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New York Fact File

NYC boroughs
NYC geographical information
NYC climate
NYC time
NYC population
NYC aka Big Apple
NYC emergency lines

New York City boroughs
When most visitors think of New York City, they are thinking of Manhattan and its skyline famous the world over. But New York City is much more than just Manhattan! The city is comprised of five boroughs:

Manhattan, the small island (13 1/2 miles long, 2 1/4 miles wide, 22 square miles) at the center of it all and the place where most of the city's most famous attractions, buildings, and cultural institutions are found;
the Bronx, the borough just north of Manhattan Island and the only one connected to the mainland United States;
Queens, home of many extraordinarily diverse communities and both of the city’s major airports, JFK and LaGuardia;
Brooklyn, across the East River from southeastern Manhattan, is home to world-famous Coney Island and recently became the undisputed Bohemian mecca of New York City;
and Staten Island, directly south of Manhattan and accessible by the free Staten Island Ferry or by bridges from Brooklyn and New Jersey.

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New York City’s Geographical Information
New York City is located on the Eastern Atlantic coast of the United States, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The city center resides at the exact location of 40 degrees, 42 minutes, 51 seconds N latitude, and 74 degrees, 0 minutes 23 seconds W longitude.
New York City's total area is 468.9 square miles (1,214 km2). 164.1 square miles (425 km2) of this is water and 304.8 square miles (789 km2) is land. The highest point in the city is Todt Hill on Staten Island, which at 409.8 feet (124.9 m) above sea level is the highest point on the Eastern Seaboard south of Maine

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New York City’s Climate
New York City has a humid subtropical climate according to the Koppen climate classification. It enjoys four seasons and an average of 234 sunshine days a year.
Summers are typically hot and humid with average high temperatures of 79 – 84°F (26 – 29°C) and lows of 63 – 69°F (17 – 21°C), however temperatures exceed 90°F (32°C) on average of 16 - 19 days each summer.
Winters are usually cold, but the city's coastal position keeps temperatures slightly milder than inland regions, with average high temperatures of 38 - 43°F (3 - 6°C) and lows of 26 - 32 °F (-3 - 0 °C), but temperatures could for few days be as low as 10 to 20°Fs (-12 to -6°C) and many days be as high as 50s or 60s°F (~10 - 15°C) during the winter. Spring and autumn are erratic, and could range from chilly to warm, although they are usually pleasantly mild with low humidity.
New York City receives 49.7 inches (1,260 mm) of precipitation annually, which is fairly spread throughout the year. Average winter snowfall is about 24.4 inches (62 cm), but this often varies considerably from year to year, and snow cover remains very short. Hurricanes and tropical storms are very rare in New York, but not unheard of.

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New York City’s Time
New York City’s time zone is five hours behind Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). The City observes daylight savings time March through November; during those months, New York is four hours behind GMT. 

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New York City’s population  
New York is the most populous city in the United States, with an estimated 2005 population of 8,213,839 (up from 7.3 million in 1990).New York's two key demographic features are its population density and cultural diversity. The city's population density of 26,403 people per square mile (10,194/km?), makes it the densest of any American municipality with a population above 100,000. Manhattan's population density is 66,940 people per square mile (25,846/km?), highest of any county in the United States

New York City aka Big Apple
Although the history of the Big Apple was once considered a mystery, research over the past two decades has provided a reasonably clear picture of the term's history. Prior to their work, there were a number of false etymologies, of which the most ridiculous was the claim, subsequently exposed as a hoax and now replaced on the source web site with more accurate information, that the term derived from a New York brothel whose madam was known as Eve.
The Big Apple was first popularized as a reference to New York City by John J. Fitz Gerald in a number of New York Morning Telegraph articles in the 1920s in reference to New York horse-racing. The earliest of these was a casual reference on May 3, 1921:
J. P. Smith, with Tippity Witchet and others of the L. T. Bauer string, is scheduled to start for "the big apple" tomorrow after a most prosperous Spring campaign at Bowie and Havre de Grace.

Fitz Gerald referred to the "big apple" frequently thereafter. He explained his use in a February 18, 1924, column under the headline "Around the Big Apple":

The Big Apple. The dream of every lad that ever threw a leg over a thoroughbred and the goal of all horsemen. There's only one Big Apple. That's New York.
Two dusky stable hands were leading a pair of thoroughbred around the "cooling rings" of adjoining stables at the Fair Grounds in New Orleans and engaging in desultory conversation. "Where y'all goin' from here?" queried one. "From here we're headin' for The Big Apple," proudly replied the other. "Well, you'd better fatten up them skinners or all you'll get from the apple will be the core," was the quick rejoinder.

Fitz Gerald's reference to the "dusky" stable hands suggests the term's origin may lie in African-American culture. Support for this is found in the Chicago Defender, an African-American newspaper that had a national circulation. “Ragtime” Billy Tucker, a vaudeville/ragtime performer and writer for the Defender, there used "big apple" to refer to New York in a non-horse-racing context on September 16, 1922.
By the late 1920s, New York writers other than Fitz Gerald were starting to use "Big Apple" and were using it outside of a horse-racing context. "The Big Apple" was a popular song and dance in the 1930s. Walter Winchell and other writers continued to use the name in the 1940s and 1950s.
By the 1960s, "the Big Apple" was known only as an old name for New York. In the early 1970s, however, the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau (now NYC & Company, the official marketing and tourism organization for New York City), under the leadership of its president, Charles Gillett, begin promoting "the Big Apple" as the city's moniker. It has remained popular since that time. Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani in 1997 signed legislation designating the southwest corner of West 54th Street and Broadway, the corner on which John J. Fitz Gerald resided from 1934 to 1963, as "Big Apple Corner."
Since 1980, the New York Mets' baseball stadium has featured a top hat that a "Big Apple" rises from when a Mets player hits a home run.

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New York City’s Emergency Lines
Call 911 in case of emergency to summon police, fire or ambulance crews.
The 24-hour Crime Victims Hot Line is tel. 212/577-7777
Alcoholics Anonymous may be reached at tel. 212/870-3400
Sex Crimes Report Line tel. 212/267-7273
Suicide Prevention Help Line tel. 212/532-2400
Almost all other services (taxi complaints, consumer affairs, parking regulations) can be easily reached by dialing 311.

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