CTConnecticut Fun Facts

Connecticut abolished county government in 1960. Its eight counties survive as lines on a map and labels in court records, with no county executives, no county councils and no county taxes. In 2022 the Census Bureau agreed to swap them for nine regional councils of governments as the official county equivalents.

Facts most people get wrong

• The Constitution State nickname has nothing to do with the US Constitution. It honors the Fundamental Orders of January 14, 1639, often called the first written constitution of a self governing people. Connecticut was actually the fifth state to ratify the federal document, on January 9, 1788.
• Hartford is not the biggest city. The 2020 census put Bridgeport at 148,654, Stamford at 135,470 and New Haven at 134,023, leaving the capital fourth at 121,054.
• Yale did not start in New Haven. Chartered in 1701, the school taught in Killingworth and Saybrook first and moved to New Haven in 1716. The Yale name came in 1718, after a donation from merchant Elihu Yale.
• Nutmeg State is an insult. The nickname came from accusations that Connecticut peddlers whittled fake nutmegs out of wood and sold them as the real spice.
• The hamburger date is 1900, not the 1890s. Louis' Lunch in New Haven is credited by the Library of Congress with serving the first hamburger sandwich in 1900, and the shop still refuses to put ketchup on one.
• Connecticut has no team in the big four leagues. The Whalers left for North Carolina in 1997. Its one major franchise is the WNBA's Connecticut Sun, owned by the Mohegan Tribe and playing at Mohegan Sun Arena in Uncasville.

Records and firsts

• The first American cookbook, American Cookery by Amelia Simmons, was printed in Hartford in 1796 and was the first to use native ingredients like cornmeal.
• New Haven opened the world's first commercial telephone exchange on January 28, 1878, with 21 subscribers, and published the first phone book weeks later: one page, about 50 names, no numbers.
• Connecticut passed the country's first automobile speed limit law in 1901, capping cars at 12 miles per hour in cities and 15 on country roads.
• USS Nautilus, the first nuclear powered vessel of any kind, was launched at Groton in January 1954 and is now a museum ship there.
• The Frisbee owes its name to the Frisbie Pie Company of Bridgeport, whose tins college students had been throwing for years before Wham-O borrowed the sound of the word in 1958.
• Hartford has anchored American insurance since Aetna, Travelers and The Hartford were founded there in the 1800s, and the state ranks first or second nationally in per capita personal income.

Geography that surprises

• The highest ground in Connecticut, 2,380 feet, is on the south slope of Mount Frissell, whose summit is in Massachusetts. The tallest peak entirely inside the state is Bear Mountain at 2,316 feet.
• Connecticut has no Atlantic shoreline. Its 96 miles of coast face Long Island Sound, shielded by Long Island, which is why the beaches have almost no surf.
• The southwest panhandle around Greenwich exists because of a 1683 deal. Connecticut gave up its claim to the Rye area and took a strip of land along the Sound in exchange.
• Ranked 48th in area at about 5,543 square miles, the state runs roughly 110 miles across and 70 miles top to bottom.
• Connecticut once owned a piece of Ohio. The Western Reserve, a strip in the northeast of that state, was sold off in 1795 and its jurisdiction handed over in 1800.

Where the name comes from

The name descends from an Eastern Algonquian word recorded as quinnitukqut, meaning roughly "beside the long tidal river." It described the Connecticut River, not the land or the people, and English speakers stretched it to cover the whole colony. The silent second letter c is an English spelling habit rather than anything in the original word. The same river gives the state its shape, cutting straight down the middle from the Massachusetts line to Long Island Sound and reaching tidal water more than 60 miles inland.

Bordering states

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