park City is created on land reclaimed from the Hudson River with 3 million cubic yards of soil and rock excavated from numerous locations throughout the city.
February 18: Hometowners Kiss plays their first Madison Square Garden show, the first of what would be six such shows during that decade (three more were in Dec. 1977, all of these 1977 "Garden shows" were sold outs and two more afterwards in July 1979).
April 26: Grand opening in Manhattan of Studio 54.
May 16: A New York Airways helicopter idling at the helipad on the MetLife Building – then the PanAm Building – toppled over and its rotor blade sheared off. The blade killed four people on the roof and then fell over the edge and down 59 stories and a block over to Madison Avenue where it killed a pedestrian.
May 25: A fire at the Everard Baths at 28 West 28th Street in Manhattan killed 9 patrons.
July 13–14: New York City again loses electrical power in the blackout of 1977.[66] Unlike the previous blackout twelve years earlier, this blackout is followed by widespread rioting and looting. Many neighborhoods, most notably Bushwick, were almost completely devastated.
August 10: David Berkowitz, the city's "son of Sam" serial killer, is captured outside his Yonkers apartment and brought back to the city for indictment and detention.
Mainstream prominence of disco music confirmed with December 14 release of Saturday Night Fever (set in the Italian-American community of Brooklyn). Also that evening, city formed heavy metalers Kiss plays the first of their three night return gigs through the 16th at Madison Square Garden, all sold outs like their first such "Garden gig" that February 18.
May 25: Six-year-old Etan Patz vanishes after leaving his SoHo apartment to walk to his school bus alone. Despite a massive search by the NYPD the boy is never found, and was declared legally dead in 2001.[136]
October 2: Pope John Paul II visits city, gives speech at U.N. against all forms of concentration camps and tortures in light of the then 40th anniversary of World War II's first establishing of both in his native Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and continuation afterwards by post-war Polish Communists.
September 25: The Grand Hyatt Hotel, on the site of the former Commodore Hotel near Grand Central Terminal, is opened, representing the first completed real estate project of Donald Trump.
December 3: Staten Island Congressman John Murphy was convicted of bribery in the Abscam bribery scam which convicted seven Congressmen.[138]
December: Transit Authority grounded its fleet of GrummanFlxible buses due to cracks in their A-frames. TA rents 150 old buses from Washington Metro.[139]
Non-Hispanic white population totals 3,668,945, down over 3 million from 1940 and representing only 51.9% of total population.
Sister city relationship established with Beijing, China.
1981
May 6: Staten Island Ferry American Legion II crashes into a Norwegian freighter during the AM rush hour; 71 passengers injured.
July 3: First article about "rare cancer seen in homosexuals" (AIDS) appears in The New York Times.[140]
AIDS is reported from here, with the city as #1 in descending order of U.S. cases of this disease (San Francisco and Los Angeles, later the first city where symptoms of it were reported to the CDC in June of this year.
January 1: Ed Koch is sworn into his second term as the city's 105th mayor.
March 20: Frances Schreuder, ~nee Bradshaw, is arrested in her Manhattan townhouse at 10 Gracie Square for 1978's Franklin Bradshaw murder of her multi-millionaire father that she forced her 17 year old son, Marc, into committing out of fears of her disinheritance from Franklin's will.
June 22: Willie Turks, an African American 34-year-old MTA worker, is set upon and killed by a white mob in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn.
October 7: Cats premieres on Broadway and subsequently holds the record for longest running Broadway show from 1997 to 2006.
Sister city relationships established with Cairo, Egypt, and Madrid, Spain.
1983
April 15: New York Post under new owner Rupert Murdoch issues famous headline "Headless Body in Topless Bar"
September 15: Michael Stewart is allegedly beaten into a coma by New York Transit Police officers. Stewart died 13 days later from his injuries at Bellevue Hospital. On November 24, 1985, after a six-month trial, six officers were acquitted on charges stemming from Stewart's death.[141]
October 6: Terence Cooke, Catholic archbishop of New York, dies at 62.
Sister city relationship established with Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
Midtown New York City seen from 2 World Trade Center in 1984
1984
April 15: Palm Sunday massacre – Christopher Thomas, 34, murders two women and 8 children at 1080 Liberty Avenue in the East New York section of Brooklyn.
October 29: 66-year-old Eleanor Bumpurs is shot and killed by police as they tried to evict her from her Bronx apartment. Bumpurs, who was mentally ill, was wielding a knife and had slashed one of the officers. The shooting provoked heated debate about police racism and brutality. In 1987 officer Stephen Sullivan was acquitted on charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide stemming from the shooting.[142]
December 22: Bernhard Goetz shoots and wounds four unarmed black men on a 2 train on the subway who tried to rob him, generating weeks of headlines and many discussions about crime and vigilantism in the media.
Fictional Cosby Show (television program) begins broadcasting.[36]
1985
June 12: Edmund Perry, returning graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, is shot to death in Harlem by undercover officer Lee Van Houten after Perry and his brother, Jonah, attacked Van Houten to get money for a film. Van Houten was acquitted the following month.
January 1: Ed Koch is sworn into his third and final term as the city's 105th mayor.
March 7: Channel 5 changes its call letters from WNEW-TV to WNYW.
March 17: St. Patrick's Day – Rosanna Scotto joined WNYW Channel 5 as a news reporter for the station's 10 P.M. weeknight newscast. At the time, she said: "In Manhattan, Rosanna Scotto, Channel 5 News".
July 7: A deranged man, Juan Gonzalez, wielding a machete kills 2 and wounds 9 on the Staten Island Ferry. In 2000 Gonzalez was granted unsupervised leave from his residence at the Bronx Psychiatric Hospital.[143]
August 26: The "preppie murder": 18-year-old student Jennifer Levin is murdered by Robert Chambers in Central Park after the two had left a bar to have sex in the park. The case was sensationalized in the press and raised issues over victims' rights, as Chambers' attorney attempted to smear Levin's reputation to win his client's freedom.
October 4: Broadcaster Dan Rather is attacked on Park Avenue by two men, one of which repeated "Kenneth, what is the frequency?"
October 27: New York Mets won their second World Series title in franchise history, defeating the Boston Red Sox in 7 games.
November 13: Wollman Rink reopens after being shut for 6 years due to the efforts of Donald Trump.
November 19: 20-year-old Larry Davis opens fire on police officers attempting to arrest him in his sister's apartment in the Bronx. Six officers are wounded, and Davis eludes capture for the next 17 days, during which time he became something of a folk hero in the neighborhood. Davis was stabbed to death in jail in 2008.
November 24: 2 Port Authority police officers and a holdup we're seriously shot and wounded in a shootout at a Queens diner.
December 20: A white mob in Howard Beach, Queens, attacks three African-American men whose car had broken down in the largely white neighborhood. One of the men, Michael Griffith is chased onto Shore Parkway where he is hit and killed by a passing car. The killing prompted several tempestuous marches through the neighborhood led by Al Sharpton.
May 19: 11-year-old Juan Perez is mauled and killed by two polar bears after he and his friends sneak into the enclosure at the Prospect Park Zoo that night.[144]
June 16: Bernhard Goetz is acquitted of the four attempted murders but convicted of one illegal gun possession count in 1984's subway shooting.
November 2: Joel Steinberg and his lover Hedda Nussbaum are arrested for the beating and neglect of their six-year-old adopted daughter Lisa Steinberg, who died two days later from her injuries. The case provoked outrage that did not subside when Steinberg was released from prison in 2004 after serving 15 years.
March 8: The first of the copycat Zodiac Killer Heriberto Seda's eight shooting victims is wounded in an attack in Brooklyn. Between 1990 and 1993, Seda will wound 5 and kill 3 in his serial attacks. He is captured in 1996 and convicted in 1998.
March 25: Arson at the Happyland Social Club at 1959 Southern Boulevard in the East Tremont section of the Bronx kills 87 people unable to escape the packed dance club.[146]
September 2: Tourist Brian Watkins from Utah is stabbed to death in the Seventh Avenue – 53rd Street station by a gang of youths. Watkins was visiting New York with his family to attend the US Open Tennis tournament in Queens, when he was killed defending his family from a gang of muggers. The killing marked a low point in the record murder year of 1990 (in which 2,242 were recorded) and led to an increased police presence in New York.[147]
January 24: Arohn Kee rapes and murders 13-year-old Paola Illera in East Harlem while she is on her way home from school. Her body is later found near the FDR Drive. Over the next eight years, Kee murders two more women before being arrested in February 1999. He is sentenced to three life terms in prison in January 2001.
July 23: The body of a four-year-old girl is found in a cooler on the Henry Hudson Parkway in Inwood, Manhattan. The identity of the child, dubbed "Baby Hope", was unknown until October 2013, when 52-year-old Conrado Juarez is arrested after confessing to killing the girl, his cousin Anjelica Castillo, and dumping her body.[148]
August 19: A Jewish automobile driver accidentally kills a seven-year-old African-American boy, thereby touching off the Crown Heights riots, during which an Australian Jew, Yankel Rosenbaum, was fatally stabbed by Lemrick Nelson.
December 28: Nine people were crushed to death trying to enter the Nat Holman gymnasium at CCNY. The crowd was trying to gain entry to a celebrity basketball game featuring hip-hop and rap performers including Heavy D and Sean Combs.[151]
February 26: two teens were shot to death by 15 year-old Khalil Sumpter inside Thomas Jefferson High School (Brooklyn) an hour before a scheduled visit by then mayor David Dinkins. Sumpter was paroled in 1998 at the age of 22.[152]
March 22: Ice buildup without subsequent de-icing causes USAir Flight 405 to crash on takeoff from LaGuardia Airport. 27 of the 51 on board are killed.
December 10–13: A noreaster strikes the US Mid-Atlantic coast. The storm surge causes extensive flooding along the city shoreline.
December 17: Patrick Daly, Principal of P.S. 15 in Red Hook, Brooklyn is killed in the crossfire of a drug-related shooting while looking for a pupil who had left his school. The school was later renamed the Patrick Daly school after the beloved principal.[153]
Sister city relationships established with Budapest, Hungary, and Rome, Italy.
1993
February 26: A bomb planted by terrorists explodes in the World Trade Center's underground garage, killing six people and injuring over a thousand, as well as causing much damage to the basement. See: World Trade Center bombing
June 6: The Golden Venture, a freighter carrying 286 illegal immigrants from China runs aground a quarter-mile off the coast of Rockaway, Queens killing 10 passengers.[154]
June 14: New York Rangers won the Stanley Cup, ending their 54-year drought. Brian Leetch became the first American to win the Conn Smythe Trophy as the MVP of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
August 31: William Tager shoots and kills Campbell Theron Montgomery, a technician employed by NBC, outside of the stage of the Today show. Tager is also identified as one of possibly two men who assaulted CBS News anchor Dan Rather on Park Avenue in 1986.
December 15: Disgruntled computer analyst Edward J. Leary firebombs a 3 train with homemade explosives at 145th Street, injuring two teenagers. Six days later, he firebombs a crowded 4 train at Fulton Street, injuring over 40. Leary is sentenced to 94 years in prison for both attacks.[157]
December 22: Anthony Baez, a 29-year-old Bronx man, dies after being placed in an illegal chokehold by NYPD officer Francis X. Livoti. Livoti is sentenced to 7 and a half years in 1998 for violating Baez' civil rights.[158]
June 5: In a collision on the Williamsburg Bridge, a Manhattan-bound J train crashed into a stopped Manhattan-bound M train after passing a red light at high speed, killing one and injuring 50.
December 8: A long racial dispute in Harlem over the eviction of an African-American record store-owner by a Jewish proprietor ends in murder and arson. 51-year-old Roland Smith Jr., angry over the proposed eviction, set fire to Freddie's Fashion Mart on 125th Street and opened fire on the store's employees, killing 7 and wounding four. Smith also perished in the blaze.[159]
March 4: Second Avenue Deli owner Abe Lebewohl is shot and killed during a robbery. The murder of this popular deli owner and East Village fixture remains unsolved as of 2013.[161]
June 4: 22-year-old drifter John Royster brutally beats a 32-year-old female piano teacher in Central Park, the first in a series of attacks over a period of eight days. Royster would go on to brutally beat another woman in Manhattan, rape a woman in Yonkers and beat a woman, Evelyn Alvarez, to death on Park Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. In 1998, Royster was sentenced to life in prison without parole.[162]
August 9: Abner Louima is beaten and sodomized with a plunger at the 70th Precinct house in Brooklyn by several NYPD officers, who were led by Justin Volpe.
November 7: A Manhattan couple, Camden Sylvia, 36, and Michael Sullivan, 54, disappear from their loft at 76 Pearl Street in Manhattan after arguing with their landlord over a lack of heat in their apartment. The landlord, Robert Rodriguez, pleaded guilty to tax evasion, larceny and credit card fraud following the missing persons investigation. The couple is presumed dead.[166]
October 21: New York Yankees won their 24th World Series championship, sweeping the San Diego Padres in 4, finishing with their highest ever with 125 wins, and just 50 losses.
Fictional Sex and the City television programme begins broadcasting.
January 3: 32-year-old Kendra Webdale is killed after being pushed in front of an oncoming subway train at the 23rd Street station by Andrew Goldstein, a 29-year-old schizophrenic. The case ultimately led to the passage of Kendra's Law.
October 25: Yankees win Game 5 of the 2000 World Series versus the Mets.
Acela Express train begins operating between Washington, D.C. and Boston, stopping at New York Penn Station.
Population: 8,008,288. First time population officially reaches this mark, and marks reversal of suburban flight of the 1970s and 1980s with an increase of nearly one million residents over two decades. Over 1.2 million foreign-born residents arrive in New York between 1990 and 2000.[171]
May 10: Actress Jennifer Stahl is killed with two other people in an armed robbery in her apartment above the Carnegie Deli in Manhattan. The victims were bound and shot point-blank in the head.[173]
June 25: Baseball returns to Brooklyn for the first time since the 1957 departure of the Dodgers with the first game of the Brooklyn Cyclones in Coney Island.
September 11: The two World Trade Center twin towers and several surrounding buildings are destroyed by two jetliners in part of a coordinated terrorist attack by radical terrorists ("9/11"), killing 2,606 people who were in the towers and on the ground.
January: New York City is put in a "Drought Warning" after a warm and dry winter. That is upgraded to a "Drought Emergency" in March until the Fall.
March 11: The Tribute in Light memorial is unveiled and lit up every day for the next month. It has since been lit up every September 11.
The Tribeca Film Festival was founded by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff.
2003
January 24: Four teenage boys drown in the Long Island Sound near City Island when their overloaded dinghy sinks. A communication misunderstanding between them and the 911 dispatcher contributed to their deaths[176]
March 10: Police officers James Nemorin and Rodney Andrews are killed during an undercover drug sting in Staten Island. Their killer was originally sentenced to death, but this was changed to life in prison after the death penalty was ruled unconstitutional in the state.[177]
May 16: 57-year-old Alberta Spruill died of heart failure due to the use of stun grenades when police raided her Harlem apartment looking for drugs after a tip from an unreliable informant[178]
Sister city relationship established with Brasília, Brazil.
2005
January 27: Nicole duFresne, an aspiring actress, is shot dead in the Lower East Side section of Manhattan after being accosted by a gang of youths.[181]
February 18: Trash bags containing the body parts of Rashawn Brazell, who was reported missing four days earlier, are found in the Nostrand Avenue station.
October 31: Peter Braunstein sexually assaults a co-worker while posing as a fireman, later leading officials on a multi-state manhunt. Braunstein was later sentenced to life and will be eligible for parole in 2023.
November: After over 190 years in Manhattan the Fulton Fish Market moves to Hunts Point in the Bronx.
January 11: 7-year-old Nixzmary Brown dies after being beaten by her stepfather, Cesar Rodriguez, in their Brooklyn apartment. Rodriguez was convicted of first-degree manslaughter in March 2008.[182]
February 25: Criminology graduate student Imette St. Guillen is brutally tortured, raped, and killed in New York City after being abducted outside the Falls bar in the SoHo section of Manhattan. Bouncer Darryl Littlejohn is convicted of the crime and sentenced to life imprisonment.[183]
April 1: New York University (NYU) student Broderick Hehman is killed after being hit by a car in Harlem. Hehman was chased into the street by a group of black teens who allegedly shouted "get the white boy". The death of Hehman echoed the death of Michael Griffith (manslaughter victim) 20 years earlier in Queens.[184]
July: Parts of Queens suffer a blackout during a heatwave.
July 25: Jennifer Moore, an 18-year-old student from New Jersey is abducted and killed after a night of drinking at a Chelsea bar. Her body is found outside a Weehawken motel. 35-year-old Draymond Coleman was convicted of the crime and sentenced to 50 years in 2010.[186]
September 30: CBGB closes.
October 8: Michael Sandy, a 29-year-old man, is hit by a car on the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn after being beaten by a group of white attackers. Sandy died of his injuries on October 13, 2006. The attack, which is being investigated as a hate crime hearkened back to the killing of Michael Griffith in 1986.[187]
January 2: film student Cameron Hollopeter suffered a seizure in the station and fell off the platform onto the tracks at the 137th Street-City College station. Wesley Autrey saved his life as a train was approaching.[190] Autrey was given numerous awards and prizes,[191][192] and his two daughters were given a scholarship.[193]
March 14: 32-year-old David Garvin goes on a shooting rampage in Greenwich Village, killing a pizzeria employee and two auxiliary police officers before NYPD officers fatally shoot him.[194]
July 9: Police officer Russel Timoshenko is shot on duty after pulling over a stolen vehicle in Crown Heights, Brooklyn and dies five days later.
February 12: Psychologist Kathryn Faughey is brutally murdered in her Manhattan office by a mentally ill man whose intended victim was a psychiatrist in the same practice.,[196]
October 3: City Council votes to relax mayoral term limits to allow Michael Bloomberg to run and serve for a third term.
December 2: 25-year-old aspiring dancer Laura Garza disappears after leaving a Manhattan nightclub with a sex offender named Michael Mele. Her remains are found in Olyphant, Pennsylvania in April 2010. On the first day of his trial in January 2012, Mele admits to killing Garza and pleads guilty to first-degree manslaughter.[198]
Population: 8,175,133; metro 18,897,109.[205] Manhattan's white population exceeds 50% for the first time since the 1970s.[206]
2011
February 11: Maksim Gelman goes on 28-hour rampage, killing 5 and wounding 6 others throughout Brooklyn and Manhattan. He is sentenced to life imprisonment.[207]
July 13: The body of 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky is found dismembered in two locations in Brooklyn after he was allegedly murdered by a 35-year-old Orthodox Jewish clerk.[208]
August 28: Hurricane Irene dumps heavy rain and floods most of the city.
June 1: Johan Santana throws the first no-hitter in New York Mets history, defeating the St. Louis Cardinals 8-0. Santana throws 134 pitches during the historic night.
October: NBA Nets play their first game in the Barclays Center, bringing professional sports back to Brooklyn for the first time since the departure of the Dodgers in 1957.
October 29–30: Hurricane Sandy brings flooding and high winds that result in several deaths and widespread power outages. The New York Stock Exchange, public schools, and all mass transit service were closed as a result.[211] At least 43 deaths have been directly attributed to the storm in New York City alone.[209]
2013
March 9: 16-year-old Kimani Gray dies after being shot by undercover New York police officers in Brooklyn.[212]
September 21: First NHL game ever played in Brooklyn with relocation from Long Island of the New York Islanders. The move ultimately does not go well and the team in 2018 announced its intention to move out of Brooklyn back to Long Island.
March 12: 8 people are killed and over 70 others are injured when an explosion in Harlem destroyed two five-story buildings. A gas leak is suspected as the likely cause of the explosion.[217]
September 17: 2016 Manhattan explosion. A bomb explodes in Chelsea, Manhattan, wounding 29 people. A second device—reportedly a pressure cooker attached to wiring and a mobile phone—was found four blocks from the site of the explosion and was removed safely.[226][227] A suspect, Ahmad Khan Rahami, is apprehended two days later.[228]
July 5: Police officer Miosotis Familia is shot and killed in her command center vehicle in The Bronx. Her killer is then killed by responding officers,
September 17: Final print edition of the Village Voice distributed
October 31: Terrorist truck attack on bike path near West Street kills eight and injures 11.
Over 1.3 million people are registered with New York City's municipal identification card ("IDNYC") program.[236]
February: Genomic analyses suggest that COVID-19 disease had been introduced to New York as early as Mid-February, and that most cases were linked to Europe, rather than Asia.[237]
March 1: A 39-year-old health care worker who had returned home to Manhattan from Iran on February 25 became the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in New York.[238][239]
May 8: The Trump Death Clock website unveiled a companion billboard in Times Square.[242] The Trump Death Clock is based on the claim that had measures been implemented one week earlier, 60% of American COVID-19 deaths would have been avoided.[243]
June: Bicyclists form Street Riders NYC, which held several protests through December 2020 to raise awareness about systemic racism and police brutality.
January 4: Registered Nurse Sandra Lindsay, received her second and final dosage of a EUA approved COVID-19 vaccine.[246] With the second dosage, she is expected to have a 95% immunity to COVID-19.[246]
February 5: SOMOS Community Care opened up Yankee Stadium as a COVID-19 vaccination "mega-site" operated by the SOMOS and the New York National Guard. Former Yankees Mariano Rivera participated in the opening of the site.[247]
September 1: Hurricane Ida brings heavy rain and intense flooding in the city, crippling the New York City Subway and commuter rails.
November 10: Concrete jungle is also becoming for scaffolding that surrounds that concrete. It's a beautiful landmark school that was built 80 years ago, which is covered in scaffolding, boards and netting.[249]
January 9: 17 people are killed in an apartment fire in the Bronx.
January 21: A shooting in Harlem killed one NYPD officer, Jason Rivera, instantly. His partner, Wilber Mora, dies four days later. The shooter, LaShawn McNeil, is killed by another officer.
April 12: A shooting on the N train, inside the 36th Street subway station in Sunset Park (Brooklyn), injured 29 people.
September 14: New York City FC wins the Campeonas Cup defeating Mexico’s Atlas FC 2-0.[251]
October 4: Aaron Judge hits his 62nd home run breaking the American League record, beating out Roger Maris' 61 home runs
June 6: 2023 Central Canada wildfires cause dangerous air pollution, and extreme smoke around the city. Many people consider it a serious health warning and take precautions by wearing a mask. Pedestrians experience trouble breathing and itching in the eyes, and damage to lungs.
June 28: Domingo German, of the New York Yankees, throws the 24th perfect game in MLB history, against the Oakland Athletics defeating them 11-0. German becomes the fourth Yankee to throw a perfect game.
July 14: Suspected Long Island Serial Killer Rex Heuermann is arrested in Midtown Manhattan as a suspect in the murders of three of "the Gilgo Four" victims, Megan Waterman, Melissa Barthelemy, and Amber Costello.
August 4: Social Media influencer Kai Cenat incites extreme violence in Union Square, Manhattan. Cenat held a PlayStation 5 and gift card giveaway with Twitch streamer Fanum. More than a thousand of his followers appeared at the event. Some of the teenagers showed up, climbed on buses, broke car windows, and clashed with the NYPD, the chaos ended in Cenat later being charged, due to the outburst.
August 23: Seventeen year old, Noah Legaspi, jumps off the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Columbus Circle. He falls onto the glass awning and his body splits in half, while his arm lands on the other side of the street. The tragic event occurred because of a breakup between him and his girlfriend. The teenager fell 750 feet from the rooftop of the West Side five star hotel.
September 29: Tropical Storm Ophelia floods the city with 8 inches of rain, a record for the city. The rain causes wild scenes of buses flooded, submerged cars, and people wading knee deep through water. La Guardia Airport gets hit badly with badly flooded terminals, and many delayed flights. A sea lion at Central Park Zoo escapes her pool enclosure due to the torrential rain, but was eventually returned back to the facility's grounds safely.
October: Pro-Palestine and Pro-Israel rallies occur throughout the city including, Washington Square Park and near the United Nations, after the savage attack by terrorist group Hamas on Israel. Governor Kathy Hochul eventually goes to Israel in support of the country, with New York City having the highest population of Jewish people outside of Israel.
More than 95,000 migrants enter the city throughout the year. Many of them housed throughout the five boroughs. The Roosevelt Hotel becomes a hot spot destination for the news arrivals.
2024
January 2: A very rare 1.7 Magnitude earthquake jolts residents in Roosevelt Island as well as Queens.
February 23: Flaco (owl) dies after colliding into an Upper West Side building. The Owl became famous after escaping the Central Park Zoo, due to multiple trespassers damaged his enclosure. The owl escaped through a hole left by the vandals in the exhibit's stainless steel mesh. A memorial was held two days later, with hundreds attending and mourning.
March 6: Governor Hochul employs 1,000 National Guard (United States) on the subway platforms throughout the city to ensure safety, due to the uptick in crime in the subway systems. This is the first time since the 9/11 attacks that they have employed.
March 25: NYPD officer Jonathan Diller is shot and killed in Far Rockaway, Queens after investigating an illegally parked car. One of the men inside the car took out a gun and shot Diller. He was rushed to the hospital and pronounced dead. Former President Donald Trump attended his wake along with Mayor Adams and Governor Hochul.
April 5: An earthquake with a magnitude of 4.8 hits the city that originated in Lebanon, New Jersey. Many residents felt a sudden shake and objects falling around. According to many it is believed to be one of the strongest East coast earthquakes in a century.
April 19: Max Azzarello, a conspiracy theorists, sets himself on fire outside of the courthouse where former President Donald Trump is on trial for his hush money charge to Porn Star Stormy Daniels. Azzarello later dies from his injuries a day later.
May 23: Former President Donald Trump holds a rally in Crotona Park located in the South Bronx. Thousands of residents around the boroughs attend the event.
September 25: Eric Adams becomes the city's first sitting mayor to be indicted by a grand jury. He is charged with, conspiracy to receive campaign contributions from foreign nationals, bribery, and wire fraud. He denies any of the allegations at hand.
New York Citys adds its going to do a re do of its Macy 4th of July fireworks show tickets giveaway after Wednesday planned failed because the website was inaccessible.
The city adds it will reopen website at 10 am on Thursday. They will be given on first come first served basis. There is limit of 2 per person.
Spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams said almost 2000 people were able to select ticket Wednesday. The city had touted a 10,000 ticket giveaway it has 8000 left.
^Grohman, Adam M. (April 2011). "Sentinels and Saviors of the Sea"(PDF). Boating World U. S. Coast Guard Series. River & Sound Publishing of NY, Inc. Archived from the original(PDF) on June 27, 2011. Retrieved September 2, 2011.
^Munroe, Mary H. (2004). "John Wiley Timeline". The Academic Publishing Industry: A Story of Merger and Acquisition. Archived from the original on June 7, 2010 – via Northern Illinois University.
^Yamamori, Yumiko (2008). "Japanese Arts in America, 1895–1920, and the A. A. Vantine and Yamanaka Companies". Studies in the Decorative Arts. 15 (2): 96–126. doi:10.1086/652831. S2CID156648890.
^McShane, Clay; Tarr, Joel (2007). The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN978-0-8018-8600-3.
^ abGregg Lee Carter, ed. (2012). "Chronology". Guns in American Society: An Encyclopedia of History, Politics, Culture, and the Law. ABC-CLIO. ISBN978-0-313-38671-8.
^Munroe, Mary H. (2004). "Pearson Timeline". The Academic Publishing Industry: A Story of Merger and Acquisition. Archived from the original on March 10, 2013 – via Northern Illinois University.
^Thorne, Kathryn Ford (1993). Long, John H. (ed.). New York Atlas of Historical County Boundaries. Simon & Schuster. pp. 33, 118–133. ISBN0-13-051962-6.
^New York. Laws of New York. 1912, 135th Session, Chapter 548, Section 1. p. 1352.
^Munroe, Mary H. (2004). "McGraw-Hill Companies Timeline". The Academic Publishing Industry: A Story of Merger and Acquisition. Archived from the original on December 27, 2014 – via Northern Illinois University.
^Blutrich, Michael. Scores: How I Opened the Hottest Strip Club in New York City, Was Extorted out of Millions by the Gambino Family, and Became One of the Most Successful Mafia Informants in FBI History. 2017
^Lin, Thomas; Markoff, John; Lohr, Steve; Allen, Craig; Allert, Marcia; Roth, Jeff (June 24, 2010). "Timeline: Building Smarter Machines". The New York Times.
^Harrison, Jon, ed. (2003). "News from around the country". Red Tape: Official Newsletter of the Government Documents Round Table of Michigan. ISSN0735-7427 – via Michigan State University Libraries.
Holli, Melvin G., and Jones, Peter d'A., eds. Biographical Dictionary of American Mayors, 1820-1980 (Greenwood Press, 1981) short scholarly biographies each of the city's mayors 1820 to 1980. online; see index at p. 410 for list.
Janowitz, Meta F. (1993). "Indian Corn and Dutch Pots: Seventeenth-Century Foodways in New Amsterdam/New York". Historical Archaeology. 27 (2): 6–24. doi:10.1007/BF03374170. JSTOR25616236. S2CID160127551.
Seaver, Barry W. (2010). "Rebecca Rankin's Campaign for a Municipal Archives in New York, 1920–1952". Libraries & the Cultural Record. 45 (3): 263–296. doi:10.1353/lac.2010.0012. JSTOR25750344. S2CID142742848.
Smith, Andrew F. (2013). New York City: A Food Biography. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN978-1-4422-2713-2. Includes Chronology.
Before/ After: New York City, São Paulo, Brazil: Urb-i. (Photographic "examples of public space transformation from car-oriented to pedestrian friendly. Viewed through Google Streetview")