1664 New Jersey becomes a colony of England.
1673 John Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley of Stratton sells his part of New Jersey to the Quakers.
1766 The last Colonial governor of New Jersey, William Franklin, signs the charter of Queen's College (later renamed Rutgers University).
1778 The term thoroughbred was first used in the United States in an advertisement in a Kentucky gazette to describe a New Jersey stallion called Pilgarlick.
1778 American Revolutionary War: the Battle of Monmouth takes place in Monmouth, New Jersey.
1787 New Jersey becomes the third U.S. state.
1789 New Jersey ratifies the United States Bill of Rights, the first state to do so.
1804 New Jersey becomes the last northern state to abolish slavery.
1815 New Jersey grants the first American railroad charter to a John Stevens.
1901 In New Jersey, the Edison Storage Battery Company is founded.
1927 The Holland Tunnel opens to traffic as the first Hudson River vehicular tunnel linking New Jersey to New York City.
1933 The first drive-in theater opened in Camden New Jersey.
1934 Off the New Jersey coast, a fire aboard the passenger liner ''Morro Castle'' kills 134 people.
1936 Bruno Richard Hauptmann, convicted of kidnapping and killing Charles Lindbergh Jr., is executed in New Jersey.
1971 Joe Kinney is born in Belleville, New Jersey.
1976 Rubin "Hurricane" Carter is retried in New Jersey.
1976 The New Jersey Supreme Court rules that coma patient Karen Ann Quinlan can be disconnected from her ventilator. She remains comatose and dies in 1985.
1987 New Jersey celebrates its bicentennial statehood.
1996 Rapper Yaki Kadafi, born Yafeu Fula, is shot to death in New Jersey at the age of 19.
1997 Melissa Drexler, a high school senior in New Jersey, kills her newborn baby in a toilet.
2004 New Jersey Governor James McGreevey announced that he is "a gay American" and would resign effective November 15, 2004.