
October 13: Connecticut’s “Food City” Gives Birth to the “Lolly Pop.” Sweet!
From world-famous pizza to the world’s first (or longest continuous source of the ) hamburger, New Haven is, bite for bite, home to more remarkable American food history than most oth…
Today in Connecticut History
September 26: Connecticut’s First English Settlement
Today in 1633, a small band of English settlers from Eastern Massachusetts sailed past an openly hostile Dutch trading fort near modern-day Hartford and defiantly staked their own claim near…
Today in Connecticut History
September 7: A Game-Changer For Sports . . . and Television
Today in 1979, at 7:00pm Eastern time, the first cable channel devoted exclusively to sports and entertainment went live from its studio in Bristol, Connecticut. The Entertainment and Sports…
Today in Connecticut HistorySeptember 1: Connecticut’s Unknown Industrial Genius
The largely unknown man at the center of Connecticut’s 19th century industrial greatness – Elisha King Root – died in Hartford today in 1865. Root’s machine tool genius first rev…
Today in Connecticut HistorySeptember 2: Man Soars Above the Connecticut — Dog Parachuted Into Middletown
Silas Markham Brooks, Connecticut’s first documented hot air balloonist, was one of many native Connecticans who pursued a colorful — if unpredictable — career as a consumm…
Today in Connecticut HistoryAugust 27: “Substance X” Leads To the Nation’s First Chemotherapy Treatment
Today in 1942, following top-secret research on the effects of the war-poison mustard gas, physicians at Yale University made medical history as they administered the first use of intraven…
Today in Connecticut HistoryAugust 22: A President Makes Transportation History in Hartford
Theodore Roosevelt was no stranger to Connecticut; his mother and second wife were Connecticans and his sister lived in Farmington for most of her adult life. While Roosevelt’s several…
Today in Connecticut HistoryAugust 18: Connecticut Man with a Rifle Enters Lincoln’s Office
It would be easy to hold up Connecticut inventor Christopher Miner Spencer as an archetype of 19th century Yankee ingenuity: Not only was he a man who spent his whole life tinkering with mac…
Today in Connecticut HistoryAugust 16: The Bar Unbarred — Connecticut’s First Woman Lawyer
Today in 1843, Mary Hall was born in Marlborough, Connecticut. Growing up on a farm in antebellum America, when high Victorian culture placed an increasingly stringent emphasis on female dom…
Today in Connecticut HistoryJuly 28: Who Made The World’s First Hamburger?
July 28, 1900 was shaping up to be an average summer day for lunch wagon owner and Danish immigrant Louis Lassen, who was serving sandwiches and other hot meals to factory workers in New Hav…
Today in Connecticut History