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Today in Connecticut History

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Today in Connecticut History: Today in Connecticut History – Big Things Happened. In This State. On This Date.

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At the start of 1941, though the United States had not yet formally entered World War II, the U.S. military was anxious to shore up defenses along the eastern seaboard, which some considered a vulnerable target for a German attack. Early in the year, the Connecticut General Assembly approved the purchase of 1,700 acres of former tobacco farmland in Windsor Locks to ...


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Born in Hartford on January 19, 1886, young Anna Louise James was the eighth of 11 children born to Willis James, a former slave who had successfully escaped from a Virginia plantation via the Underground Railroad. As a child, Anna’s family moved from Hartford to Old Saybrook, where she graduated high school and, as a diligent student, sought to pursue some form of ...


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At 4:19am on January 18, 1978, downtown Hartford narrowly missed being the site of one of the deadliest disasters in American history when the entire roof of the Hartford Civic Center arena — covering an area of nearly 2.5 acres and weighing 1,400 tons — suddenly collapsed onto a coliseum of 10,000 empty seats. Thanks to a series of incredible coincidences, there we...


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On January 17, 1901, the Hartford Electric Light Company (HELCO) took a major — and somewhat risky — step into the steam-powered future with the delivery of a huge, innovative, first-of-its-kind steam-turbine-powered generator. The massive 90,000-pound machine arrived on a custom-designed railroad car following a long journey from the Westinghouse Machine Company of...


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Today in 1996, yielding to intense and unrelenting pressure from the university administration, graduate student teachers at Yale University finally turned in final grades for the classes they had taught the previous semester — an action that ended an incredibly tense standoff over teacher compensation and labor rights closely watched by students and university admi...


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