Today in 1907, film star Katherine Hepburn was born in Hartford. Widely considered to be one of the greatest film and theater actresses in American history, Hepburn holds the record for the most Academy Awards ever won by an actor or actress (four) and starred in over 80 feature films, TV shows, and stage…
Tag: popular culture
May 7: Edwin Land, Inventor & Founder of Polaroid
Today in 1909, Edwin Land, a self-taught inventor and co-founder of Polaroid who revolutionized the way the world experienced photography, was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut. After graduating from the Norwich Free Academy in southeastern Connecticut (which later named their library after their famous alumnus), Land attended Harvard University for one year before dropping out…
May 4: Hudson River School Artist Frederic Edwin Church born in Hartford
On this day in 1826, iconic American landscape painter Frederic Edwin Church was born in Hartford, Connecticut. The internationally-renowned artist’s Connecticut roots ran deep: He was a direct descendant of one of the original English Puritans who settled Hartford under the leadership of Thomas Hooker, and Frederic’s father was a prominent silversmith and later…
April 21: Mark Twain, American Author & Satirist, dies in Redding
On this day in 1910, Mark Twain, one of America’s most famous authors and Connecticut’s most famous residents, died at his home in Redding, Connecticut. 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…
April 18: A Deadly Boxing Match in Waterbury
Even though it had been a documented pastime for millennia, amateur (or “Olympic-style”) boxing experienced a popular renaissance in the United States during the turn of the twentieth century, thanks to celebrity heavyweights like John L. Sullivan and the inclusion of the sport in the 1904 Olympic games. During the early twentieth century, amateur…
February 21: The World’s First “Phone Book”
Thanks to Connecticut inventor and innovator George Coy, the city of New Haven can lay claim to a number of “firsts” related to the early development and adaptation of the telephone. Not even two years after Alexander Graham Bell first patented the revolutionary communication device, Coy and his company had implemented a number of…
February 12: Sherlock Holmes’ “Farewell Tour”
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. He left Hartford at the age of 20 to seek his fame and fortune as an actor and stage producer and met with moderate success until 1899, when he landed…
February 11: Charles Dickens visits New Haven
On the evening of February 7, 1842, three words spread throughout the streets of New Haven like wildfire, causing crowds of people to rush toward the city’s downtown Toutine Hotel: “Dickens has come!” Just before 8:00pm that night, Charles Dickens had arrived at the city’s Union Station, traveling by rail from Hartford. The man…
February 10: “General Tom Thumb” Marries “The Queen of Beauty”
Born in 1838 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, legendary entertainer Charles Sherwood Stratton, a.k.a. “Tom Thumb,” began touring with the 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 — Stratton was a dwarf who never grew taller…
January 28: The World’s First Commercial Telephone Exchange
In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell received a U.S. Patent for the first practical telephone design, ushering in one of the most revolutionary devices of the late 19th century. The earliest telephones, however, were extremely limited: they allowed for communication between two receivers, but only if they were directly connected by a single wire. It…
January 24: Legislators Create the Connecticut Hall of Fame
On January 24, 2005, state legislators unveiled a plan to establish an official Connecticut Hall of Fame to honor the state’s most distinguished citizens. Supported by individual donations, state grants, and Connecticut-based businesses, the Hall of Fame was created to recognize the accomplishments of notable inventors, entertainers, artists, politicians, athletes, and others with an…
January 23: A Pie in the Sky Idea Takes Off.
In 1871, a Civil War veteran and baker by the name of William Russell Frisbie opened the Frisbie Pie Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut, later building a large factory on the city’s east side to accommodate the growing demand for his pastries. Little did he know that one day, several decades in the future, his name…