Trains derailed, autos crashed, and fishermen staggered into port. It killed at least five people, many snow shovellers who died from heart attacks.

The National Guard towed and pushed abandoned cars that had blocked roadways. The Long Island Railroad gave up and erased the day off its calendar.

Packing a howling 35 mph wind, the killer storm, called the worst of the year, easily stripped the title from the 14 inch blizzard that hit the city during the previous winter on March 4th.

Within 24 hours, the mercury plunged to a deep freeze of seven frigid degrees further slowing the borough from digging out.

Of the 130 fatalities across the country, Long Island tallied 26 dead.

Its nearest Queens neighborhoods are Beechhurst, Bayside, and Little Bay, as well as historic Fort Totten. Two 3,200 foot suspension cables support the 1,800-foot main span and two 555-foot side spans.

The bridge cost $92 million. It was name for John Throckmorton who settled the area in 1643.

The L.I.E. was comprised of various sections, some of them previous roads, and built under one standard construction plan to link them together and form the 13-mile Queens stretch.

The $92 million bridge was designed by engineer Othmar H. Amman and built mainly to ease the congestion on the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge.

The expressway linked the Queens-Midtown Tunnel to the Nassau County line, and eventually to Riverhead in Suffolk County.

Its arrival creates confusion within US Customs Service over the possibility that the coffin might contain narcotics or diamond contraband. Although officials had a right to do so, they did not open it.

Connie Valis, 14, rushes through the crowd of 2,000 at LaGuardia Airport and presents a bouquet of carnations to Mrs. Glenn, who first exits from the aircraft. Colonel Glenn, following his wife off the plane, is so impressed that he stops waving to the people, grabs Connie's hand and warmly thanks her and her teacher, Mrs. Anne M. O'Connor, assistant principal of Junior High School 10 in Astoria.

He continued, “We were a fraud. All those people came out to watch us play. We had them believing we had a better team this year, but we didn't look it. The starting pitcher was lousy and the infielders were worse.”

After six balks by his pitchers in the game, Casey walked out the mound and gave a demonstration to his pitchers on how to throw a baseball.

As the train grinds to a stop, a long battle to save the service ends for all time. The city cannot see spending the $3.9 million to upgrade the line for 184 passengers.

In July, 10 teenagers had been arrested in Queens on juvenile delinquency charges stemming from glue sniffing. In a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers ridiculed labeling glue sniffing as just another adolescent craze.

They explained, “Unlike other relatively harmless activities, such as telephone booth-stuffing, glue inhalation appears to carry with it a potential for significant detriment to the child’s physical and emotional health.”

Sweeping new strips of highway were being built to connect the expected 70 million visitors to the fair with thruways, air terminals or piers. There were less than 600 days to the scheduled opening.

Robert Moses (in the Long Island Star-Journal’s words, “autocratic czar of the biggest exhibition ever planned in the history of the world”) ordained:

“Every participant must keep up with the time schedule. The calendar is all-important now. Management has to be frank about plausible excuses and smooth explanations for delays and it cannot accept substitutes for performance.”

Sixty-eight countries planned pavilions, and all 50 states were expected to be represented at the fair.

The defendants were Frank Padron, 31, and Jose Blanco, 26, both of 25-30 48th Street in Astoria. Both had been in the country three years.

The cache was discovered innocently when police found Blanco double-parked in front of the A & P market at 42-13 30th Avenue and noticed that the rear of the car was sagging badly. When asked why, Blanco replied, “I have ammunition to be shipped to our anti-Castro forces in Florida.”

For the next two decades, the Jets will play at Shea Stadium, in Flushing. Football enthusiasts claim that Jet’s quarterback Joe Namath deserves credit for putting the ‘super’ in Super Bowl III.

Mayor Robert Wagner and schools superintendent Dr. Calvin Gross were notified by a committee headed by Mrs. Helen Marshall of East Elmhurst.

Helen Marshall, who was a public school teacher, would later embark in a successful political career that led her to Albany and the city council, and ultimately to the Queens Borough president’s office.

The reason for the hearings was a bill to block the building of reactors in the city. Outside City Hall a crowd of over 100 protesters marched with signs saying: “No A-plant in New York” and “Don’t Make an Ash Out of Us.”

Con Ed withdrew its application to build the plant on January 6, 1964 as a result of ongoing public protests. Instead, in 1965, Ravenswood Unit 3, a 1,000 megawatt conventional plant with a generator known as “Big Allis” began operation.

Less than three months after the assassination of President John Kennedy, The Beatles took New York by storm as they performed on the Ed Sullivan Show two nights later. It was American rock and roll with a British twist and a sound that became their own.

Under the banner “Peace Through Understanding,” the fair displayed humanity's inventions, discoveries, arts, skills and aspirations in an expanding universe. It had more than 150 pavilions, spreading over 646 acres of Flushing Meadow Park.

The stadium, originally to be called Flushing Meadow Park, is later named for attorney William A. Shea, who spearheaded the drive to bring National League baseball back to New York.

Scheduled for completion the following year, the plant was predicted to burn 2 to 2.5 million tons of coal annually. Earlier in the month, the Johnson Administration had urged Con Ed to drop a multi-million dollar Canadian project to purchase electric power and invest in coal power in Appalachia.

Madonna later cast Debi in some of her music videos launching her career. With over 70 major roles listed to her credit, Debi has appeared in Goodfellas, LA Law, CSI Miami, NYPD Blue, Ugly Betty, Friends and is a voice over in the popular video game Grand Theft Auto.

Debi Mazer was born August 15, 1964.

Most tickets were for $5.65 while some in the upper level were as cheap as $4.50. The band earned a $160,000 share of the $304,000 gross receipts, also a record at the time.

The riot began when jostling, pushing and shoving, and finally brawling and stomping broke out when management attempted to get non-ticket holders to form lines to purchase tickets for the second show of the night. Stores, including jewelry, clothing, shoe and gift shops were looted. The windows of 17 stores along Jamaica Avenue were smashed.

Police had to break up a huge mob that descended on the Jamaica bus terminal and began brawling. Another mob was dispersed on Hillside Avenue and 168th Street, nearly a mile from the theater.

The second show was held. It started a little late and ended at 2 AM. Ironically, it was not sold out.

The article continued, “Police today are still searching for leads in the fire-bombing of Malcolm X’s East Elmhurst home early yesterday morning. Their basic questions are: Who tossed the Molotov cocktail at the house on 23-11 97th Street? And why? Malcolm, who aroused his wife and four daughters at 2.30 in the morning to escape the flames, flew to Detroit that evening. Before leaving, Malcolm said of the bombing: ‘It doesn’t frighten me. It doesn’t quiet me down in any way or shut me up.”

A week later he would be assassinated.

• safeguarding the city's historic, aesthetic, and cultural heritage
• helping to stabilize and improve property values in historic districts
• encouraging civic pride in the beauty and accomplishments of the past
• protecting and enhancing the city's attractions for tourists, thereby benefiting business and industry
• strengthening the city's economy
• promoting the use of landmarks for the education, pleasure, and welfare of the people of the city

Queens, falling behind the other four boroughs during a generation's worth of landmark designation, recently has taken this issue by storm. Neighborhoods across the borough are now demanding this distinction for their communities. To date, only a few blocks in Hunters Point, Jackson Heights, Ridgewood, and Douglaston have this honor.

Regarding the civil rights bill before Congress, he said “It may take all summer, it may take sessions round the clock, but I promise you here and now that we are going to pass that bill.”

Johnson also appealed for aid in his ‘War on Poverty.’

At the same time, half way around the world, Malcolm X, of Corona, the former Black Muslim leader, inflamed African passions against the United States by making a bitterly anti-American speech to an applauding university student group in the Nigerian city of Idaban. He said that racial discrimination in the United States was worse than apartheid in South Africa and that ‘32 million Negroes in the United States were being treated as less than human beings.’

Malcolm had formed a new black nationalist group more militant than the main Black Muslim organization.

Cited as an economy measure by the Defense Department, many New York businessmen criticized the move that was estimated to result in a $1.5 billion loss to the local economy. In its heyday, the shipyard was the largest employer in the city producing, among many others, the battleships Maine, Arizona, and Missouri.

A single relay near Niagara Falls failed, thus crashing the interconnected power grid. The load lost was 20,000 megawatts of power (compared with the August 2003 loss of 62,000 megawatts). Three quarters of a million people were trapped in the subways and many more stranded during rush hour. It took up to 13 hours to restore power to seven states from Ontario and Quebec to eastern Massachusetts to southern New Jersey to western Pennsylvania.

In stark contrast to the August 1977 blackout, civil disorder in 1965 was rare.

After the spectacle of these aircraft coming into the heart of the city, the Star Journal wistfully noted that they came in to land “almost anti-climactically.” Regularly scheduled flights between Midtown and Kennedy Airport were to take place for a fare of seven dollars! A round trip took you back ten dollars.

In a trip that lasted only seven minutes, passengers experienced vistas that took their breaths away, including a close up view of the Chrysler building, looking down into Con Edison’s riverside smokestacks, and sitting motionless above the entrance of the Lincoln tunnel “watching cars like an all-seeing traffic cop.” With the regularity of the subway (the Star Journal reported a quip that it all was like the IRT with flight insurance) passengers were treated to the glimmering sun over New York Harbor and ocean mists in the distance. All this was a novel attempt to solve a persistent problem in commercial aviation: getting people from the city to the airport “in a time reasonably proportionate to the length of [the] total trip.”

(Their novelty notwithstanding, these flights proved to be unprofitable and were cancelled about three years later in 1968. In 1977, the experiment was revived briefly, only to fail with tragic consequences when a landing gear collapsed and an idling helicopter crashed on to the roof killing four people at the pad, and a fifth struck by debris hurled onto a busy Park Avenue.)

The purchaser, the Metropolitan Commuter Transportation Authority (which later became the MTA), embarked in an aggressive capital campaign at raising funds for new track and rolling stock. It remains the busiest commuter rail line in the country.

Called the “Great Stone Face,” he would do silent movie stunts without batting an eye. This former resident of Little Neck and Bayside’s career spanned most of the twentieth century, from the era of silents through the sixties, when he was rediscovered by a new generation who adopted him as one of their own.

Of Keaton, fellow comedian Mel Brooks said, “His eyes shone with a certain intensity, fire and love. His face had little expression, but his eyes were always dynamically alive. His eyes spoke more than any script could speak.”

Local papers warned “More of Same on Way.” An accompanying photo showed a small tanker frozen in icy waters off Far Rockaway. As far south as Florida, the weather was so cold and snowy. Not only were orange crops destroyed, but so were the tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash, corn, and beans.

The next day, the front page of the Long Island Star Journal had more ominous things to say about the weather: “Shhh! Snow's Due Friday” and “Groundhog Sees Its Shadow; 6 More Weeks of Winter.”

The accompanying article went on to explain ruefully that every time that winter the Weather Bureau had predicted snow, they'd been right. Travel in the city remained paralyzed.

In 1902, the Franciscan Sisters of the Poor purchased the old Isaac Vandeveer farm in Woodhaven. It took twelve years to raise money and develop the 700 by 500 foot site. When it opened in 1914, more than 400 patients occupied the facility, making it the largest hospital in Queens.

The Sisters pioneered many new treatments for tuberculosis, the number one killer of tenement dwellers. Despite efforts to save the architecturally distinguished building and its spacious grounds, the 90-year-old hospital was recently torn down for development.

A number of observers said that the object appeared to correspond to the descriptions of UFOs reported in Michigan the previous week, which Air Force experts had attributed to swamp gas discharged from lake bottoms in springtime.

This explanation did not satisfy everyone in Queens. Some thought that “maybe the Martians wanted to visit the World’s Fair, and didn’t know it was over.”

In reality, the house was built in 1853 for merchant John Bodine. After becoming wealthy from the Cuba trade, he ran, and lost, in the New York mayoral election of 1876.

Although Lahr’s movie career never really caught on, he remained a life-long icon due to his role as the Cowardly Lion in Oz. Aside from that role, he is probably best remembered for his role in a Lay’s potato chip “Bet you can’t eat just one” commercial ad campaign. His vocal characterization of the Lion was also a strong influence on the voice of the cartoon character Snagglepuss.

The college offers 30 majors to nearly 12,000 students from more than 150 countries. Over 70% of its students are from Queens; the largest contingent is from Flushing.

Its LaGuardia and Wagner Archives is a leading repository of the social and political history of New York.

A four-yard touchdown run by Nassau County's Matt Snell and three Jim Turner field goals were all the Jets needed.

The defense, led by Verlon Biggs, Gerry Philbin, Al Atkinson, and Randy Beverly, held the mighty Colts to a mere seven points.

The victory established the AFL as a more than formidable rival to the NFL. The Jets, ably coached by Weeb Ewbank, won the AFL Championship over Oakland at Shea Stadium to get to the Super Bowl in Miami, Florida. The victorious Jets became the first Queens based sports franchise to win a championship.

During a tumultuous period in American history, the Mets' victory had proven that the underdog can still win and that, perhaps, miracles do happen.