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Harvard Awards Bowditch Honorary Degree
Harvard Awards Bowditch Honorary Degree
On this day in 1802, Harvard College awarded Nathaniel Bowditch an honorary Master's Degree. The Salem-born astronomer, mathematician, and navigator was almost entirely self-educated. His formal schooling ended when he was ten. While apprenticed to...
First Esperanto Society Formed
First Esperanto Society Formed
On this day in 1905, the first Esperanto Society in the United States was established in Boston. Invented by a Polish doctor in the 1880s, Esperanto was an entirely new language created to promote international...
Fall River Church Locks Out Priest
Fall River Church Locks Out Priest
On this day in 1884, a Fall River newspaper reported that French Canadian Roman Catholic parishioners had locked their newly-appointed priest out of their church. When the priest finally gained entry to the building, he...
"Storm Warriors" Rescue 29 Sailors off Hull
"Storm Warriors" Rescue 29 Sailors off Hull
On this day in 1888, one of the most ferocious storms of the nineteenth century battered the New England coast. In the seas off Hull, "Storm Warriors," as the men of the United States Life-Saving...
Newburyport Fire Leads to Execution for Arson
Newburyport Fire Leads to Execution for Arson
On this day in 1820, a barn filled with hay burned to the ground in Newburyport. Just three days later, cries of "fire" alarmed the town again. Terrified residents were convinced they had an arsonist...
Red Sox Win World Series
Red Sox Win World Series
On this day in 2004, the Boston Red Sox ended an 86-year drought and buried the "Curse of the Bambino." They won the World Series! Their sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals was almost —...
Boston Receives First Transcontinental TV Broadcast
Boston Receives First Transcontinental TV Broadcast
On this day in 1951, anyone in Boston with access to a television set could be part of history — a program was transmitted live from coast-to-coast for the first time ever. President Harry Truman's...
Hemingway Room Dedicated at JFK Library
Hemingway Room Dedicated at JFK Library
On this day in 1980, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Ernest Hemingway's son Patrick dedicated the Hemingway Room at the recently opened John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston. The Nobel-prize winning author and the...
Oliver Wendell Holmes Born in Cambridge
Oliver Wendell Holmes Born in Cambridge
On this day in 1809, Oliver Wendell Holmes was born in Cambridge. The man who coined the phrase "Boston Brahmin," he was a true member of that class, and he entertained the nation with poems,...
Poet Anne Sexton Publishes First Book
Poet Anne Sexton Publishes First Book
On this day in 1960, Massachusetts poet Anne Sexton had her first collection of poems published, To Bedlam and Part Way Back. Just before the manuscript was to go to press, she made major changes...