Our story about Mayor La Guardia pushing back against the federal war on drugs was kind of the “Today in NYC History” post for the day, but reader Carrie Chess sends in a good one that I felt like posting just under the deadline. According to the site Jewish Currents, on April 20, 1657, Asser…
Fiorello La Guardia is widely regarded as the best mayor in New York City’s history, and on 4/20 we remember his impressive and forward-thinking approach to marijuana. La Guardia served as mayor from 1934 to 1945, and during the early years of his administration, weed use barely registered as an issue. Annual arrests for sales…
The tearing down of the ornate old Penn Station inspired a push to create New York City’s first landmarks law, which Mayor Robert Wagner, Jr. signed on April 19, 1965. Celebrations, tributes and symposia are taking place over the city – there is even a whole website dedicated to the anniversary. There are now 1,348 official…
Article by Janos.nyc guest writer, Crispus Knight. This might just be the craziest NBA story of the year. On the night of April 7th into the early hours of April 8th, Chris Copeland, an NBA journeyman currently on the roster of the Indiana Pacers, was out in Manhattan with a close female friend. They visited…
While Henry Hudson is often credited as the first European to explore the New York area, and Juan Rodriguez has recently gotten recognition as New York’s first resident of European descent, it was Giovanni da Verrazzano who first set caucasian eyes on the New York harbor, on April 17, 1524. Verrazzano was born in Florence…
This book review was written by Janos.nyc guest writer Roxanne Earley. “New York City was the beneficiary but the victim of its geography.” –Raymond Moley, 1970 So begins Ted Steinberg’s sweeping ecological history of New York City, an exceptional read about the significant environmental changes that have been taking place in the metropolitan region for…
Waving severed limbs at children. Graverobbing. Fleeing angry rioters. The medical profession has definitely come a long way since April 16, 1788, when a mob of New Yorkers, some literally armed with pitchforks, came looking for doctors who had been digging up the dead to teach medical students with their cadavers. Using the deceased to…
On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson played his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first African-American to play major league baseball since the 1800s. Though his first game was a quiet one on the field (he went 0-3, scoring one run in a Dodgers win), Robinson’s debut was a landmark moment in sports…
Before Williamsburg was a hipster paradise, before it was a Puerto-Rican/Italian enclave, before it was a Jewish refuge from LES tenements, before it was a booming industrial hub of sugar and beer, before it was a local center for Whig Party politics, Williamsburgh (The “h” was shed in 1855) was the headquarters for Hessian mercenaries hired by…
Revolution was coming. The American Continental Congress, sensing the inevitability of a break from the British Empire and the ensuing war, had called George Washington, the head of the Continental Army, to come down to New York from Boston. Even though New York’s population of 20,000 was only the seventh largest in the colonies, Washington considered…
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