Connecticut Trivia & Tidbits - Page 7

Looking for Connecticut trivia? Try our list Connecticut little know facts, tidbits and trivia.

Trumbull (pop. 34,243) native Chris Drury and his Boston University teammates won the NCAA hockey title in 1995. Drury went on to play in the NHL and competed on Team USA during the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

first appeared: 1/16/2005

On May 21, 1901, the Waterbury Clock Co. in Waterbury received a letter from Mark Twain stating, "Please send me a watch. $1 enclosed." Twain was referring to the company's highly successful and inexpensive "Yankee" pocket watch, "the watch that made the dollar famous." After Walt Disney introduced the public to the Mickey Mouse cartoon character, Waterbury Clock in 1933 offered its first Mickey Mouse watches, which sold for as little as $1.50 and are highly-prized collectors' items today. In 1969, the company became Timex Corp.

first appeared: 1/2/2005

In 1976, 19-year-old ice skater Dorothy Hamill of the Riverside district of Greenwich (pop. 61,101) dazzled viewers of the Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria, with her grace and athleticism—and won the Gold Medal.

first appeared: 12/19/2004

Lindy Remigino, a 1949 graduate of Hartford Public High School, is the only Connecticut athlete to win two Olympic gold medals—one in the 100-meter dash, the other in 4x100 relay at Helsinki in 1952.

first appeared: 12/5/2004

In 1989,Connecticut became the first state to require that operators of personal watercraft take a mandatory boating education and certification course.

first appeared: 11/21/2004

Bristol (pop. 60,062) is nicknamed "Mum City" because of the many varieties of chrysanthemum grown there and shipped around North America.

first appeared: 11/7/2004

Golfer Julius Boros (1920-1994), born in Fairfield (pop. 57,340), won 18 Professional Golfers Association of America tournaments, including U.S. Opens in 1952 and 1963 and the PGA Championship in 1968.

first appeared: 10/24/2004

The Peter Paul Division of Hershey, makers of Mounds and Almond Joy candy bars, is headquartered in Naugatuck (pop. 30,989).

first appeared: 10/10/2004

In 1903, Connecticut purchased land for what would become the first state forest in New England. The Meshomasic State Forest takes its name from the rocky Meshomasic Mountain, where the habitat is favorable to rattlesnakes. Meshomasic is the American Indian word for “place of many snakes.”

first appeared: 10/3/2004

Decathlete Bruce Jenner, who won a gold medal at the 1976 Olympic Games, sharpened his athletic skills as part of the football, basketball and track teams at Newtown (pop. 25,031) High School.

first appeared: 9/19/2004

Rosalind Russell, an Oscar nominee for her roles in My Sister Eileen, Sister Kenny, Mourning Becomes Electra and Auntie Mame, was born in Waterbury in 1907.

first appeared: 9/12/2004

Ezra J. Warner of Waterbury patented the first can opener in 1858. The device resembled a bent bayonet and was used by the U.S. military during the Civil War.

first appeared: 9/5/2004

Each year United States consumers eat 3 billion pieces of PEZ Candy, which are manufactured in Orange (pop. 13,233).

first appeared: 8/29/2004

A desk made almost entirely of rubber is housed at the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury. Vulcanized rubber inventor Charles Goodyear created the desk in 1851 for display at London’s Crystal Palace.

first appeared: 8/22/2004

To protect his piano manufacturing plant from fire, Henry Parmelee of New Haven invented a fire sprinkler system that released water only where needed. The system was patented in 1875.

first appeared: 8/15/2004

During the 1920s, while attending Yale University in New Haven, Hubert “Rudy” Vallee played saxophone for a variety of bands, among them the Yale Collegians.

first appeared: 8/8/2004

While working in southern Egypt in 1998, John Darnell, a Yale University Egyptologist in New Haven, discovered a rock bearing puzzling inscriptions. Those inscriptions, some 4,000 years old, are believed to be the prototype for all modern alphabets.

first appeared: 8/1/2004

The 1784 Tapping Reeve House in Litchfield (pop. 8,316) served as the nation’s first formal law school.

first appeared: 7/25/2004

When a cluster of arthritis cases was reported in Lyme (pop. 2,016) in 1975, researchers began looking for a cause. Two years later, the syndrome was labeled Lyme disease, but it wasn’t until 1982 that scientists determined that a tick-borne bacterium was the cause.

first appeared: 7/18/2004

Blake Brothers in New Haven invented the first mortised locks for doors and chests in 1835. Inset into doorframes, mortised locks replaced box locks mounted outside the door.

first appeared: 7/11/2004

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