From a guy who was arrested 29 times for impersonating MTA employees and stealing New York City buses to a guy who was trapped in an NYC elevator for 41 hours, some crazy things have happened throughout NYC's existence.
It probably comes as no surprise though, right?
Mark Twain once said "truth is stranger than fiction," and in the case of these stories, that quote rings abundantly true.
And trust us, these stories are way too wild to ever made up.
Read on and prepare to have your mind blown by these 5 insane-- and sometimes extremely unfortunate-- occurrences that have actually gone down in this wild city.
1. Nicholas White was trapped in an elevator for 41 hours in 1999
via Youtube
Nicholas White, a 34-year-old production manager, was working late on a Friday evening in October of 1999 when he ventured down to the floor-level of his 6th Avenue building to smoke a cigarette.
On the journey back to his office on the 39th floor, the elevator he was riding stopped in between floors. He pressed the alarm again and again, but since it was 11 p.m., the building was deserted and no one heard a thing.
White spent nearly the next two days pacing around the elevator, wrenching the doors open to reveal a brick wall, pushing on the ceiling, and trying to stave off dehydration. He also relieved himself by opening the elevator doors and urinating down the elevator shaft.
"I hoped that might be a signal to people: 'Why is the elevator leaking?'" White said.
On Sunday at 4 p.m., delirious from thirst, White heard a voice on the intercom asking if someone was there. And then it happened.
After 41 hours, he was finally rescued. And yes, White received a settlement from the building after his elevator nightmare.
[via ABC]
2. Darius McCollum was arrested 29 times for impersonating transit employees and stealing buses
via New York Daily News
McCollum's crimes range from impersonating subway workers to stealing buses, but his true crime is loving the NYC transit system.
In 1981, when McCollum was 15, he drove an E train six stops from 34th Street to the World Trade Center, without anyone noticing anything was wrong.
All-in-all, 48-year-old McCollum has spent 18 years in prison for his crimes. His latest transit offense was in 2010 when he was pulled over driving a Trailways coach in Queens. He said he was returning the bus to its depot in Hoboken after driving a flight crew from outside a Manhattan hotel to JFK Airport.
McCollum's cases were especially perplexing for prosecutors and judges; how they could punish someone whose crimes were victimless and driven by his desire to be a part of what he referred to as "the best public transportation system in the world?"
"I just love everything about it," McCollum said from Rikers Island. "I love the atmosphere, I love the lights, I love the signals, I love the fact that it's moving all the time... there's nothing negative I can say about the transit system."
When McCollum was 12, he was stabbed at school and, afraid to return to class, he rode the subways all day long, and befriended a motorman who let him hang out in the crew room at the 179th Terminal in Jamaica, Queens.
McCollum credits this occurrence as the origin of his fasciation with NYC trains.
[via The Wall Street Journal]
3. Nineteen-day-old Carlina White was kidnapped from Harlem Hospital Center in 1987
via New York Post
Carlina White was 19-days-old in July of 1987, when her parents brought her to Harlem Hospital Center with a high fever. She was receiving IV antibiotics when Ann Pettway, posing as a nurse, removed her IV and kidnapped her.
Hospital workers had noticed the Pettway hanging around for several weeks, but none could identify her.
The city of New York offered a $10,000 reward for information that would lead to White's return, and her parents sued the hospital and were eventually awarded a large settlement.
When White was in her early twenties she found photos of herself on the internet pre-kidnapping and was able to reunite with her birth family twenty-three years after her abduction. Her case is the longest known gap in a non-parental abduction where the victim was eventually reunited with her family in the United States.
Pettway turned herself into the Federal Bureau of Investigation in January of 2011, and admitted to kidnapping White after several miscarriages and bouts of depression because she'd never become a mother.
[via List Verse]
,4. In 2014, a woman took a taxi to Massachusetts and refused to pay the $980 fare
via New York Daily News
In February 2014, 31-year-old Denise Rebelato had an NYC taxi driver take her all the way to Framingham, Massachusetts.
When she hailed the cab she told the driver "money is not an obstacle," but then not only refused to pay the $980 fare once they arrived, but screamed at the driver and called him a moron for hours on end during the drive.
She said her failure to pay the money she owed the driver was intended as a "message to Obama."
"It was the worst job ever," the 28-year-old cab driver Adnan Chaudhry said, also reporting that Rebelato screamed at him to go faster despite icy roads, and shouted contradictory directions.
Chaudhry then drove Rebelato to the Framingham Police Station, where she was arrested on larceny charges. She was released once she agreed to pay Chaudhry back within 30 days.
[via New York Daily News]
5. Seventeen-year-old Demid Lebedev climbed to the top of 432 Park Avenue
via Untapped Cities
Just recently, Demid Lebedev scaled 432 Park Avenue, NYC's tallest residential building, only to be charged with criminal trespass and reckless endangerment after posting pictures from his climb to his Instagram.
"I went to heaven and back," Lebedev wrote as a caption on one of his Instagram photos.
Lebedev said he started out by first climbing the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge, because people of his age were doing the same thing and taking incredible photos. He said he still aspires to climb the Woolworth Building and the Brooklyn Bridge, but he wants to climb these legally.
He also said the top of 432 Park Avenue is his favorite vantage point of the entire city.
"The higher you get, the lonelier the world seems," Lebedev said.
[via Arch Daily]
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[via Native Gypsies]