Bridgeport is notable for having had a socialist mayor for 24 years. Jasper McLevy, who served from 1933 to 1957, was known for his fiscal restraint. When asked, after a snow storm, when the City would begin plowing snow, McLevy allegedly replied, "God put the snow there, let him take it away."
Because of the nature of the street, its lots, and its orientation to the nine-square-grid of New Haven (the nation's first planned city), Hillhouse Avenue is sometimes considered to be the first suburb in the United States and was referred to by both Charles Dickens and Mark Twain as "the most beautiful street in America".
Holy Land USA is a park in Waterbury most notable for its illuminated cross on the hill that can be seen from both major highways and most points in the city. The original park contained miniature models of Jerusalem and Bethlehem. It was one of Connecticut's biggest tourist attractions in the 1960s and 1970s, with 50,000 visitors per year.
On May 6, 1853, 48 passengers were killed when a train travelling at 50 mph plunged into the Norwalk Harbor off an open drawbridge. As a result of the public panic and indignation caused by the accident, the Connecticut Legislature imposed a law requiring every train in the state to come to a dead halt before crossing any opening bridge.
James Naismith's original basketball rules said nothing about dribbling, merely stating that passing the ball was the legal way of advancing it. There's a photo of the local men's YMCA basketball team in the New Britain Industrial Museum from 1896, the year the squad won the world championship. Bernardotte Loomis, later the city tax collector, bounced the ball in the title game, developing the strategy of "passing to himself." This unexpected maneuver, according to The Courant's Bob Zaiman who wrote an article on March 6, 1954, "probably saved the game of basketball from extinction."
On July 18, 1640, Daniel Patrick and Robert Feake, jointly purchased the land between the Asamuck and Tatomuck brooks, in the area now known as Old Greenwich, from Wiechquaesqueek Munsees living there for "twentie-five coates."
SHARE THIS PAGE!