Jan 2
John Wayne Wilson murders Roseann Quinn, who had brought him home to her New York City apartment. The crime is the inspiration for the novel Looking for Mr. Goodbar .

Mar 12
New York Giants second baseman Frankie Frisch, the Fordham Flash, dies in Wilmington, Delaware, at the age of 74.

Mar 18
Lauritz Lebrecht Hommell Melchior, Danish-born Wagnerian tenor with the Metropolitan Opera, dies at the age of 82.

April
Jazz trumpeter Augustus "Gus" Aiken dies in New York City at the age of 70.

Apr 22
Easter Sunday temperatures in New York rise to 86 degrees F, tying a record for the date set in 1962.

Nov 6
Abraham D. Beame and Herman Badillo, running along with Mario Biaggi and Albert H. Blumenthal in the Democratic Primary get the most votes. Beame beats Badillo in the runoff. Beame goes on to defeat Republican John J. Marchi, Liberal candidate Blumenthal and Conservative candidate Biaggi, to be elected the city's first Jewish mayor, serving 1974-1977.

City
A section of Manhattan's West Side Highway collapses. ** The apartment building at 45 East 66th Street is sold to builder Sigmund Sommer, by the Bing and Bing real estate company. He modernizes the building, precipitating a rent strike by tenants, who take him to court. ** Pace College becomes Pace University. ** Argentine national Ricardo S. Caputo, under observation after stabbing his fiancee to death in 1971, is transferred to the Manhattan Psychiatric Center on Wards Island. ** A 75th-birthday salute to Paul Robeson is produced at Carnegie Hall. He is too ill to attend. ** The World Hockey Association's New York Golden Blades team is formed, lasts one season. ** Medical researcher Julia Tiffany Weld, daughter of designer Louis Comfort Tiffany, dies.

State
The Alternate College (later Delta College) opens at Brockport College. ** Elsie Chenko becomes the first woman to climb all 46 mountains of the Adirondacks in the wintertime. ** Utica's Consolidated Water Supply becomes fully amortized. ** Napoli's 1890 Gladden Windmill is declared a National Historic Site. ** Young's Restaurant in Batavia closes. ** A room from the Reed Mansion in Erie, Pennsylvania, is moved to the Peek 'n Peak Resort Conference Center near Findley Lake. ** William Lombard is elected Monroe County Sheriff.

Jan 1
New York City's new mayor Abraham Beame is inaugurated, then orders the lights on the city's bridges turned off as a symbolic fuel-saving measure.

Jan 28
Jazz trumpeter Edward Clifton Allen dies in New York City at the age of 76.

Mar 4
Temperatures in New York City rise to 70 degrees F, highest here for this date.

Mar 28
Broadway lyricist Dorothy Fields dies at the age of 68.

Apr 29
Temperatures in New York City climb to 89 degrees F, highest here for this date.

July
The former Staten Island ferryboat Dongan Hills is scuttled, at Tottenville, Staten Island, when she becomes a pollution hazard.

Aug 7
Anesthesiologist Virginia Apgar dies in New York at the age of 63.

September
Mario Cuomo loses the Democratic primary for lieutenant-governor of New York State.

Oct 29
A break in the Erie Barge Canal on the Grand Embankment at Bushnells Basin, southeast of Rochester, unleashes 200,000,000 gallons of water, destroying one home and severely damaging forty others.

City
Gordon Bunshaft's 9 West 57th Street is completed. ** The 1902 Dorilton apartment house is declared a landmark by the Landmarks Preservation Commission. ** Painter Jean-Michel Folon's The Silence and New York Times. ** Actress Colleen Dewhurst wins a Tony for Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten. ** Dino De Laurentis's film Serpico opens. ** The Sy Oliver Orchestra begins a ten-year run at the Rainbow Room. ** Buddy Rich dissolves his orchestra and opens Buddy's Place, a jazz club. ** The Golden Blades hockey team is disbanded. ** Stuart Applebaum begins as a publicist at Bantam. ** Geraldine Ferraro becomes an assistant district attorney for Queens County. ** A dump truck falls through an elevated portion of the West Side Highway. Transportation officials propose a replacement superhighway, at a cost of $1,100,000,000, to be called Westway. Brooklyn congressman Hugh L Carey (running for governor) and Representative Edward I. Koch lead opposition forces. ** Governor-elect Carey grants developer Donald Trump, a campaign contributor, the rebuilding rights to the Commodore Hotel. ** Minoru Yamaaki and Emory Roth's World Trade Center towers are completed. ** Renovations on Yankee Stadium are begun. ** Novelist Mary Higgins Clark enters Fordham University at Lincoln Center.

State
Mario M. Cuomo is appointed the state's secretary of state. ** Whitehall's Main Street is placed on the National Register of Historic Places. ** The National Park Service acquires Lindenwald, U. S. President Martin Van Buren's home in Kinderhook. ** Argentine national Ricardo S. Caputo, on furlough from the Manhattan Psychiatric Center on Wards Island, strangles his former psychiatrist Judith Becker in Yonkers, and flees to South America. ** The railroad bridge across the Hudson River at Poughkeepsie burns. Soon afterwards the Lehigh & Hudson Railroad declares bankruptcy. ** The Wegmans supermarket chain acquires the building and garden supply company Bilt-Rite Chase-Pitkin Inc. ** Wegmans East Rochester store becomes one of the first in the country to use laser scanning at checkouts to read Universal Price Codes. ** Geneva Hall and Trinity Hall of Geneva's Hobart and William Smith Colleges are placed on National Register of Historic Places. ** The U. S. Supreme Court decides, in Oneida Nation v. County of Oneida (overturning its previous ruling in Deere v. St. Lawrence River Power Co.) that the Iroquois Nation can bring land dispute cases before U. S. courts. ** Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller becomes Vice President of the U. S. under Gerald Ford. ** Hugh L Carey is elected governor. ** Plans are made for a joint bicentennial project by the New York State Historical Association and the American Revolution Bicentennial Commission, to be published in the former's July 1976 issue. ** Antique Dutch language specialist Charles Gehrig begins working with 17th-century documents at the New York State Library in Albany, the beginning of the New Netherland Project. ** The first four volumes of Dutch records in the New York State Library, originally edited and translated by Arnold J. F. van Laer, are published by the Genealogical Publishing Company, under the direction of the Holland Society of New York.

Batavia
The living quarters of the Genesee County Sheriff's Office are converted to offices. ** Batavia Clamp Company owner John C. Sliker sells the business to Marine Supply Company owner David Barrett, who turns his own business over to his son Michael. David Barrett moves the clamp company to 33 Swan Street and restores the name Colt Clamp Company.

Buffalo
Clock experts Marvin DeBoy and Albert Bull repair and refurbish the city's Apostolic Clock. The Apostolic procession now occurs on the half hour also, in addition to on the hour. ** Evening News heir Kate R. Butler, Mrs. Edward H. Butler, Jr., dies, the last family member living in the mansion at 672 Delaware Avenue.

Rochester
The First Presbyterian Church merges with two other congregations and moves into the Downtown Presbyterian Church on North Fitzhugh Street. ** Gambler Richard Perry is convicted of participating in a betting scandal at New York's Roosevelt and Yonkers raceways. ** WXXI public television director Raymond Ho decides to produce an hour-long documentary on the city's history. He will enlist the services of writer Joseph W. Barnes, cinematographer Gerardo Puglia and City Historian Blake McKelvey. ** Police officer Thomas Hastings is named Chief of Police. ** The coal trestle at the Genesee Docks on Boxart Street in Charlotte is demolished.

Jan 3
Metropolitan Opera radio announcer Milton John Cross dies at the age of 77.

Jan 8
Metropolitan Opera tenor Reuben Ticker (Richard Tucker) dies at the age of 60.

Jan 11
Temperatures in New York City reach 63 degrees F, highest here for this date.

Jan 24
A bomb explodes in New York City's Fraunces Tavern, killing four people. Puerto Rican nationalists are suspected.

Jan 29
Temperatures in New York City rise to 55 degrees F, highest here for the date.

Mar 27
Jazz clarinet-saxophonist Frank "Pete" Clarke dies in New York City at the age of 64.

 April
The musical A Chorus Line opens at Lincoln Center.

May 12
The Metropolitan Museum of Art unveils its new Robert Lehman wing.

Jun 1
NBC News forms the News Information Service.

Jun 10
New York City, on the verge of bankruptcy, surrenders much of its financial autonomy to a special state agency, the Municipal Assistance Corporation - "Big Mac".

Jun 16
A tank of sulfuric acid explodes at the Agway Inc. fertilizer plant in Lyons, killing employee Carl Allen.

Jun 24
An Eastern Airlines 747 crashes upon landing, at JFK Airport. 113 people are killed.

Jul 3
The New York Bar Association disbars John N. Mitchell.

Aug 2
Billy Martin becomes manager of the New York Yankees.

Aug 3
The Staten Island Ferry quadruples its 5-cent fare.

Aug 10
Samuel Bronfman II, son of the Seagram Distilleries Chief Executive Officer, is kidnapped.

Aug 16
Samuel Bronfman I pays a ransom of $2,300,000 for the return of his son.

Aug 17
Samuel Bronfman II is rescued by New York City police officers from Mel Patrick Lynch and Dominic Byrne. The ransom money is recovered.

Aug 23
The Metropolitan Museum of Art buys a 13th-century collection of Japanese art worth $5,100,000.

Sep 7
Manuel Orantes and Chris Evert win the U. S. Open tennis titles at Forest Hills.

Oct 6
Diana Nyad succeeds on her second attempt to swim around Manhattan Island.

Oct 19
A Chorus Line opens for a regular Broadway run at the Shubert Theater.

Oct 27
Former Monroe County sheriff Albert W. Skinner dies at the age of 81.

Oct 29
U. S. President Gerald Ford announces his opposition to any federal financial bailout of New York City.

Nov 3
Vice-president Rockefeller announces he will not run as President Gerald R. Ford's running mate in 1976.

Nov 9
The temperature in New York City reaches 75 degrees F, the highest on record for this date.

Nov 10
The temperature in New York City reaches 75 degrees F for the second day in a row, the highest on record for this date.

Nov 26
Ford asks for a $2,300,000,000 loan to help New York City avoid bankruptcy.

Dec 30
A bomb is exploded in the passenger terminal of LaGuardia Airport, killing 14 people.

City
Gordon Bunshaft becomes a trustee of the Museum of Modern Art. ** Martha Graham premieres her Lucifer with English ballerina Margot Fonteyn as guest artist. ** Brendan Gill's Here at the New Yorker is published. ** Beverly Sills makes her Metropolitan Opera debut. ** Joan Whitney Payne, majority owner of the Mets baseball team, dies.

State
Preservationist Howard Kirschenbaum buys financier J. P. Morgan's Adirondacks camp, Camp Uncas, under the auspices of the Preservation League of New York State. ** Pace University merges with the Colleges of White Plains. ** The village of Moravia holds its first Fillmore Days festival, in honor of former president Millard Fillmore, born nearby. ** The Brunswick Historical Society is founded, in Cropseyville. ** Ellenville's defunct Sun-Ray spring water bottling company is bought out by a toy manufacturer. ** Hugh Carey is elected governor. He decides to reject a Federal offer of a trade in funds to convert money for the Westway project to mass transit funds. ** Ancram, in Columbia County, has 45 dairy farms. By 1996 the number will be down to 8. ** Bernard Shenkman, son of Shenkman's Clothing store founder Louis Shenkman, and Bernard's brother-in-law Victor Aronson, sell the South Main Street store in Canandaigua to Marshall Seager, Harold and Ken Unger. ** The journal The New York Folklore Quarterly changes its name to New York Folklore. ** The DeMonstoy cabin in Campbell, Steuben County, dating back to the late 1700s or early 1800s, is taken apart and put in storage.

Rochester
Genesee Hospital's seven-story Carlson Building opens, increasing floor space by 50%. ** Production begins on WXXI-TV's documentary Blake McKelvey's Rochester.

© 2002 David Minor / Eagles Byte

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