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1633

Grietje Reyniers, New York’s first recorded prostitute, arrives from the Netherlands. Reiners measured her clients’ penises against a broomstick, and worked the city’s first tavern, on Pearl Street.

1701

Edward Hyde

Edward Hyde, the Viscount Cornbury, becomes governor of the New York colony. Aside from being perhaps the most corrupt official the city has ever known, Hyde had a penchant for wearing ball gowns to public events.

1806

Actor Edwin “Ned” Forrest, a big star with an ego to match, is born. Forrest’s feud with Brit thespian William Macready led to the deaths of 22 people at the Astor Place Riot of 1849.

1823

Ira Aldridge, the first black actor to play Othello, emigrates to England after enduring racist reviews for his work at New York’s African Grove Theater. He became a huge star in Europe, lauded as the “African Roscius.”

1856

"Diamond Jim" Brady

“Diamond Jim” Brady is born. The railroad tycoon, a golden boy of the Gilded Age, was widely celebrated for his bling-loving and binge-eating (dozens of oysters at a sitting) ways.

1857

Elisha Graves Otis, inventor of the elevator brake, installs the first-ever passenger elevator in 1857; his idea makes skyscrapers possible.

1891

Samuel O’Reilly invents the electric tattoo machine and opens the first electric tattoo parlor, at Chatham Square.

1916

Nathan Handwerkerestablishes a hot-dog stand at Stillwell and Surf Avenues at Coney Island. He was smart to choose to promote just his first name; “Handwerker’s Famous” is a bit of a mouthful.

1916

Madame C.J. Walker, the nation’s first African-American millionaire, moves to NYC. Walker’s hair-care empire bought her a townhouse on West 136th Street, which became the epicenter of the Harlem Renaissance.

1945

Laurette Taylor

Laurette Taylorslays ’em with her naturalistic performance as Amanda in the Broadway premiere of The Glass Menagerie. She dies less than two years after the opening, her legend secure only in the minds of the most hard-core show queens.

1956

Charles Van Dorenfirst appears on the TV quiz show Twenty-One. After winning a ton of cash and becoming an instant celebrity, the Columbia prof later admits it was all a fix, with the questions rigged by the show’s ratings-hungry producers (Van Doren briefly returned to the public consciousness with the 1994 film Quiz Show, in which he was played by Ralph Fiennes).

1986

Donald Manes

Donald Manes, former Queens borough president, commits suicide by plunging a knife into his heart, after an investigation threatened to uncover the wide-scale corruption during his tenure.

1990

Word gets out that Marla Maples is shagging Donald Trump, then married to Ivana; Maples trumpets “the best sex I ever had” in TheNew York Post. The Georgia Peach and the Donald later married, but divorced in 1999; nowadays, she gets small parts in films we’ve never heard of.

1998

The life of eccentric Gray Line tour guide Timothy “Speed” Levitch is chronicled in cult-fave documentary The Cruise. Levitch spends only a short time in the public discourse, though the film’s director, Bennett Miller, triumphantly returns with Capote in 2005.

2003

Aaron Boone

In Game 7 of the ALCS versus the Red Sox, Yankees third baseman Aaron Boonehits the first pitch of the 11th inning for a game-winning homer, sending the delirious Bombers to the World Series. Boone tears up his knee during the off-season, and the Yankees replace him with Alex Rodriguez.