The Times Square New Year's celebration originated as a party for The New York Times

A New York fireworks ban necessitated a new way to ring in the New Year

In 1906, the city banned fireworks displays, forcing the Times Square celebration to find a new centerpiece. The Times commissioned Jacob Starr, a Ukrainian immigrant who worked for Strauss Signs, to develop an ornament. He returned with the now-iconic New Year’s ball.

Watch 5 decades of Times Square ball drops

Dick Clark started hosting his “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” show in 1972, which has become an annual television staple. This compilation includes five decades' worth of ball drops, allowing you to watch how the tradition subtly evolved.

Throughout the 1980s, the Times Square ball was a giant apple

From 1981 to 1988, the sparkling ball was replaced by a “big apple” to promote the city’s “I Love New York” tourism campaign. This broadcast is from the apple’s first year, where one announcer proclaims, “It’s great! It’s beautiful!”

The New York Stock Exchange was started in 1792

When it first opened, traders would meet both outside on the street and in coffee shops to do business. Today, the NYSE is known as one of the most important financial institutions in the world.

How the New Yorker went from poker game to powerhouse

After 100 years in print, the New Yorker is still going strong, publishing weekly issues featuring the best in long-form journalism, cultural criticism, and short fiction. This history of the magazine's founding and early years shows how its balance of high and lowbrow culture, along with a fortuitous game of poker, led to its longstanding success.

New York was once called New Amsterdam

Although New York has a long history, it wasn’t actually called “New York” until the late 1600s, when the English beat out the Dutch for control of the area. In 1664, Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant surrendered what used to be known as “New Amsterdam” to the English, who renamed it New York after the Duke of York.

Broadway is a theater district in New York

There are 41 official Broadway theaters in New York City, all within a few blocks of Times Square, a key contributor to the area's prestige and economic success. These theaters host the productions eligible for Tony Awards.

How a Seattle scenester pranked The New York Times with ridiculous grunge 'slang'

In 1992, The New York Times was eager to report on the grunge phenomenon. When a Times reporter called Megan Jasper, who'd previously worked at Sub Pop, she decided to have some fun, feeding him a fake "Lexicon of Grunge."

The Wall Street Journal: a timeline

The Wall Street Journal got its start as a financial news bulletin for people trading stocks. Since then, it has evolved beyond just financial news. It now ranks among the preeminent global business news sources.

New York named a street after Basquiat in 2025

The influential pop artist made his name (and developed his unique graffiti-inflected style) in the city's East Village. In 2025, the city added his name to one of the neighborhood's streets in his honor. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

'Harry Potter' dominance led The New York Times to create a new bestseller list

In 2000, The New York Times introduced a separate bestseller list for children's books after Harry Potter titles occupied top spots on the main list for more than a year.

The history of the White House Hanukkah party

Despite celebrating Christmas for hundreds of years, the US Presidential White House didn't have its first Hanukkah celebration until 1979, when Jimmy Carter oversaw the lighting of a menorah. Since then, the tradition has expanded, including lessons on playing with dreidels and big parties. See a timeline of the events here.

Macy’s doesn’t own its flagship location because of the 'million dollar corner'

When Macy’s moved to the Herald Square location, it reached a verbal agreement to acquire that corner of land—but at the last minute, it was sold to a rival store for roughly $1M.

Journalists are increasingly unionizing

The LA Times was a famously anti-union paper—until its owner sought to cut costs by consolidating positions across its portfolio. This paper isn’t alone. Over the past few years, as the news business struggled, many publications kicked their unionizing efforts up a notch.

The story of the debut 1967 Consumer Electronics Show

Read an account of the origins of the first CES in New York in 1967, a story which is surprisingly difficult to find information about.

New York Times Co. v. Sullivan transformed libel law and the relationship between the press and public officials

The 1964 case arose when an Alabama official sued The New York Times over a civil rights advertisement he claimed was defamatory. The ruling makes it very difficult for public officials to win libel suits against the press unless they can prove deliberate falsehood.

Craig Claiborne invented the modern food critic

The New York Times critic began his column "Directory to Dining" in 1962. While there had been restaurant reviews before then, Claiborne's ethical standards and appreciation for a variety of cuisines established a new kind of food critic and, in the process, a new kind of eater. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

The history of New York's first hotel for middle-class women

March 2, 1903, marked the opening of New York's first hotel just for women, generally from the middle class. Prior to the establishment of the "Women's Hotel," it was difficult for solo women to find lodgings in the city. Seeing an opportunity, Charles Day Kellogg raised funds to establish the 400-room hotel, which exclusively served women until 1998. Read more about its history here.

Lombardi's was the first documented pizza restaurant in the US

The New York establishment opened in the early 1900s and was a cornerstone of Manhattan's SoHo. At one point, it was open 23 hours a day, allowing laborers of the predominantly Italian-American community to stop by for pies before or after work.

The Bomb-proof, Cold War-era New York data center inspiring spy movies

At 33 Thomas Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, a 45-story concrete tower with no windows stands imperiously over the city. Inside, 18 floors of telecommunications technology have hummed for decades. The building's purpose—to protect US comms from nuclear fallout—and its design have played into spy movie plotlines. Dive into the building's curious role in pop culture with this long read.

In the 1910s, sailors on a US Navy ship started using the term 'happy hour' in reference to their leisure hours

The leisure activities sailors were treated to during the ship's long voyages included boxing tournaments and dancing—but unlike the happy hours we know today, they likely didn’t involve alcohol. This article includes more information about happy hour’s origin story.

Lyndon Johnson moved the State of the Union into prime time

In January 1965, President Johnson moved the address to prime time to reach a larger TV audience, using it to promote his "Great Society" program—a push to reduce poverty, advance civil rights, and expand federal action in healthcare and economic opportunity.

See the most iconic photos from four decades of LIFE magazine

See how newspapers broke the news of the attack around the world

This collection showcases front pages from cities around the globe reacting to Pearl Harbor in real-time—capturing the shock, fear and uncertainty as the US entered World War II.

''Twas the Night Before Christmas' was published anonymously with a different title

A decade after it came out, Clement Clarke Moore accepted credit for the rhyming holiday tale. Some still believe that Henry Livingston, Jr. is the author, but evidence largely points to Moore.

15,000 people from over 20 nations lived in these Lower East Side tenements

The Tenement Museum recreated authentic immigrant homes using artifacts from historic buildings that housed diverse communities between 1863 and 2011. Take a digital tour that explores the immigrant experience through carefully preserved living spaces and belongings.

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

Mark Twain spent decades feuding with the US Postal Service, convinced its costs and regulations were bureaucratic overreach.

After the Boston Tea Party, colonists switched to coffee, which became the main morning drink for revolutionaries.

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

'Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,' a work by American painter Thomas Moran, inspired Congress to establish Yellowstone National Park.

'Silent' fireworks have gained more interest in recent years as a quieter celebratory option.

The distributor behind 'Rocky Horror' pulled the film from its scheduled national release, believing it would be a failure, though it eventually amassed a dedicated fanbase through midnight showings, a trend that continues over 50 years later.

When a Paris department store hesitated to sell Estée Lauder's perfume, she 'accidentally' broke a bottle, causing the smell to spread throughout the store and shoppers to start asking to buy the scent.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

Before the current East Wing ballroom project, only two White House renovations in the past 100 years cost more than $10M.

The identity of the Tank Man in the iconic photo from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests remains unknown and was possibly killed.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

Sears sold DIY house kits starting at $600 in its famous catalog from 1908 through the 1940s, resulting in roughly 10,000 'Sears and Roebuck houses' being built.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of young men ate standard American food—replete with food additives like borax and formaldehyde—as part of government research to better understand food safety.

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

For centuries, Niagara Falls has been a magnet for daredevils seeking to conquer one of nature's most powerful wonders, with its 200-foot drop and water rushing at 32 feet per second with 280 tons of force.

While the first exchange-traded fund (a 'basket' of different assets that can be bought and sold on a stock exchange) in the US only launched in 1993, the global ETF market has grown to more than $10T in the short time since.

Quincy Jones' 'Big Band Bossa Nova' helped introduce bossa nova—a jazz-influenced Brazilian genre—to the US

Massive blooms of microscopic plankton called dinoflagellates produce the neon blue light seen in glowing tides.

In 1963, a basement renovation in Turkey revealed a passageway to a hidden, multilevel underground city that once housed as many as 20,000 people

See how Budweiser's famous Clydesdales spend their days at Warm Springs Ranch, where roughly 70 to 80 of the beer brand's giant horses can be found at any given time.

El Niño, Spanish for 'the boy,' was named after Jesus Christ because the phenomenon resembled the weather changes observed around Christmastime.

The US Constitution is widely regarded as the longest-standing written national constitution still in force—see how it has influenced rights worldwide.