Today in Connecticut History

Today in 1970, an iconic pop music duo consisting of a New Haven-born brother and sister, experienced the first major breakthrough of their musical careers. They did so with a song that had previously been recorded by a host of other performers. The pair achieved “overnight stardom” (after a decade of effort) with their rendition of “Close to You,” a song previously...

Hiram Bingham III was, without a doubt, one of the most colorful people to grace the annals of Connecticut history. Born in 1875, over the course of his lifetime he became an Ivy League-educated scholar of Latin America, pilot, amateur archaeologist, Yale professor, United States senator, best-selling author, and the duly elected governor of Connecticut (for exactly...

  Today in 1879, Abigail “Abby” Hadassah Smith, — who achieved instant national fame at age 76 because of the way she responded to the man who took her cows — passed away at her home in Glastonbury.

Laurilla Smith, “The Smith Sisters Homestead,” watercolor prior to 1867 (Connecticut Historical Society)

Born into a prominent activist Glastonbury...

Samson Occom, one of the Mohegan tribe’s most famous members and a direct descendant of the great 17th-century tribal leader Uncas, was born in 1723 in southeastern Connecticut. As a teenager, he converted to Christianity after attending one of the many revivals held throughout Connecticut as part of the first Great Awakening. When he was 20, Occom moved to Columbia...

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 farm and attend Yale College, where (as a...