The worst weather disasters in southern New England occurred in years that ended in the number 8. Included are the Blizzard of 1888, the Hurricane of 1938, and tornadoes and ice storms in the years 1878, 1898, 1978, and 2018.

Paul Revere and Sybil Ludington. They both rode through the countryside to warn Patriots of a pending British attack during the Revolutionary War. The big difference: Sybil was just 16 years old and rode through a major rain storm. But she doesn't get the same credit.

NASCAR was born at the Thompson Speedway, during an agreement struck in the back corner of the cafeteria. Thompson itself set many firsts, including being the first track to be asphalt paved and the first to have separate, looped racetrack that did not use public roads. It still hosts races today.

How did a titan of Wall Street manage to attain his success coming from a rural dairy farm? Charles Dow's only education was in a one-room schoolhouse, and yet managed to start the Dow-Jones Company, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and the Wall Street Journal.

The earliest firefighters used bucket brigades, hand-drawn pumpers, and "speaking trumpets" (to project a voice and bark orders at fire scenes). With all of the wooden structures in Colonial America, fires were frequent. This fire department has the distinction of being the oldest volunteer fire department in the country.

The media dubbed it the Glawackus - an elusive and ferocious creature first spotted in Glastonbury, CT that veteran hunters could not identify. It killed wildlife, dogs, chickens, and made unidentifiable howls at night, terrifying the population. Finally, one hunter is believed to have bagged it - but there is much more to the story.

Helen Keller - deaf, dumb, and blind from childhood. She overcame her disabilities, with help, and went on to become an internationally celebrated author, lecturer, and advocate for those with her disabilities. One of her good friends was Samuel Clemens, a.k.a., Mark Twain.

It's one of the more quoted stories from the slave era. Four deaths during a mutiny aboard a ship - La Amistad - carrying 50 kidnapped Africans from Cuba led to high profile court cases in the U.S. about the immoral slave trade in the 1800s, drawing international attention.

Veteran soldiers in the 1700s were as perplexed as ordinary towns folks - and even as scared - by the deafening, ongoing noise that woke them up on a particularly dark night. Nobody could see the source of the sound - a sound like never heard before. Was it Judgement Day? When the morning light came, the mystery was solved.

His gravestone reads "X-Y-Z" because the identity of the man who staged an 1899 bank robbery is still unconfirmed. He was shot dead during the robbery and photos of him were widely circulated in the newspapers of the day. No one ever positively identified him.