Once known as the "Great Swamp" in the Berlin section of Farmington, New Britain was approved as a new parish in 1754. By the beginning of the 19th century, New Britain had made its mark as an emerging industrial village.

The city's official nickname is "Hardware City" because of its history as a manufacturing center and as the headquarters of Stanley Black & Decker.

U.S. President Thomas Jefferson was known to have a device for hanging clothes in his closet at Monticello, but today's most popular hanger, the shoulder-shaped wire hanger, was inspired by a coat hook that was invented in 1869 by O. A. North of New Britain, Connecticut.

Also referred to as "Little Poland", New Britain's Broad Street neighborhood has been home to a considerable number of Polish businesses and families since 1890, and by 1930 a quarter of the city was Polish. The city is served by three Polish language newspapers and a television station, and many businesses and civil agencies are bilingual.

The Knowledge Corridor is an urban region of New England known for its high concentration of colleges and universities and is home to more than 120,000 college students.

Walnut Hill Park is an early work of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, with winding lanes, a band shell, and the city's monument to its World War I soldiers. The park was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

James Naismith's original basketball rules said nothing about dribbling, merely stating that passing the ball was the legal way of advancing it. There's a photo of the local men's YMCA basketball team in the New Britain Industrial Museum from 1896, the year the squad won the world championship. Bernardotte Loomis, later the city tax collector, bounced the ball in the title game, developing the strategy of "passing to himself." This unexpected maneuver, according to The Courant's Bob Zaiman who wrote an article on March 6, 1954, "probably saved the game of basketball from extinction."

New Britain's motto, Industria implet alveare et melle fruitur -- translated from Latin -- means "Industry fills the hive and enjoys the honey." This phrase was coined by Elihu Burritt, a 19th-century New Britain resident, diplomat, philanthropist and social activist.

The New Britain Museum of American Art, founded in 1903, carries the distinction of being the first museum in the country strictly devoted to American art. Today it contains over 8,400 paintings, works on paper, sculptures, videos, and photographs.

The university's athletic teams are known as the Blue Devils. Their mascot was originally named Victor E, but was changed to Kizer in 2011 after unveiling a new logo.