Inventor and longtime Connecticut resident Elias Howe Jr. may not have invented the first sewing machine, but he was the first person to obtain a U.S. patent for one in 1846. Howe’s success in patenting his novel “lockstitch” sewing machine, which was the first to feature the automatic thread feed that remains a crucial…
Tag: april
April 2: The Deadly Flu Pandemic of 1918-1919 Hits Connecticut
On this day in 1919, the medical paper “Complications of Influenza” was read to a desperately worried Hartford County Medical Society, who had been fighting a devastating global flu pandemic that had first reared its ugly head in Connecticut nearly twelve months before. This particular strain of flu, commonly referred to as “Spanish influenza,”…
April 1: “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” Takes America By Storm
On this day in 1852, the final installment of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published in The National Era, a weekly abolitionist newspaper. Written in the popular sentimental and melodramatic style of the mid-19th century, Stowe originally envisioned her story as a brief tale that would “paint a word picture…
April 23: Connecticut’s Worst Construction Disaster: L’Ambience Plaza
In early 1987, excitement was building in Bridgeport for “L’Ambience Plaza,” a new luxury apartment complex slated to open later that year on the corner of Washington Avenue and Coleman Street. Those dreams of downtown revitalization were suddenly dashed, however, in the afternoon hours of April 23. At 1:36pm, construction crews had just hoisted…