Not that I live in NYC ~ about four hours from it ~ but I thought these were interesting:
Dutch explorer Peter Minuit purchased the island of Manhattan (really its southern tip) from the Algonquin tribe for trinkets and tools worth about $24.
New York City was the U.S. capital from 1789 to 1790
Although many legends exist about the origin of New York City's nickname, the Big Apple, most historians agree that it can be traced back to a writer who covered horse racing in the 1920s. In The Morning Telegraph, he wrote that stable hands often referred to New York as the Big Apple, meaning that any thoroughbred that raced in New York had reached the pinnacle of racing.
( These facts are copied over from
http://hubpages.com/hub/20-Interesti...-New-York-City )