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 domesticity, made her perhaps one of the most unlikely candidates to defy gender norms and become the first woman in Connecticut to be admitted to…
Tag: connecticut firsts
August 10: Little Girl Launches Her Bumpy Journey to Fame at the Goodspeed Opera House
Today in 1976, one of America’s most beloved musicals, “Annie,” had its world premiere at the Goodspeed Operah House in East Haddam. The now-classic production, based on the popular Harold Gray comic strip “Little Orphan Annie,” had to endure several “hard knocks” on the road to legendary status . At first, Goodspeed’s executive director Michael…
July 28: The World’s First Hamburger
July 28, 1900 was shaping up to be an average summer day for lunch wagon owner and German immigrant Louis Lassen, who was serving sandwiches and other hot meals to factory workers in New Haven during their lunch breaks. Suddenly, a local businessman, Gary Widmore, rushed up to Lassen’s wagon and desperately asked for…
July 21: Testing the World’s First Attack Submarine — in 1776
While Connecticut has been home to an outsized share of American innovators and creative geniuses, few of them have had as long-lasting an impact as David Bushnell, inventor of the Turtle — the world’s first combat submarine. Born in Saybrook in 1740, Bushnell decided at age 30 to sell his share of the family…
July 1: Concerns Over Prison Unrest Lead to Creation of the State Department of Correction
Today in 1968, the Connecticut General Assembly voted in favor of consolidating the state’s prisons into a single organization, creating the State Department of Correction. Previously, every prison in the state had been independently managed, with its own Board of Directors, administrative staff, and policies for inmate behavior and rehabilitation. This sweeping reform of the…
June 11: A Breakthrough in Compassionate Care for the Terminally Ill
Today marks a medical history milestone: on June 11, 1974, the Connecticut Commission on Hospitals and Health Care approved construction of America’s first hospice facility. That moment also marked the fulfillment of nurse Florence Wald’s lifelong dream of providing comprehensive, compassionate care for patients with terminal illnesses. Florence Wald at her Branford, CT home….
May 21: America’s First Speed Limit Law
Today in 1901, Connecticut became the first state in America to pass a law governing the speed of automobiles. According to the new law, cars were not to exceed 12 miles per hour within city limits and 15 miles per hour on rural or suburban roads, and were required to slow down whenever they…
May 5: The First Woman to Receive a U.S. Patent
Even though the U.S. Patent Act of 1790 allowed American citizens to apply for patents regardless of gender, women were discouraged from doing so due to local coverture laws that made it difficult, if not impossible, for a married woman to own property and titles independently of her husband. But today in 1809, nearly…
April 12: Invention of the “Five-Pound Secretary”
Today in 1892, George Canfield Blickensderfer of Stamford patented the first successful portable typewriter, one of the most transformative examples of Yankee ingenuity ever to come from the Constitution State. Blickensderfer’s machine used a radical, minimalist design that contained up to 90 percent fewer parts than the heavier, more complicated desk typewriters that came before…
April 10:The Sheep That Shaped New England
Have a merino wool scarf or sweater that you absolutely love? You can probably thank Connecticut native David Humphreys for that. David Humphreys, born in Derby in 1752, was one of the most accomplished Connecticut men of the Early Republic. A Yale graduate, he served under General Israel Putnam in the Revolutionary War and, after…
April 9: Son of Russian Immigrants Who Rose to Become Both Governor & Barrier-Breaker
Today in 1910, Abraham Alexander Ribicoff was born in a New Britain tenement house to Ashkenazi Jewish parents who had immigrated to Connecticut from Poland. Over the course of his lifetime, he would spend nearly 50 years in public service. The highlight of that half century of service was when he overcame entrenched anti-Semitism to…