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Rockport Women Smash Liquor Barrels

July 8, 1856
July 8, 1856

Rockport Women Smash Liquor Barrels

On this day in 1856, 200 women, some of them wielding hatchets and ranging in age from 37 to 75, rampaged through the town of Rockport destroying every container of alcohol they could find. One...

Phillis Wheatley Arrives in Boston

July 11, 1761
July 11, 1761

Phillis Wheatley Arrives in Boston

On this day in 1761, a girl from West Africa arrived in Boston, enslaved with 74 other people on the ship Phillis. John Wheatley, a successful merchant, purchased her and named her Phillis, after the...

Tupperware Inventor Born

July 28, 1907
July 28, 1907

Tupperware Inventor Born

On this day in 1907, Earl Tupper, inventor of Tupperware, was born. Raised in central Massachusetts, birthplace of the plastics industry, he was a compulsive tinkerer, inventing, among hundreds of other things, a fish-powered boat....

Lizzie Borden's Father and Stepmother Murdered

August 4, 1892
August 4, 1892

Lizzie Borden's Father and Stepmother Murdered

On this day in 1892, a prosperous banker and his wife were hacked to death with a hatchet in their Fall River home. Suspicion immediately focused on the man's unmarried 32-year-old daughter, Lizzie Borden. Basing...

Frederick Douglass First Addresses White Audience

August 11, 1841
August 11, 1841

Frederick Douglass First Addresses White Audience

On this day in 1841, Frederick Douglass, a fugitive slave, addressed a white audience for the first time when he spoke to a gathering of abolitionists on Nantucket. "It was with the utmost difficulty that...

Charlestown Convent Lies in Ruins

August 12, 1834
August 12, 1834

Charlestown Convent Lies in Ruins

On this day in 1834, the Ursuline Convent in Charlestown lay in ruins. The night before, a Protestant mob sacked it and burned it to the ground. The nuns who lived in the elegant building...

Woman's Rights Pioneer Lucy Stone Born

August 13, 1818
August 13, 1818

Woman's Rights Pioneer Lucy Stone Born

On this day in 1818, woman's rights pioneer Lucy Stone was born on a farm in West Brookfield. Her mother greeted the news that her sixth child was a girl by exclaiming, "Oh Dear! I...

Oak Bluffs Writer Dorothy West Dies

August 16, 1998
August 16, 1998

Oak Bluffs Writer Dorothy West Dies

On this day in 1998, Dorothy West died on Martha's Vineyard. The Boston-born writer was the last living member of the Harlem Renaissance, a movement of African American artists, writers, and musicians that energized American...

Smithsonian Puts Julia Child's Kitchen on Display

August 19, 2002
August 19, 2002

Smithsonian Puts Julia Child's Kitchen on Display

On this day in 2002, a new exhibit opened in Washington, DC. The kitchen in Julia Child's Cambridge home of 32 years had been disassembled and moved to the Smithsonian. Designed by her husband Paul...

Dr. Susan Dimock Begins Medical Residency

August 20, 1872
August 20, 1872

Dr. Susan Dimock Begins Medical Residency

On this day in 1872, Dr. Susan Dimock became the resident physician at the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston. Only a month earlier, she had returned from medical school in Europe,...

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