In early September 1776, the Continental Army was enduring some of the darkest days it would ever encounter in the entire Revolutionary War. George Washington and his troops had just been soundly defeated in the Battle of Brooklyn, and had just barely escaped annihilation during their retreat. It looked more and more likely that…
Tag: connecticut celebrities
September 10: Madison Square Garden Gets a Two-Minute “Pep Talk” from a Boxer Heading for Greatness
Today in 1942, Connecticut boxer Willie Pep began his meteoric rise to stardom when he knocked out featherweight Frankie Franceroni of New Jersey just two minutes into the first round, shocking a crowd of thousands at Madison Square Garden. Just two months and five more wins later, the twenty-year-old Pep became the World Featherweight…
August 12: Gidget Born in Bridgeport
Today in Connecticut history, actress Deborah Walley was born in Bridgeport in 1941. With nationally famous ice skaters and choreographers Edith and Nathan Walley as her parents, young Deborah caught the show business bug at an early age, performing on the ice with her parents for the first time at the age of three….
June 25: Marilyn Monroe Takes Connecticut By Storm
Today in 1956, the small, rural, western Connecticut town of Roxbury was swarmed by reporters who had learned that the internationally famous starlet Marilyn Monroe was there visiting her fiancée, Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Arthur Miller. The couple had been dating for months, and they had announced their plans to marry the week before. Miller,…
June 20: CT Resident Helen Keller Honored by President Kennedy
Today in 1961, Easton resident Helen Keller received a birthday greeting from President John F. Kennedy containing high praise for her lifetime’s worth of hard work and advocacy for people who, like herself, were blind and/or deaf. In it, he wrote: “You are one of that select company of men and women whose achievements…
April 21: Rumors of His Death Were NOT Greatly Exaggerated
Today in 1910, Mark Twain, one of America’s most famous authors and Connecticut’s most famous residents, died at his home in Redding. Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, he grew up in Missouri and traveled extensively, working as a newspaper reporter and fiction writer, until settling with his family in 1871 in the wealthy “Nook Farm”…
March 9: The Man Who Put the Iron in “Old Ironsides”
Today in 1798, 25-year-old Isaac Hull, who was destined to become one of the United States’ most famous heroes of the War of 1812, began his distinguished career in the Navy after accepting a commission as a 4th Lieutenant aboard the U.S. frigate Constitution. Born in 1773 in Derby, Connecticut, young Isaac was raised…
February 27: He Killed the Cars That Killed the People Who Drove Them
Today in 1934, consumer advocate, author, and political activist Ralph Nader was born in Winsted, Connecticut. The son of Lebanese immigrants who operated a popular restaurant in the moderately sized Connecticut factory town, Nader displayed, at an early age, an insatiable appetite for reading and an incredible ability to retain information. These traits helped…
February 24: Connectican Arrested in Russia for Spying
John Ledyard, one of America’s first celebrity adventurers, was born in Groton, Connecticut in 1751. The son of a sea captain, young John had acquired plenty of shipboard experience — as well as an insatiable appetite for travel coupled with a flair for the dramatic — by the time he was a teenager. Heeding…
February 12: The Connecticut Man Who Became England’s Most Famous Detective
A scion of one of Connecticut’s oldest and most prominent families, world-famous actor and playwright William Hooker Gillette, was born in Hartford in 1853. Drawn early to the theater arts, he left the city at the age of 20 to seek his fortune as an actor and stage producer. He met with only moderate…
February 10: The Civil War’s Biggest Wedding: “General Tom Thumb” & “The Queen of Beauty”
Born in 1838 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, legendary entertainer Charles Sherwood Stratton, a.k.a. “Tom Thumb,” began touring with internationally famous showman and fellow Connectican P. T. Barnum at the tender age of five. Stratton had first attracted Barnum’s attention because of his unusually small size; he had dwarfism, and never grew taller than 42 inches…
February 5: The Stray New Haven Pup Who Became an American War Hero.
Today in 1918, an unlikely future war hero in the shape of a small, short-tailed puppy arrived at the front lines in France alongside the 102d Regiment of the Yankee Division, a unit of mostly Connecticut soldiers recruited in New Haven. Named “Stubby” by his comrades because of his tiny tail, the contraband puppy would…