1613 – Juan Rodriguez became the first documented non-Native American to live on Manhattan Island. 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.
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.
1776
* In February David Mathews became the city's 43rd mayor and the highest ranking civilian leader of the British held territory during the American Revolution. Arrested June 22 in plot to kill George Washington.
* July 9: Statue of George III demolished and melted down for shot / bullets at Bowling Green square.
* September 15: British troops capture lower Manhattan following the Landing at Kip's Bay on the East River.
* 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 and, during a round-up of suspicious persons by British forces, Nathan Hale is arrested.
* September 22: Execution of Nathan Hale by the British as a spy.
1778 – August 3: Fire near Cruger's Wharf destroys 64 homes.
1780 – Black population reaches 10,000; New York becomes the center of free black life in North America.
1783 – November 25: British troops depart; 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.
* December 9: The "Coffee House Slip Fire" burns from the foot of Wall Street and East River to Maiden Lane.
1797 – Newgate Prison built.
1798
* The "great epidemic", a major yellow fever epidemic, kills 2086 people from late July to November. Epidemics occur in several other years, but this was the worst of them all.
* 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.
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.
1833 – Harper & Brothers publisher in business.
1834
* July: Anti-abolitionist riots.
* Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Color held.
* 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.
* 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.
* December: Cholera outbreak begins, its spread initially limited by winter weather. By June 1849, it reaches epidemic proportions. 5071 city residents are killed.
* July 13–16: Approximately 50,000 people riot in protest of President Abraham Lincoln's announcement of a draft for troops to fight in the American Civil War. Over 100 are killed and many African Americans flee the city. The film Gangs of New York takes place during the draft riots.
* 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.
1866
*Cedar Tavern and A.A. Vantine in business.
*Steinway Hall built.
*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.
* July 30: A boiler explosion aboard the Westfield IIStaten Island Ferry kills 125 among hundreds of Manhattanites making a weekend trip to the beaches.
* 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.
* January 13: A train wreck occurs just south of Spuyten Duyvil Creek when a local train from Tarrytowncrashes into the tail end of an express from Albany, which had stopped on the tracks to make an emergency repair. At least 10 persons 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 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.
* 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.
* September 21: Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus newspaper editorial published.
1898
* January 1: City of Greater New York created, consolidating the existing City of New York with the eastern Bronx, Brooklyn, most of Queens County, and Staten Island.
* September 13: Henry H. Bliss becomes the first person killed in an automobile accident in the United States when he steps off a streetcar at West 74th Street and Central Park West and is struck by a taxicab.
General Slocum, carrying 1300 to a picnic site on Long Island, catches fire and sinks while on the East River alongside Astoria, Queens. Over 1000 passengers are killed, a major factor in the demise of the Little Germany neighborhood.
* 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.
* September/October: Hudson-Fulton Celebration of the 300th anniversary of Henry Hudson's discovery of the Hudson River and the 100th anniversary of Robert Fulton's first successful commercial application of the paddle steamer.
* 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.
* March 25: 146 employees, mostly women, are killed in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire near Washington Square Park, some by being forced to jump from the building by the fire.
* July 30: Black Tom explosion set off by German saboteurs at a munitions arsenal on a small island in New York Harbor kills seven in Jersey City, New Jersey and causes damage as far as the Brooklyn waterfront and Times Square.
* July 28: African Americans started the Silent Parade on Fifth Avenue as a protest against the East St. Louis riots.
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.
* 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 but no one was ever charged with the crime.
* New York Giants football team 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 disappeared a few weeks later.
* December 9: New York Giants won their 2nd NFL championship, defeating the Chicago Bears 30–13.
1935
* 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.
* January 16: Benny Goodman performs at Carnegie Hall.
* August 26 Fire Fighter is launched as the world's most powerful fireboat.
* September 21: New England Hurricane of 1938 strikes Long Island and continues into New England, killing 564. In New York City, ten people are killed and power is lost across upper Manhattan and the Bronx.
* December 11: New York Giants won their 3rd NFL championship, defeated the Green Bay Packers, 23–17.
* 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. 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, to signed on the air. And the second was WCBW 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.
* 98.7 FM facility station signs on for the first time, as WOR-FM.
1949
* February 10: Premiere of Miller's play
Death of a Salesman''.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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.
* December 16: Mid-air collision between TWA Flight 266 and United Airlines Flight 826 over Miller Field, Staten Island. 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.
* November 30: Eastern Air Lines Flight 512 crashes when trying to make a go-round after failing to land at Idlewild Airport in the fog. 25 of the 51 on board are killed.
* 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.
* November 21: Verrazano-Narrows Bridge between Brooklyn and Staten Island opens. Bridge at the time is the longest in the world.
* February 8: Eastern Air Lines Flight 663 crashes at Jones Beach when after takeoff from JFK it is forced to evade inbound PanAm Flight 212. All 84 on board are killed.
* 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 plead guilty to the murders.
* February 10:Nor'easter kills 14 and injures 68. Dubbed the "Lindsay Snowstorm", outer borough residents accuse the city of favoring Manhattan for snow removal. 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.
* Knapp Commission begins its investigation of police corruption.
1971
* May 21: Two NYPD officers, Waverly Jones and Joseph Piagentini, are gunned down in ambush by members of the Black Liberation Army in Harlem. The gunmen, Herman Bell and Anthony Bottom, still in prison as of 2012, were rearrested in jail in connection with the 1971 killing of a San Francisco police officer.
* March 15: The Godfather movie about a fictional New York City Italian- American crime family, premieres at the Loew's Theatre.
* April 7: Mobster Joe Gallo is gunned down at Umberto's Clam House in Little Italy. The incident serves as the inspiration for the Bob Dylan's epic "Joey" recorded in 1975.
* August 22: John Wojtowicz and Salvatore Natuarale hold up a Brooklyn bank for 14 hours, in a bid to get cash to pay for Wojtowicz' gay lover's sex change operation. The scheme fails when the cops arrive, leading to a tense 14-hour standoff. Natuarale is 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.
* July 29: David Berkowitz 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.
1977
* February 18: Hometowners Kiss plays their first Madison Square Garden gig.
* April 21: City premiere of musical Annie.
* 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. 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.
* October 12: "Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning." During Game 2 of the 1977 World Series between the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers, a fire rages out of control at an abandoned elementary school near Yankee Stadium. The images and a dramatic statement on national television by sportscaster Howard Cosell is widely seen as the symbolic nadir of a dark period in city history. The story of 1977 in New York City is later featured in such works as the film Summer of Sam by Spike Lee, the best-selling book Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx Is Burning, and the television drama The Bronx is Burning.
* Mainstream prominence of disco music confirmed with December 14 release of Saturday Night Fever. Also that evening, city formed heavy metalers Kiss plays the first of their three night return gigs through the 16th at Madison Square Garden.
* Dean & DeLuca food shop, Big Apple Circus, Smith & Wollensky restaurant, and Christie's branch office in business.
* 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.
* 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 continuation afterwards by post WWII Polish Communists.
* New York Yankees come from behind to beat the Baltimore Orioles, 5–4, on a day when they buried their team captain Thurman Munson, with a game-winning 2-run hit by Bobby Murcer.
* 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.
* December: Transit Authority grounded its fleet of GrummanFlxible buses due to cracks in their A-frames. TA rents 150 old buses from Washington Metro.
* Late Night with David Letterman television programme begins broadcasting.
* 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.
* October 6: Terence Cooke, Catholic archbishop of New York, dies at 62.
* Sister city relationship established with Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
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.
* June 23–29: Billy Joel performed seven live shows at Madison Square Garden, in the second North American leg of the An Innocent Man Tour.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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.
* September 27: Hurricane Gloria made landfall with a broad of poorly defined center right passed John F. Kennedy International Airport in Jamaica, Queens.
* November 5: Ed Koch is elected to a third and final term as mayor by a landmark margin, this time defeating New York City Council President Carol Bellamy.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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.
* City Commission on Public Information & Communication created.
* Fictional Seinfeld television programme begins broadcasting.
1990
* January 1: David Dinkins became the city's first African-American mayor.
* January 25: Avianca Flight 52 to Kennedy airport crashes at Cove Neck, Long Island, after missing an approach and then running out of fuel. 73 of 158 passengers are killed.
* 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.
* 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 and led to an increased police presence in New York.
* 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 arrest 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.
* 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.
* August 28: A 4 train crashes just north of 14th Street – Union Square, killing 5 people. Motorman Robert Ray, who was intoxicated, fell asleep at the controls and was convicted of manslaughter in 1992.
* 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.
* Formation of rap group Wu Tang Clan from Staten Island.
1992
* February 26: two teens were shot to death by 15 year-old Khalil Sumpter inside Thomas Jefferson High School an hour before a scheduled visit by then mayor David Dinkins. Sumpter was paroled in 1998 at the age of 22.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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.
* September: Friends debuts on NBC.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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.
* July 17: TWA Flight 800 departs Kennedy airport and crashes in the Atlantic Ocean south of Long Island, killing all 230 people on board.
* October 26: New York Yankees won the 23rd World Series championship, their first in 18 years, defeating the Atlanta Braves in 6 games.
* 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.
* May 17: David Wells pitched a perfect game, as he and the New York Yankees defeat the Minnesota Twins, 4–0. It was the 2nd perfect game in Yankees history.
* 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.
* March 8: Amy Watkins, a 26-year-old social worker from Kansas who worked with battered women in the Bronx, is stabbed to death in a botched robbery near her home in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. Her two assailants were sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
* Deaths in New York City from AIDS exceed 75,000 since the onset of the disease.
Contemporary history
2000s
2000
* January 21: American Psycho, film about a psychopathic serial killing investment banker in Manhattan, is released.
* March 16: Patrick Dorismond is shot and killed by an NYPD officer in a case of mistaken identity during a drug bust.
* 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..
2001
* 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.
* 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, killing 2,606 people who were in the towers and on the ground.
* November 12: American Airlines Flight 587 crashes into the Belle Harbor neighborhood of Queens shortly after takeoff from Kennedy airport, killing all 260 onboard and five persons on the ground.
* 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
* July 23: Othniel Askew shoots to death political rival City Council member James E. Davis in the City Hall chambers of the New York City Council.
* August 14: New York loses power in a blackout that affects eight states as well as parts of Canada.
* October 11–12: The first-ever Openhousenewyork Weekend takes place, with more than 75 buildings opening to the public.
* October 15: The Staten Island Ferry boat Andrew J. Barberi collides with a pier at the St. George Ferry Terminal in Staten Island, killing ten people and injuring 43 others.
* December 13: AirTrain JFK opens, now carrying over 10 million passengers annually.
* 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.
* 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.
* April 1: New York University 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 20 years earlier in Queens.
* May 29: Jeff Gross, founder of the Staten Island communeGanas, is shot and wounded by former commune member Rebekah Johnson. Johnson was captured in Philadelphia on June 18, 2007 after being featured on America's Most Wanted.
* July 10: 66-year-old Romanian immigrant Dr. Nicholas Bartha commits suicide by blowing up his townhouse at 34 East 62nd Street in Manhattan while in the basement of the building. Bartha chose to demolish his home rather than relinquish it to his ex-wife as ordered by the courts.
* 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.
* 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.
* November 25: Four NYPD officers fire a combined 50 shots at a group of unarmed men in Jamaica, Queens, wounding two and killing 23-year-old Sean Bell. The case sparks controversy over police brutality and racial profiling.
* New York City Global Partners established.
* Gun offender registration ordinance enacted.
2007
* 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.
* July 18: A steam pipe explosion kills one and wounds twenty others near the corner of Lexington Avenue and East 41st Street in Manhattan.
* 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.,
* March 15: A crane collapse at a construction site in Turtle Bay kills seven and damages adjacent buildings.
* September 15: Lehman Brothers goes bankrupt.
* 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.
* 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.
* May 23: Smoking ban takes effect in all parks, boardwalks, beaches, recreation centers, swimming pools and pedestrian plazas.
* June: High Line Phase II opens.
* 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.
* 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. At least 43 deaths have been directly attributed to the storm in New York City alone.
2013
* 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.
* 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. A suspect, Ahmad Khan Rahami, is apprehended two days later.
