Short answers, pulled from the story.
Thirty families arrived on Governors Island in 1624 to establish a Dutch fur trading settlement. This group founded what would become New Amsterdam in 1625.
Peter Minuit purchased Manhattan from the Canarsie band of Lenape people for sixty guilders. The transaction value equated to roughly nine hundred dollars in modern currency.
British forces routed the Continental Army during the largest engagement of the Revolutionary War at the Battle of Long Island. General George Washington retreated across the Hudson River to New Jersey after losing Fort Washington in November 1776.
English troops led by Colonel Richard Nicolls seized the city without bloodshed in 1664 and King Charles II granted the territory to his brother the Duke of York. The name changed permanently to New York in 1674 following this transfer of power.
The Statue of Liberty was dedicated in 1886 to welcome fourteen million immigrants arriving via Ellis Island. More than two hundred thousand Irish immigrants lived in New York by 1860 representing over a quarter of the population.