The city’s unemployment rate reaches 13.4 percent—the highest level of joblessness since the Great Depression. The situation causes current Mayor Dinkins’ popularity to decline, and residents of Staten Island threaten to secede from the city.
The Voice endorses Mayor David Dinkins for reelection.
Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville was named best album and The Breeders’ “Cannonball” was named best single in the Pazz & Jop Music Critic’s poll.
Six people are killed and more than a thousand injured when a truck bomb planted by terrorists detonates in a basement garage of Tower One in the World Trade Center.
The Late Show with David Letterman debuts on CBS. The hour-long weeknight comedy and talk show comes over from NBC, where it was called Late Night with David Letterman from 1982 to 1992.
Mark J. Green is elected as the city’s first Public Advocate. The position, created in the city charter revision of 1990, is described as an “ombudsman” who monitors city services. The advocate is the second-highest-ranking city official and the first in line to succeed the mayor in an emergency.
Colin Ferguson, a Jamaican immigrant, shoots 25 passengers, killing six, on a Long Island Rail Road commuter train out of Penn Station. Court documents reveal he is motivated by phantom prejudice he sees as the reason for his failings in life.