New Haven is the second-largest city in Connecticut and the sixth-largest in New England. With a population of 129,779 people, New Haven is the principal municipality in the Greater New Haven metropolitan area, which had a total population of 571,310 in 2000. It is located in New Haven County, on New Haven Harbor, on the northern shore of Long Island Sound.

New Haven was founded in 1638 by English puritans, and a year later eight streets were laid out in a four-by-four grid, creating what is now commonly known as the "Nine Square Plan", now recognized by the American Institute of Certified Planners as a National Historic Planning Landmark. The central common block is New Haven Green, a 16-acre (6 ha) square, now a National Historic Landmark and the center of Downtown New Haven.

New Haven is the home of the Ivy League school Yale University. The university is an integral part of the city's economy, being New Haven's biggest taxpayer and employer, as noted in the Mayor's 2010 State of the City address. Health care (hospitals and biotechnology), professional services (legal, architectural, marketing, and engineering), financial services, and retail trade also help to form an economic base for the city.

Connecticut (ⁱ/kəˈnɛtɨkət/) is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south (with which it shares a water boundary in Long Island Sound).

Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately bisects the state. Its capital city is Hartford. Much of southern and western Connecticut (along with the majority of the state's population) is part of the New York metropolitan area; three of Connecticut's eight counties are statistically included in the New York City combined statistical area, the same area is widely referred to as the Tri-State area. Connecticut's center of population is in Cheshire, New Haven County, which is also located within the Tri-State area.

Connecticut is the 3rd least extensive, the 29th most populous, and 4th most densely populated of the 50 United States. Called the Constitution State, Nutmeg State, and "The Land of Steady Habits", Connecticut was influential in the development of the federal government of the United States.

Paul Albert Anka, OC (born July 30, 1941 Ottawa) is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and actor.

Anka first became famous as a teen idol in the late 1950s and 1960s with hit songs like "Diana", "Lonely Boy", and "Put Your Head on My Shoulder". He went on to write such well-known music as the theme for The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and one of Tom Jones's biggest hits, "She's a Lady", and the English lyrics for Frank Sinatra's signature song, "My Way" (originally French song "Comme d'habitude").

In 1983, he co-wrote with Michael Jackson the song "I Never Heard", which was retitled and released in 2009 under the name "This Is It". An additional song that Jackson co-wrote with Anka from this 1983 session, "Love Never Felt So Good", has since been discovered, and will be released in the near future. The song was also released by Johnny Mathis in 1984.

Anka became a naturalized US citizen in 1990.

Anka was born in Ottawa, Ontario in Canada to Andy and Camelia Anka who owned a restaurant called The Locanda there. His parents are of Lebanese descent. He sang with the St. Elias Antiochian Orthodox Church choir under the direction of Frederick Karam, with whom he studied music theory. He also studied piano with Winnifred Rees.