It was the snowiest, coldest winter in recent history. Mother Nature dumped a record 24 inches of snow on us during the Blizzard of ’96. The 36-hour storm blew snowdrifts up to four-feet high in Fresh Meadows and Long Island City….  

Fire marshals arrested a 36-year-old homeless drifter, charged in the arson death of Fire Lt. John Clancy. Edwin Smith lit a candle in the basement of an abandoned house in Jamaica, which set off the blaze that claimed Clancy’s life. Clancy’s widow, Dawn, was six months pregnant with the couples first child when John Clancy died, minutes into the new year….

Queens narcotics cops got caught in a traffic jam in Flushing. Before the gridlock cleared, they had arrested two men who were hauling around 220 pounds of cocaine in their double-parked car. The cops later turned up another 250 pounds of cocaine, found stashed in a closet in one suspect’s Flushing apartment….

Queens cops slammed the brakes on a major car theft ring in Flushing. A dozen car thieves were bagged in the bust…Homeless men returned to a makeshift shelter in the Flushing Armory, despite a municipal promise that they would never be housed there again….  

The crash landing at LaGuardia Airport of Flight 800 left Queens families shattered and looking for answer.

Borough historians made a last ditch effort to save the crumbling Aquacade. The last remaining piece of the 1939 World’s Fair was set for demolition in the spring….NY Mets management unveiled plans for a new Shea Stadium…Parolee Benito Olivar walked into a Queens car dealership on Feb. 12,where he shot and killed his ex-girlfriend, then took his own life….

Former Queens Chief Administrative Judge Francis X. Smith won his nine-year battle and was reinstated to the Bar. Smith, one of the borough’s most liked and likable judges, was disbarred amid a backlash of accusations stemming from the 1987 Queens cable scandal. Smith vowed then to prove his innocence, and he did just that….

Term Limits for City politicians dominated a Trib front page feature…The Queens Marriage License Bureau was robbed by a masked gunman in March – talk about shotgun weddings….

City Councilwoman Julia Harrison set off a furor with remarks she made about Asian immigrants in a front-page N.Y. Times article. Local pols joined forces to decry the comments. Harrison fought back, describing her colleagues actions as “Gang Rape.”…

Rudy Giuliani tapped Queens native Rudy Washington for his Deputy Mayor for Economic Development. Washington, who hails from Laurelton, got his feet wet by working with borough civic and community groups….

The Queens community and the NYPD mourned the deaths of Rockaway residents, Dep. Insp. John Fahy and his six-year-old son, James – the pair that perished in an inferno at the family’s home. John Fahy, Jr., 13, and Meaghan Fahy, 9,escaped the blaze; the youngsters’ police captain mother, Margaret, passed away just two months before the blaze....

A Queens Village elementary school principal was stabbed to death during a struggle with three teens who broke into his home. Ironically, one of the teens was a former student at P.S. 33, where Edward Funk worked….

A State appeals process granted the killer of Kitty Genovese a second chance to ask for a new trial. The Genovese murder rocked New York City in March 1964 and became a national symbol of urban shame, when 38 neighbors told police they saw the murder on Austin Street, but did nothing to help….

Acting Queens Parks Commissioner Richard Murphy went out on a limb to rescue a stranded cat in Fresh Meadows. The family feline had been stuck in a tree for 15 days, despite the efforts of local residents to free the kitty. The “Super Commish” saved the cat’s life by “talking it down” from the tree….

A 14-year-old boy was convicted of murdering “Granpa,” the six-year-old Siberian Husky who captured our hearts when he was torched while on a leash in his owner’s back yard... Plans were unveiled for a new $1.1 billion International Arrivals Building at JFK Airport…A Trib feature looked into a Port Authority plan to install a rail-link connecting the Jamaica Long Island Rail Road Station with JFK and LaGuardia airports....

Diana Ross rocked fans at the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium…Former presidential press secretary James Brady came to queen7 to dedicate a new wing at Jamaica Hospital…Queens lost one of its best-liked activists in May – Aldo Viscovich, a business and civic leader, died in an auto accident, leaving a void in the heart of a grieving community….

Construction began on the decade-old Queens West project….Queens lost a popular and well-respected top cop in May. Assistant Chief Robert Burke bid farewell to the borough. Dep. Chief Jules Martin succeeded Burke as Commander of Patrol Boro Queens South….

The Queens North Task Force settled into a new home at the Flushing Armory. Capt. Michael Doherty became the only NYPD commander to lead his troops out of a castle…The MTA’s infamous E-Z Pass was introduced to irate Queens motorists….

The infamous “Zodiac Killer” was arraigned in Queens. Heriberto Seda is charged with killing three Queens people and injuring a fourth during his four-year reign of terror in the early 1990s…City and borough officials sued the State in June, to prevent the creation of a High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lane on the Long Island Expressway in eastern Queens…

A crew of 500 movie-makers blew up the Unisphere in July. The computer-generated explosion was part of a scene in the Tommy Lee Jones movie, “Men In Black.”….

Board of Ed President Carol Gresser was ousted in what was called a “mayoral coup” in July…Queens Community Boards were open for business on July 5, but borough lawmakers closed-up shop – and services – to catch some rays over a long weekend…Queens City Council Member Thomas Ognibene proposed a curfew for the under-18 crowd….

A Paris-bound TWA Boeing 747 left JFK International Airport at about 8:15 p.m. on July 17 with 230 people on board. At 8:45 p.m., they were gone – blown from the skies over Moriches, Long Island, in an aircraft disaster that would rewrite the history of airline crash rescue operations.…

Claims of a scandal continued to plague the Flushing RKO Keith’s Theater. A developer and a contractor faced a probe into charges that they lied about cleaning-up a major oil spill at the site...An explosion ripped through the door of a Flushing synagogue….

A Trib feature examined 81-year-old Tony Avena’s battle with MTA officials who wanted to boot Avena’s shoeshine business out of a storefront in Flushing where he had operated for 73 years….

Mayor Rudy Giuliani blasted officials from the United States Tennis Association for their insistence that planes from area airports be re-routed during the U.S. Open….

Magic Johnson unleashed plans to build a $5 million movie complex in Jamaica….

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to Queens to pay his respects at the gravesite of Grand Rebbe Menachem Schneerson….

A plaque bearing a poem written by Queens-based spiritual leader Sri Chinmoy ruffled feathers when it was placed at  the base of the Statue of Liberty….

An explosion at a Queens Korean church devastated a Flushing neighborhood where it had stood. The blast brought the community together in efforts to help stranded parishioners and local residents with property damage….

Fourteen-thousand police officers filled the streets of Corona on Oct. 23. They came to honor and bury slain police Lieutenant Federico Narvaez, who was gunned-down while trying to quell a domestic dispute. It was the largest police funeral in New York City history…And the owners of “XXX” rated shops lost their bid to overturn a City Council ruling that would force them to shut-down in certain areas citywide….

A Delta jetliner crash-landed during a fierce rainstorm on Oct. 19, sliding down to LaGuardia Airport’s infamous Runway 13-31...The first of many anticipated lawsuits was filed by relatives of the victims of Flight 800 as probers continued…and Eva Ackerman, 79, passed away in October…Ackerman was the mother of Tribune founder, Gary Ackerman.

City  Comptroller Alan Hevesi exposed an $8 million bookkeeping snafu at the Queens Library…New Yorkers approved Term Limits for City politicos, virtually guaranteeing a new City government by the year 2002….

Vice President Al Gore came to Woodside in December, to taste a local specialty – cheesecake, and meet with Queens politicians and the public…The Flushing Jewish Center was destroyed in late-night fire in December. Probers blamed the blaze on a cigarette carelessly tossed by a pedestrian….

The year closed on a sad note. In one week, a Woodside civic leader was murdered, and an off-duty New York City cop was slain.