1524 Giovanni de Verrazano explores the coast of New Jersey.
1524 Spaniards defeat local Indains at the Battle of Mauvilla.
1609 Henry Hudson arrives and claims the land for the Dutch.
1660 The Dutch establish Bergen as the first European settlement in New Jersey called the New Netherlands.
1664 Dutch lose New York and thus New Jersey to England.
1664 Sir George Cateret and Lord John Berkley become the proprieters of New Jersey colony.
1674 Lord Berkely sells his part of New Jersey to the Quakers.
1678 New Jersey is divided into East and West Jersey with the Quakers in the west and the Puritans in the east.
1702 West and East Jersey are reunited as a royal colony.
1746 College of New Jersey now Princeton University is founded.
1776 First Constitution of New Jersey adopted.
1776 George Washington crosses the Delaware River and defeats the Hessians at Trenton.
1777 January 3 The Battle of Princeton.
1778 June 28 The Battle of Monmouth.
1783 The Continental Congress meets at Princeton.
1787 New Jersey ratifies the U.S. Constitution and becomes the 3rd state.
1790 Trenton becomes the capital.
1804 New Jersey becomes the last northern state to abolish slavery.
1835 Samuel Colt began producing guns in Paterson.
1830 The Choctaw Indians ceded their remaining land and they begin their migration to Oklahoma.
1836 The Cherokees were forced to migrate to Oklahoma.
1846 The first professional baseball game is played in Hoboken.
1847 Thomas Edison born.
1876 Thomas Edison opens his famous lab in Menlo Park.
1884 Grover Cleveland is elected the 22nd President of the United States.
1911 The Standard Oil Company of New Jersey is broken up by the order of the Supreme Court.
1912 New Jersey governor Woodrow Wilson is elected the 28th President of the United States.
1921 The first Miss America pageant is held in Atlantic City.
1937 German Zeppelin Hindenburg explodes over Lakehurst Naval Air Station.
1951 The New Jersey Turnpike opens.
1976 New Jersey implements a state income tax.
2012 Hurricane Sandy destroys parts of the New Jersey shore causing Billions of dollars in damage.