Interesting Facts About Fairfield Co. & Connecticut

The Darien recently had free copies of the Book of Lists Connecticut, 2012 edition, published by Connecticut Business News Journal, based in New Haven. It has some interesting facts in it that may surprise you about institutions in this area and around the state.

The Connecticut Business News Journal's website sells the magazine-like "book" in both hard copy and digital versions.

Did you know that ...

• Priceline.com Inc., with $39.9 billion in market capitalization, is the third-largest company with headquarters in Connecticut (its headquarters are on the Norwalk-Darien border, on the Norwalk side of the line). The ranking is by market capitalization. It has 5,000 employees. The largest is General Electric ($198.3 billion; headquartered in Fairfield), the second largest is United Technologies Corp. ($71.3 billion; Hartford); Xerox comes in at No. 8 ($10.3 billion; Norwalk).

• The Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk is the state's sixth largest tourism or cultural attraction, with 450,000 annual visits. (The state's largest is Hammonasset Beach State Park in Madison, with two million visits.) Mystic Aquarium at the other end of Connecticut's coast gets 700,000 visits, and Norwalk's Stepping Stones Museum for Children is tied for seventh place (with Mystic Seaport) with 300,000 annual visits. The Stamford Museum & Nature Center gets 175,000.

• Greenwich's Bruce Museum gets as many visitors as Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum museum—100,000 each.

• Ridgefield Playhouse gets more visitors per year (500,000) than any other theater in the state, with the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts in Hartford coming in second place at 300,000.

• With 2,600 members, the Stamford Chamber of Commerce is the largest local or regional business organization in the state. The Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce comes in at No. 2, with 2,400 members.

• The largest professional organization in the state is the Connecticut Association of Realtors, with 17,000 members. 

• The largest professional networking group in the state is the Financial Executives Networking Group, headquartered in Weston, with a total membership of 3,400.