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John Adams Dies
John Adams Dies
On this day in 1826, 50 years after the Declaration of Independence was adopted in Philadelphia, John Adams died at home in Braintree. One of the great men of the Revolutionary generation and the second...
Rockport Women Smash Liquor Barrels
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...
Anti-war Activists Sentenced to Prison
Anti-war Activists Sentenced to Prison
On this day in 1968, four men were sentenced to federal prison for counseling young men to refuse military service. Dubbed the Boston Five, the defendants included famed baby doctor Benjamin Spock and Yale Chaplain...
Borden Announces Plan to Sell Prince Pasta Plant
Borden Announces Plan to Sell Prince Pasta Plant
On this day in 1997, the Borden company announced a tentative deal to save the Prince pasta factory in Lowell. When Borden closed the failing plant, Senator Ted Kennedy remarked that it was "a sad...
Berkshire Town Sends Giant Cheese Ball to Washington
Berkshire Town Sends Giant Cheese Ball to Washington
On this day in 1801, the Berkshire County town of Cheshire made a 1235-pound ball of cheese and shipped it to Washington, D.C. as a gift for the newly-elected President, Thomas Jefferson, who was a...
Henry David Thoreau Spends Night in Jail
Henry David Thoreau Spends Night in Jail
On this day in 1846, Henry David Thoreau left his cabin at Walden Pond for a brief walk into town and ended up in the Concord jail for refusing to pay his poll tax. A...
Free Love Supporters Protest at Faneuil Hall
Free Love Supporters Protest at Faneuil Hall
On this day in 1878, several thousand supporters of Ezra Heywood held an "Indignation Meeting" at Boston's Faneuil Hall. They were protesting his conviction and imprisonment on obscenity charges. Educated for the ministry, he had...
Frederick Douglass First Addresses White Audience
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...
Woman's Rights Pioneer Lucy Stone Born
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...
Boston Mob Protests Stamp Act
Boston Mob Protests Stamp Act
On this day in 1765, the British official charged with administering the hated Stamp Act was hung in effigy from an elm tree near Boston Common. A small group of merchants and master craftsmen had...