8. The First Person To Drive Through It?

Omero Catan is known among the obscurest annals of New York History as Mr. First. He earned the nickname by, quite literally, being the first to a lot of New York’s landmark openings. He was the first, among 500 other notable things, to cross the George Washington Bridge when it opened in 1931, the first to use the 8th avenue subway when it opened the next year, the first to skate in Rockefeller Plaza in 1936, and the first to lead the public through the newly opened Lincoln Tunnel in 1937, parking near Weehawken at 10pm the night before to be sure. Years later, his brother, Michael, was selected to be the first to drive through the Tunnel’s second line in 1945.