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…
Tag: popular culture
July 25: The Carpenters Top the Charts
On this day in 1970, The Carpenters, the iconic pop music duo consisting of New Haven-born siblings Richard and Karen Carpenter, experienced the first major breakthrough of their musical careers as their second album, “Close to You,” reached #1 on the Billboard charts, where it remained for the next four weeks. Born in 1946…
July 6: The Hartford Circus Fire
What began as an innocent day at the circus ended in one of the worst fire disasters in U.S. history, on this day in 1944. In early July of that year, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus had set up one of their largest “Big Top” tents in a field in Hartford’s…
June 17: Windsor’s “Murder Factory” True Crime Story Kills at the Box Office
Today in Connecticut history, the Broadway comedy “Arsenic and Old Lace,” based on one of Connecticut’s most infamous true crime tales, wrapped up its wildly successful New York run after over 1,400 shows. The unlikely inspiration for “Arsenic and Old Lace,” written by Joseph Kesserling in 1939, was the story of Amy Archer-Gilligan, a…