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UMass Plays in Final Four
UMass Plays in Final Four
On this day in 1996, the UMass Minutemen ended the winningest season in UMass basketball history. Coached by John Calipari and led by future NBA star Marcus Camby, the Minutemen racked up a 26 game...
Puritans Leave for Massachusetts
Puritans Leave for Massachusetts
On this day in 1630, the last well-wishers stepped off the ship Arbella and returned to shore. More than a week after the vessel first set out, the winds were finally favorable. The ship weighed...
Frances Perkins Born in Boston
Frances Perkins Born in Boston
On this day in 1880, Frances Perkins, the first woman to hold a cabinet position, was born in Boston. Raised in Worcester, she attended Mt. Holyoke College, where she became committed to improving the lot...
First CCC Enrollees Arrive at Ft. Devens
First CCC Enrollees Arrive at Ft. Devens
On this day in 1933, the first enrollees of the Massachusetts Civilian Conservation Corps arrived at Fort Devens in Ayer. They were soldiers in a peacetime army that, in the words of the men who...
Massachusetts Passes First Education Law
Massachusetts Passes First Education Law
On this day in 1642, Massachusetts Bay Colony passed the first law in the New World requiring that children be taught to read and write. The English Puritans who founded Massachusetts believed that the well-being...
First Whale Watch Departs
First Whale Watch Departs
On this day in 1975 charter boat captain Al Avellar left Provincetown Harbor with a boatload of school children. They were going to look, not fish. This was the first whale-watching trip on the eastern...
G.E. Engineers Test Jet Engine
G.E. Engineers Test Jet Engine
On this day in 1942, after months of highly secret work, GE engineers in Lynn successfully tested the engine they called by the innocuous name "I-A." It was the first jet engine built in the...
Battle Begins on Lexington Common
Battle Begins on Lexington Common
On this day in 1775, the first shots were fired in the cause of American independence. In Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous poem, "the shot heard 'round the world" came from the musket of a Concord...
Telephone Operators Strike
Telephone Operators Strike
On this day in 1919, striking telephone operators in Massachusetts won the right to negotiate with the New England Telephone Company. The young, single women who had flooded into the industry in the early 1900s...
W.E.B. DuBois Returns to Harvard
W.E.B. DuBois Returns to Harvard
On this day in 1904, W.E.B. DuBois gave a lecture on "the race question" at Harvard, where nine years before he had been the first black person to receive a Ph.D. From his childhood in...