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Look Back at 2016: These Were Our Most Popular Stories

By Nicole Levy | December 30, 2016 12:57pm | Updated on January 2, 2017 10:50am
 Snapshots of our top five stories in 2016
Snapshots of our top five stories in 2016
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DNAinfo

As we at DNAinfo bid 2016 adieu, and ponder, like the mayor, why anyone would want to spend New Year's Eve in Times Square, we're taking a moment to reflect on our readers' favorite stories over the past 12 months.

We've included some of the most notable events of the year, from the election, the Chelsea bombing to Pokemon Go. But aside from breaking headlines, we've found our readers have shown an insatiable appetite for real estate news — particularly when it comes to affordable housing.

Here are the top 16 stories that riveted our readers during 2016:

16. Mysterious Manhattan Military Flyover Was Trump Rescue Exercise: Sources

The unexpected sight of a C-130 search-and-rescue aircraft and two HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters making passes over the heart of "no-fly" Manhattan for 40 minutes in December unnerved countless New Yorkers and tourists, who expressed post-9/11 concerns on Twitter and Facebook.  

They came to DNAinfo for an explanation: the aircrafts were conducting an “emergency relocation” planning mission, in case an extraction of President-elect Donald Trump should prove necessary in the future, sources said.

15. Virginia Couple Assaults Officer They Didn't Think Was 'Real Cop': NYPD 

A young Virginia couple visiting the city attacked a transit police officer in a Williamsburg subway station when he tried to arrest one of them for turnstile jumping, prosecutors charged in April.

"You're not real cops," the girlfriend said, according to police. "Those are fake badges."

14. Woman Flings Crickets at Riders on D Train, Sparking Panic 

In what turned out to be an elaborate prank, a woman unleashed a bucket of insects on a sweltering D train on one August evening. Riders panicked. One straphanger even pulled the train's emergency brake, stalling it for about half an hour in the middle of the Manhattan Bridge.

13. 7 Reasons Why Your Daily Commute Is Slowly Killing You

All that complaining New Yorkers do about rush-hour rides on the subway and how they'll be the death of us — it's rooted in reality, not neuroticism. DNAinfo collected the evidence.

12. Naked Donald Trump Statue Appears in Union Square

Remember when that naked Donald Trump statue mysteriously appeared in Union Square? Of course you do, because you can never unsee it.

11. $559 Studios Up for Grabs at Affordable Housing Tower Near Barclays Center
10. Score a $566 Apartment in a High Rise Near Herald Square

What do our readers fantasize about more than anything else? Winning city-run affordable housing lotteries, which typically attract upwards of 50,000 applicants. Your odds of scoring an apartment are very, very slim.

9. MAP: Where Are You Finding Pokémon in New York City?

When Pokémon GO — an app game based on a late '90s cartoon show where players catch and train fictional creatures called Pokémon — launched in the U.S. this summer, hordes of New Yorkers combed city streets and parks in pursuit of the virtual monsters that appeared on their smartphones at various locations. 

DNAinfo created a tool to advance their quest: a map of all the spots where players could find wild Pokémon, where they could store and train their captured specimens and where they could stock up on supplies.

8. See Which Subway Station Is Closest to the Cheapest Apartments

Did you know you can pay up to $845 less per month by adding one extra subway stop and 2 minutes more to your daily commute? 

Before we wrote this story, we didn't either.

7. Here's Your Outdoor Movie Guide For New York City

Our readers really love watching movies en plein air, so we made it a little easier for them to find screenings in their neighborhood.

6. How to Apply for Affordable Housing in New York City
5. 121 Affordable Apartments Up for Grabs in Brooklyn Starting at $494 a Month

Tip No. 1: make sure you're extremely lucky. Tip No. 2: register through the Department of Housing Preservation and Development's NYC Housing Connect portal. 

4. Video Clears Teens in Playground Gang Rape, Defense Attorneys Claim

During an ongoing trial, in which five teenagers were charged with raping and injuring a young woman in a Brownsville playground, DNAinfo obtained a 12-second cellphone video clip that defense lawyers were using as evidence of their clients' innocence. The alleged victim was seen smiling, but did not give her alleged attackers verbal consent. Charges against the five teens were later dropped.

3. Thieves Helped Crack Chelsea Bombing Case, Sources Say

Only in the New York metropolitan area would people snatching bags from a city street and a train station inadvertently help law enforcement get the upper hand in a bombing that injured dozens of people.

In Chelsea, where Ahmad Khan Rahami allegedly planted two bombs in September, two well-dressed young men unintentionally helped disable his second explosive device when they stole the rolling suitcase it was stashed in.

"Who in this world finds a pressure cooker with a phone and just takes the bag?" a law enforcement source said.

Many New Yorkers could empathize.

2. INTERACTIVE: Here's Where You Can Afford to Live Alone in NYC

A room of one's own is every New Yorker's dream. This interactive we made aimed to help you make that dream come true.

1. How Every New York City Neighborhood Voted In The 2016 Presidential Election

After a general election that ended with Trump's victory, our readers wanted data about the results. DNAinfo's interactive map and corresponding table shows that the president-elect's New York City supporters primarily live in Staten Island, southern Brooklyn and various pockets in Queens