Windsor Locks, CT
Opened 1941 as a US Army airfield. Named in 1948 for Lt. Eugene M. Bradley, killed in a 1941 training accident at the field. Connecticut's primary commercial airport; also serves western Massachusetts.
On the north perimeter of Bradley International Airport sits the largest aviation museum in New England. The Connecticut Aeronautical Historical Society started building the collection in 1959 in a smaller hangar at the airport. In October 1979 an F4 tornado tore through Windsor Locks and destroyed most of it — aircraft scattered, fuselages torn open, a B-29 that had been intact for thirty years left in pieces. The volunteers spent years restoring what could be saved and built a new permanent home on Perimeter Road. Today it holds more than eighty aircraft across three display hangars plus an outdoor yard, and is one of the most significant aviation collections in the eastern United States. The collection leans on Connecticut aerospace history — Sikorsky, Pratt & Whitney, Kaman, Chance Vought, all of which had factories in the state. The 58th Bombardment Wing Memorial centers on a fully restored B-29A Superfortress, "Jack's Hack." The oldest aircraft is the 1870 Silas M. Brooks balloon basket, generally considered the oldest surviving American-built flying machine. The Sikorsky VS-44A on display is the sole remaining American-built four-engine commercial flying boat. The Goodyear ZNPK-28 blimp control car is one of only two surviving K-class control cars in the world. Major fighter exhibits include a P-47 Thunderbolt, F-86F Sabre, F-100A Super Sabre, F-89J Scorpion, F-104A Starfighter, and an F-15C credited with a 1991 MiG-25 kill. There's an exhibit specifically on the 57th Fighter Group — the unit Eugene Bradley flew in when he was killed at this field in 1941.
A 25-room High Victorian Gothic mansion at 351 Farmington Avenue in Hartford, Connecticut — the home of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain), his wife Olivia, and their three daughters from 1874 to 1891. Twain commissioned the orange-and-black brick house in 1873 from New York architect Edward Tuckerman Potter; it was wildly experimental for its time, with asymmetric massing, polychrome brickwork, and elaborate Tiffany-designed interior stenciling. In the 17 years he lived here, Twain wrote his major works in the third-floor billiard room: "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" (1876), "The Prince and the Pauper" (1881), "Life on the Mississippi" (1883), and "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (1884) — works that defined American literature. The family lost the house in 1891 after Twain's investments in the Paige Compositor (a failed mechanical typesetting machine) bankrupted him. After serving variously as a school, library, and boarding house, the house was saved in 1929 and restored to Twain's era. Next door is the Harriet Beecher Stowe House — Stowe ("Uncle Tom's Cabin," 1852) was Twain's next-door neighbor and friend.
Founded as the Collegiate School in 1701 at Old Saybrook, Connecticut — the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States (after Harvard 1636 and William & Mary 1693). Relocated to New Haven in 1716, renamed Yale College in 1718 after a donation from Welsh merchant Elihu Yale. The Old Campus quadrangle is bounded by High, Elm, Chapel, and College streets in downtown New Haven. Connecticut Hall (built 1750) is the oldest surviving building, where Nathan Hale lived as a student before being hanged by the British in 1776 — his statue stands outside the entrance with the words "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." Yale produced five U.S. presidents (William Howard Taft, Gerald Ford, both George Bushes, Bill Clinton), 65 Nobel laureates, the Skull and Bones secret society (founded 1832), and the Yale Bulldogs football team that helped invent American football in the 1880s under Walter Camp. The Beinecke Rare Book Library's translucent marble walls (built 1963) protect the world's largest collection of Gutenberg Bibles (one of only 21 complete copies on vellum).
On the west bank of the Thames River in New London, Connecticut — the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, established 1876 as the Revenue Cutter School aboard the schooner Dobbin, made permanent on shore in 1910. It is the smallest of the five federal service academies (corps of cadets around 1,100) and the only one that does not require a Congressional nomination — admission is by merit alone. The academy's training barque USCGC Eagle (WIX-327) is the only active commissioned sailing vessel in the U.S. military. Built in Germany in 1936 as Horst Wessel for the Kriegsmarine and used to train Nazi naval cadets, she was surrendered as war reparations in 1946 and sailed to New London by an American crew that included her former German captain teaching them the rigging. Across the Thames in Groton, on Naval Submarine Base New London (the Navy's primary submarine training base since 1916), the Submarine Force Museum hosts USS Nautilus (SSN-571) — the world's first nuclear-powered submarine, launched 1954, the first vessel to reach the North Pole submerged (August 3, 1958). Nautilus is open to the public, free admission.