Top 10 New York facts

Empire State Building has held the title for 42 years since 1931. It was surpassed by the North Tower of the World Trade Center in 1972. An early-1970s proposal to dismantle the spire and replace it with an additional 11 floors, which would have made it once again the world's tallest at the time, was considered but ultimately rejected.

It was built quickly and under budget. The Empire State Building took only one year and 45 days to build, or 7 million man-hours. To this day, this is a record for a skyscraper of its height. Due to reduced costs during the Depression, the final costs totalled only $24.7 million instead of the estimated $43 million.

Newspaper publisher. James Gordon Bennett, Jr. (1841-1918) was publisher of the New York Herald. He sponsored many sport and exploration events, including the first tennis match in the United States and Henry Morton Stanley's trip to Africa to find David Livingstone. He established three Gordon Bennett Cups: for international yachting, for automobile races and for ballooning. The last one continues to this day.

New York City organised crime families. Those are the names of 3 out of 5 major New York City organized crime families called "The Five Families". The term was first used in 1931, when Salvatore Maranzano formally organized the previously warring gangs into what are now known as the Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese, and Lucchese crime families.

Electrocution. Topsy was a female Asian elephant put to death in Coney Island, New York amusement park by electrocution in January 1903.

New Amsterdam. In 1625 the Dutch established the Nieuw Amsterdam housing estate in Manhattan. The English won it in 1664 and renamed it New York. In 1673, the Dutch again regained the city, but gave the English a year later in exchange for the recognition of the rights to Suriname.

1945. The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization tasked to promote international cooperation and to create and maintain international order. A replacement for the ineffective League of Nations, the organization was established on 24 October 1945 after World War II in order to prevent another such conflict.

On a bull from Wall Street. Fearless Girl is a bronze sculpture by Kristen Visbal, was originally installed on March 7, 2017, at Bowling Green in the Financial District of Manhattan, New York City. It depicts a girl who, faced the Charging Bull (or Wall Street Bull) statue. It was removed in November 2018 in preparation for relocation to a site in front of the New York Stock Exchange.

In New York. The site of the United Nations Headquarters has extraterritoriality status. Journalists, when reporting from the complex, often use "United Nations" rather than "New York" as the identification of their location in recognition of the extraterritoriality.

On Manhattan. The university was established as King's College by George II, and later renamed Columbia College in 1784 following the American Revolutionary War.