Hartford is 1.75 hours drive from White Plains, New York. It's the capital of Connecticut. After the American Civil War, it was one of the wealthiest cities in the States for several decades but today 30% of people in the city live below the poverty line and 83% commutes into the city for work... (wiki)
Here are some of the historic places it's known for:
- The nation's oldest public art museum - Wadsworth Atheneum
- The nation's oldest publicly funded park - Bushnell Park
- The nation's oldest continuously published newspaper - The Hartford Courant
- The nation's second-oldest secondary school - Hartford Public
- Trinity College is also here
- Mark Twain's house as well where he wrote his most famous stuff and raised his family.
I know a $h1t ton of history in this city right?
I saw one place today - Mr Twain's House. We were on a tight schedule to get a hoodie from Yale! Mr. Twain apparently married a wealthy woman and networked his way into fame thru parties getting his work known amongst the wealthy patrons of his time. It helped that he was witty and brilliant. That's pretty much the short version of the tour.
Favorite quote by him so far:
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” 
For those gun enthusiasts, one of Hartford's most influential 'phases' of its history was in the 1800s after the American Independence. Samuel Colt invented the trigger in a revolver that can fire multiple times. How many weapons use that little invention today? Needless to say he was a multi million dollar man back in those days supplying weapons for both the Mexican-American War and the Civil War. $15 million to be exact which is equivalent to $380 million today. You can google the rest of that story, it's pretty cray.
Headed out to Yale after eating at Effie's Diner. Which was not bad but not exciting either. It's only 45 minutes away to New Haven from Hartford.
A bit of a museum nerd. Had to pop into Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.
They only had Rex's head...
This super old turtle is 10 feet long...
This is what my childhood nightmares are made of.
Three of these guys starred in the latest installment of Jurassic Park.
I just thought the horns were wicked.
We headed to the bookstore after the museum and got our hoodies. There are Hebrew
letters in the crest. It says 'Urim and Thummim' meaning 'Light & Truth'
which is the motto of the university.
It was a Sunday so we didn't get to properly do a university tour but we still got to see most of the buildings. They're totally built in Gothic style. There wasn't really a singular gated campus to Yale like most universities I know of in California. More of a bunch of buildings all over one area of the city - reminded me of my alma mater.
This is John Edward's College. (Famous theologian, also an Alumni)
The Harkness Tower (Harkness is the guy who financed most of Yale's buildings)
Yale started as the Collegiate School of Connecticut to train ministers in theology and scared languages in 1701. It wasn't called Yale College until 1718 after Elihu Yale gave a substantial gift to the school.
Yale's the third oldest institution of higher education in the States.
Its library is also the third largest academic library in the nation.
Nathan Cole, the first American Spy in the Revolution, was an alumni of Yale.
Travel+Leisure listed Yale campus as one of the most beautiful in the country.
Yale's notable alums:
Bill Clinton - 42nd US President
Sr. George Bush - 41st US President
George W. Bush - 43rd US President
Hilary Clinton - Soon-to-be US President
John Kerry - Secretary of State
Walter Camp - Created American Football
Noah Webster - Lexicographer (you know like the Webster dictionary?)
Samuel F. B. Morse - ever heard of the Morse Code?
Nathan Hale - First American Spy
Jonathan Edwards - Famous Theologian
Paul Newman - Actor
Sargent Shriver - Founder of the Peace Corp
Ernest Lawrence - cyclotron inventor and Nobel laureate in Physics
Henry Luce - Co-founder of Time Magazine
Fredrick W. Smith - Founder of Fedex
Bing Gordon - Co-founder of EA
I only listed the people I know or should know.... but the list is extensive. You can google the rest. I'm really impressed with Yale as if I wasn't before. Now, Mind Blown.
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