The following is a timeline of New York City crimes and disasters.

• July 11-13, 1863 - Approximately 50,000 people riot in protest of President Lincoln's announcement of a draft for troops to fight in the civil war.
• March 12-13, 1888 - A record blizzard drops 21 inches of snow on the city. An estimated 800 people die.
• June 14, 1904 - The General Slocum catches fire while cruising the East River. Over 1000 passengers are killed.
• June 25, 1906 - Stanford White is shot and killed by Harry K. Thaw. The murder would soon be dubbed "the Crime of the Century".
• March 25, 1911 - 145 employees, mostly women, are killed in the Triangle Factory fire.
• November 16, 1940 - George Metesky plants the first bomb of his sixteen years as "The Mad Bomber".
• July 28, 1945 - A B-25 Mitchell bomber accidentally crashs into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building, killing 13 people.
• March 13, 1964 - Kitty Genovese is stabbed to death. The crime is witnessed by dozens of people, none of whom aid Genovese or call for help.
• November 9, 1965 - New York City is affected as part of the Northeast Blackout of 1965.
• July 29, 1976 - David Berkowitz (aka the "Son of Sam") kills one person and seriously wounds another in the first of a series of attacks that terrorized the city for the next year
• July 13-14, 1977 - New York City again loses power in a blackout. Unlike the previous blackout twelve years earlier, this blackout is followed by widespread rioting and looting.
• December 8, 1980 - John Lennon is killed in front of his home, The Dakota building.
• December 22, 1984 - Bernhard Goetz shoots four men on a subway who tried to rob him.
• April 14, 1989 - Trisha Meili (aka the Central Park Jogger) is violently raped and beaten while jogging in Central Park. The crime is later attributed to a group of young men who were practicing an activity they called "wilding". However, DNA evidence later proved the originally charged teens innocent; a convicted serial rapist confessed to the crime.
• February 26, 1993 - A bomb planted by terrorists explodes in the World Trade Center's underground garage, killing six people and injuring over a thousand.
• December 7, 1993 - Colin Ferguson shoots 25 passengers on a commuter train out of Penn Station.
• July 17, 1996 - TWA Flight 800 crashes in Long Island Sound. Some people allege the plane was struck by a missile.
• September 11, 2001 - The World Trade Center towers and several surrounding buildings are destroyed by a terrorist attack. Approximately 2700 people are killed.
• 23 July 2003 - 31-year-old Othniel Askew, a Brooklyn resident and political rival of City Councilmember James E. Davis, fired multiple gunshots in the City Hall chambers of the New York City Council, killing Davis. New York City Police Officer Richard Burt, who was on a special security detail in the Council Chamber, shot and killed Askew. According to news reports, Askew appeared at Councilmember Davis's Brooklyn office and drove with him to the New York City Hall. The security guards permitted both men to circumvent the security posts. (Under an agreement between the City and the City Council, councilmembers and their staff and guests were allowed to enter the building without a security check.) Since the shooting, however, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced that everyone (including himself) wishing to enter City Hall must go through the security checkpoints.
• August 14, 2003 - New York loses power in a blackout that affects eight states as well as in parts of Canada.
• October 15, 2003 - At about 3:30 pm, the Staten Island Ferry boat the Andrew J. Barberi collided with a pier on the eastern end of the St. George Ferry Terminal in Staten Island killing at least ten people, seriously injuring many others, and tearing a huge slash through the lowest of the three passenger decks. It is the worst mass transit disaster in New York City in over a century.

• See also History of New York City.