Timeline Massachusetts
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The name derives from two Indian words,
"massa" meaning great, and "wachusett" meaning mountain place. It is
believed this is a reference to the Great Blue Hill.
(www.bostonhistory.org/faq.html)
Massachusetts was the first American colony to legalize
slavery.
(SFEC, 4/20/97, Z1 p.5)
Nantucket is a 3 by 14 miles island 30 miles from the coast
of Cape Cod.
(SFEC, 8/13/00, p.T5)
1588
Feb 12, John Winthrop, English attorney, puritan,
1st gov of Massachusetts Bay Colony, was born.
(HN, 1/12/99)(MC, 2/12/02)
1589 Mar 19, William Bradford,
governor of Plymouth colony for 30 years, was born (baptized).
(HN, 3/19/98)(MC, 3/19/02)
1591 Jul 20, Anne Hutchinson,
religious liberal who was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony
for her views, was born.
(HN, 7/20/98)
1602 May 15, Bartholomew
Gosnold, English navigator, discovered Cape Cod.
(AP, 5/15/97)(HN, 5/15/98)
1602 May 21, Martha's Vineyard
was first sighted by Captain Bartholomew Gosnold.
(HN, 5/21/98)
1602 Bartholomew Gosnold camped
for a few months in a party of 24 gentlemen and 8 sailors on
Cuttyhunk Island, Mass.
(SFEM, 11/15/98, p.23)
1604-1690 Reverend John Eliot was an English
missionary in Massachusetts called the "Apostle to the Indians." The
Puritan Eliot learned the Algonquian language and preached to the
Indians. He translated the Bible into Algonquian and published it in
1663 in Cambridge, Mass.
(HNQ, 6/7/98)(WSJ, 8/7/98, p.W13)
1607 Nov 26, This day is
believed to be the birth date of London-born clergyman John Harvard,
the principal benefactor of the original Harvard College in
Cambridge, Mass.
(AP, 11/26/07)
1616-1619 An epidemic, possibly viral hepatitis
from contact with Europeans, ravaged the Wampanoag confederacy in
Massachusetts. This helped to make possible the Pilgrim settlement
in 1620.
(Econ, 8/11/07, p.49)
1617 The Pilgrims decided to
leave the Netherlands. They formed a partnership in a joint-stock
company with a group of London merchants in a company called John
Pierce & Assoc. They received a grant for a plantation in the
Virginia colony but ended up landing in Massachusetts. Each adult
was to receive a share in the company but earnings would not be
divided for 7 years.
(WSJ, 11/26/97, p.A14)
1619 In England Tisquantum
joined a new exploratory mission to the New England coast and
returned to find that his tribe had been wiped out by the plague. It
was he who later communicated with the first Pilgrims at Plymouth.
(SFEM, 11/15/98, p.29)
1620 Sep 16, The Pilgrims
sailed from England on the Mayflower, finally settling at Plymouth,
Mass. The Pilgrims were actually Separatists because they had left
the Church of England. The 4 children of William Brewster, who
arrived on the Mayflower, were named: Love, Wrestling, Patience, and
Fear. In 2006 Nathaniel Philbrick authored “Mayflower: A Story of
Courage, Community and War.”
(HN, 9/16/98)(SFEM, 11/15/98, p.23)(SFC, 3/20/99,
p.B4)(SFC, 7/26/06, p.E2)
1620 Nov 11, (OC) Pilgrims
aboard the Mayflower, anchored off Massachusetts, signed a compact
calling for a "body politick." 102 Pilgrims stepped ashore. 41 men
signed the compact calling themselves Saints and others Strangers.
One passenger died enroute and 2 were born during the passage. Their
military commander was Miles Standish. In 1945 George Willison
authored "Saints and Strangers." In 2006 Nathaniel Philbrick
authored “Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War.”
(AP, 11/11/97)(SFEM, 11/15/98, p.8,23)(AM, 11/00,
p.17)(Econ, 5/6/06, p.82)
1620 Nov 19, The Pilgrims
reached Cape Cod.
(HN, 11/19/98)
1620 Nov 20, Peregrine White
was born aboard the Mayflower in Massachusetts Bay -- the first
child born of English parents in present-day New England.
(AP, 11/20/97)
1620 Nov 21, (NC) Leaders of
the Mayflower expedition framed the "Mayflower Compact," designed to
bolster unity among the settlers. The Pilgrims reached Provincetown
Harbor, Mass.
(HN, 11/21/98)
1620 Dec 6, A group of
passengers and crew left the Mayflower in a shallop to search for a
suitable harbor and place to settle.
(AM, 11/00, p.18)
1620 Dec 11, 103 Mayflower
pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.
(MC, 12/11/01)
1620 Dec 16, The Mayflower
dropped anchor in Plymouth Harbor.
(AM, 11/00, p.18)
1620 Dec 18, The Captain of the
Mayflower 1st went on land at Plymouth Harbor with 3 to 4 sailors.
(AM, 11/00, p.18)
1620 Dec 21, The Mayflower
reached Plymouth, Mass. after a 63-day voyage. Pilgrims aboard the
Mayflower went ashore for the first time at present-day Plymouth,
Mass. The crew of the ship did not have enough beer to get to
Virginia and back to England so they dropped the Pilgrims at
Plymouth Rock to preserve their beer stock.
(HFA, '96, p.44)(AP, 12/20/97)(Hem., 8/96,
p.115)(MC, 12/21/01)
1620 "The chronicle of the
Pilgrims voyage to and settlement in America was begun by Nathanial
Morton, keeper of the records of Plymouth Colony, based on the
account of William Bradford, sometime governor thereof..." From the
two editorials titled: "The Desolate Wilderness" and "And the Fair
Land," published annually in the WSJ since 1961.
(WSJ, 11/22/95, p.A-10)
Captain Edward Bangs, a member
of the Plymouth Colony, founded the town of Brewster.
(SFC,11/6/97, p.A27)
1620 The Wampanoag Confederacy
of some 50 Algonquin bands stretched across southeastern
Massachusetts.
(AH, 6/02, p.44)
1621 Feb 17, Miles Standish was
appointed 1st commander of Plymouth colony.
(MC, 2/17/02)
1621 Mar 16 The first Indian
appeared in Plymouth, Mass. Samoset, and his friend Tisquantum
(Squanto), an English speaking Indian of the Wampanoag tribe, became
friends with the Pilgrims.
(HN, 3/16/98)(SFEM, 11/15/98, p.23)
1621 Apr 1, The Plymouth,
Massachusetts colonists created the first treaty with Native
Americans.
(OTD)
1621 Apr 5, The Mayflower
sailed from Plymouth, Mass., on a return trip to England. By this
time 44 of the landing party had died and 54 people, mostly
children, were left to build the colony.
(AP, 4/5/97)(SFEM, 11/15/98, p.23)
1621 Oct 25, Gov. Bradford of
US Plymouth colony disallowed sport on Christmas Day.
(MC, 10/25/01)
1621 Oct, The first American
Thanksgiving was held in Massachusetts' Plymouth colony in 1621 to
give thanks for a bountiful harvest. 51 Pilgrims served codfish, sea
bass and turkeys while their 90 Wampanoag guests contributed venison
to the feast. After the survival of their first colony through a
bitter winter and the subsequent gathering of the harvest in the
autumn, Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford issued a
thanksgiving proclamation. During the three-day October thanksgiving
the Pilgrims feasted on wild turkey and venison with their Native
American guests. American Indians introduced cranberries to the
white settlers. In 2006 Godfrey Hodgson, British historian, authored
“A Great and Godly Adventure: The Pilgrims and the Myth of the First
Thanksgiving.” American scholars quickly defied Hodgson’s allegation
that there were no turkeys in the region.
(Econ, 12/18/04, p.122)(SSFC, 11/12/06,
p.M1)(SFC, 11/22/06, p.A1)
1621 Dec 25, The governor
William Bradford of New Plymouth prevented newcomers from playing
cards. The queens later depicted on playing cards were said to be:
spades (Pallas), hearts (Judith), diamonds (Rachel), clubs
(Elizabeth).
(HN, 12/25/98)(SFC, 3/20/99, p.B4)(MC, 12/25/01)
1622 William Bradford and
Edward Winslow authored “Mourt’s Relation.” It was published in
London and provided an account of the Plymouth colony’s first year.
(WSJ, 11/22/08, p.W11)(AM, 11/00, p.18)
1623 Sep 10, Lumber and furs
were the first cargo to leave New Plymouth in North America for
England.
(HN, 9/10/98)
1623 Gov. William Bradford
instituted private property so that the pilgrims could cultivate
food at a profit. He assigned every family a parcel of land.
(WSJ, 11/26/97, p.A12)
1625 An English colonizing
group founded the Mount Wollaston settlement, 25 miles north of
Plymouth. It later became Quincy, Mass. Thomas Morton, a London
lawyer, was part of the group.
(ON, 3/00, p.11)
1626 Nov 15, The Pilgrim
Fathers, who settled in New Plymouth, bought out their London
investors.
(HN, 11/15/98)
1627 James Morton changed the
name of the Mount Wollaston settlement to Merrymount and organized a
trading company to compete with Plymouth for the Indian trade in
beaver pelts.
(ON, 3/00, p.11)
1628 Mar 19, Massachusetts
colony was founded by Englishmen.
(MC, 3/19/02)
1628 May 1, A May festival in
Quincy, Mass., degenerated into an orgy with Indian women.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1628 Jun 9, Thomas Morton of
Mass. became the 1st person deported from what is now US.
(MC, 6/9/02)
1628 Sep 8, John Endecott
(1588-1665) arrived with colonists at Salem, Massachusetts, where he
would become the governor.
(HN, 9/8/98)
1629 Mar 14, A Royal charter
was granted to the Massachusetts Bay Company. About 1,000 puritans
under the leadership of John Winthrop received a charter from King
Charles to trade and colonize between the Charles and Merrimack
rivers. The official seal to the document was reported found in
1997. [see 1684]
(SFC, 7/12/97, p.A21)(HN, 3/14/98)(HNQ, 11/23/00)
1629 Apr 30, John Endecott
became governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
(http://38.1911encyclopedia.org/E/EN/ENDECOTT_JOHN.htm)
1630 Feb 22, Indians introduced
pilgrims to popcorn at Thanksgiving.
(MC, 2/22/02)
1630 Mar 22, The first American
legislation prohibiting gambling was enacted in Boston.
(HN, 3/22/97)
1630 May 29, Gov. John Winthrop
began his "History of New England."
(SC, 5/29/02)
1630 Jun 12, John Winthrop
aboard the Isabella, landed at North River near Salem and took over
as governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Winthrop eventually
decided to locate the colony in Charlestown because of its proximity
to the harbor.
(www.bostonhistory.org/faq.html)
1630 Jun 25, The fork was
introduced to American dining by Gov. Winthrop.
(MC, 6/25/02)
1630 Sep 7, The Massachusetts
town of Trimontaine (Shawmut), was renamed Boston, and became the
state capital. It was named after a town of the same name in
Lincolnshire, England.
(HN, 9/7/98)(www.bostonhistory.org/faq.html)
1630 Sep 30, John Billington,
one of the original pilgrims who sailed to the New World on the
Mayflower, became the first criminal in the American colonies to be
executed for murder. He was hanged for having shot John Newcomin
following a quarrel.
(HN, 9/30/01)(MC, 9/30/01)
1630 Oct 19, In Boston the 1st
general court was held.
(MC, 10/19/01)
1630 John Winthrop gave a
speech to his fellow Puritans aboard the ship Arabella: "For we must
consider that we shall be as a City on the Hill."
(WSJ, 5/7/01, p.A20)
1630 The Boston Common was
first used by the Pilgrims as a common grazing ground for their
livestock. It remained open to livestock until 1830.
(AH, 10/07, p.72)
1631 Feb 5, A ship from
Bristol, the Lyon, arrived with provisions for the Massachusetts Bay
Colony (Massachusetts Bay Company). Puritan Roger Williams,
proponent of religious freedom and later founder of Rhode Island,
arrived with his wife in Boston from England and joined the
Separatist colony at Plymouth.
(http://tinyurl.com/m6czns)(AP, 2/5/97)(WSJ,
6/21/05, p.D10)(AH, 4/07, p.25)
1631 May 18, English colony of
Massachusetts Bay granted Puritans voting rights and John Winthrop
was elected 1st governor of Massachusetts.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1631 The General Court of
Massachusetts gave voting rights only to Puritan church members.
(AH, 4/07, p.30)
1633-1635 Roger Williams (d.1683), minister, moved
to Salem and engaged in an ongoing dispute with Boston minister John
Cotton.
(WSJ, 6/21/05, p.D10)
1634 Mar 4, Samuel Cole opened
the first tavern in Boston, Massachusetts.
(HN, 3/4/99)
1634 May 31, Massachusetts Bay
colony annexed the Maine colony.
(MC, 5/31/02)
1634 Sep 18, Anne Hutchinson,
the first female religious leader in American colonies, arrived at
the Massachusetts Bay Colony with her family. She preached that
faith alone was sufficient for salvation. As her following grew, she
was brought to trial and found guilty of heresy against Puritan
orthodoxy and banished from Massachusetts. She left with 70
followers to Providence, Rhode Island, Roger Williams's colony based
on religious freedom.
(MC, 9/18/01)
1634 Gov. John Winthrop of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony estimated the local population rather
counting it directly.
(Econ, 12/22/07, p.97)
1635 Feb 13, In Massachusetts
the oldest public school in the United States, the Boston Public
Latin School, was founded.
(SFC,12/11/97, p.A1)(AP, 2/13/98)
1635 Oct 9, Religious dissident
Roger Williams was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Mass.
Bay Company). He became a founder of Rhode Island. Enforcement was
delayed until the following January due to illness.
(AP, 10/9/01)(AH, 4/07, p.26)
1636 Jul 20, John Oldham,
trader in Mass., was murdered by Indians.
(MC, 7/20/02)
1636 Sep 8, Harvard College,
the first college in America, was founded as Cambridge College. It
changed its name two years later in honor of the Reverend John
Harvard, who gave the institution three hundred books and a large
sum of money for the day. [see Oct 28]
(MC, 9/8/01)
1636 Oct 4, The Massachusetts
Plymouth Company drafted its 1st law.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1636 Oct 28, The General Court
of Massachusetts passed a legislative act establishing Harvard
College in Cambridge, Mass. It was the first corporation in the US.
Harvard Univ. was named after John Harvard who bequeathed books to
the Univ. that included “The Christian Warfare Against the Devil
World and Flesh” by John Downame. Englishman George Downing was the
first graduate. London’s Downing St. was named after him. [see Sep
8]
(SFEC, 6/28/98, Z1 p.8)(HN, 10/28/98)(SFEC,
12/6/98, Z1p.10)(AP, 10/28/07)
1636 The first militia units in
the Massachusetts Bay Colony were formed.
(SFC, 5/17/06, p.A11)
1637 Jul 23, King Charles of
England handed over the American colony of Massachusetts to Sir
Fernando Gorges, one of the founders of the Council of New England.
(HN, 7/23/98)
1637 Nov 7-1637 Nov 8, Anne
Hutchinson (b.1591) and her followers were tried as heretics and
banished from the Mass Bay colony to Rhode Island.
(http://law.jrank.org/pages/2329/Anne-Hutchinson-Trials-1637-1638.html)(WSJ,
11/25/08, p.A13)
1637 James Morton published
"New English Canaan," a satiric book describing his encounters with
the New England Pilgrims.
(ON, 3/00, p.12)
1637 The Archbishop of
Canterbury launched an effort to revoke the charter of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony, but the boat carrying the English
authorities sank on its way. This period in Pilgrim and Puritan
history was covered by Sarah Vowell in “The Wordy Shipmates” (2008).
(WSJ, 11/25/08, p.A13)
1638 Jun 1, The first
earthquake was recorded in the U.S. at Plymouth, Mass.
(DT internet 6/1/97)
1638 John Harvard, a Puritan
minister, bequeathed his 260-volume library to Harvard College.
(SFCM, 12/10/00, p.11)
1639 Mar 13, Cambridge College
was re-named Harvard University for clergyman John Harvard.
(AP, 3/13/98)(MC, 3/13/02)
1639 May 20, Dorchester, Mass.,
formed the 1st school funded by local taxes.
(MC, 5/20/02)
1639 Jun 6, Massachusetts
granted 500 acres of land to erect a gunpowder mill.
(MC, 6/6/02)
1639 Nov 5, 1st post office in
the colonies opened in Massachusetts.
(MC, 11/5/01)
1640 Dec 9, Settler Hugh Bewitt
was banished from the Massachusetts colony when he declared himself
to be free of original sin.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1640 The Massachusetts Bay
Company sent 300,000 codfish to market.
(SFC, 5/24/97, p.E3)
1641 Dec 1, Massachusetts
became the 1st colony to give statutory recognition to slavery. It
was followed by Connecticut in 1650 and Virginia in 1661.
(MC, 12/1/01)(HNQ, 5/20/02)
1641 Puritans wrote a statute
that enjoined husband from beating their wives: the Massachusetts
Body of Liberties.
(WSJ, 4/1/02, p.A13)
1642 Sep 23, Harvard College in
Cambridge, Mass., held its first commencement.
(AP, 9/23/97)
1643 May 19, Delegates from
four New England colonies, Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut
and New Harbor, met in Boston to form a confederation: the United
Colonies of New England.
(AP, 5/19/97)
1643 Jul 5, 1st recorded
tornado in US was at Essex County, Massachusetts.
(MC, 7/5/02)
1643 Ann Radcliffe established
the first scholarship at Harvard.
(SFC, 4/21/99, p.A2)
1644 Jan 18, 1st reported UFO
sighting in America was made by perplexed pilgrims in Boston.
(MC, 1/18/02)
1644 Mar 7, Massachusetts
established 1st 2-chamber legislature in colonies.
(MC, 3/7/02)
1644 A house was constructed
for the Reverend John Lothrop, the founder of Barnstable, Mass. It
later formed the original part of the Sturgis Library, the oldest
Library building in the United States. The building is also one of
the oldest houses remaining on Cape Cod."
http://home.capecod.net/~sturgis/history.html
1646 Feb 28, Roger Scott was
tried in Massachusetts for sleeping in church.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1646 Oct 28, The 1st Protestant
church assembly for Indians took place in Massachusetts.
(MC, 10/28/01)
1647 May 26, A new law banned
Catholic priests from the colony of Massachusetts. The penalty was
banishment or death for a second offense.
(HN, 5/26/99)
1647 May 27, In Salem Achsah
Young became the first recorded American woman to be executed for
being a "witch."
(AP, 5/27/97)(HN, 5/27/98)
1647 Nov 11, Massachusetts
passed the 1st US compulsory school attendance law.
(MC, 11/11/01)
1647 William Bradford authored
"History of Plymouth Plantation."
(ON, 3/00, p.12)
1647 Samuel Danforth, a Puritan
minister, authored “An Almanack for the Year of Lord 1647.” It
included a 20-year chronology of notable events in the Massachusetts
colony.
(WSJ, 11/22/08, p.W11)
1648 May 13, Margaret Jones of
Plymouth was found guilty of witchcraft and was sentenced to be
hanged by the neck.
(HN, 5/13/99)
1648 Oct 18, Boston shoemakers
were authorized to form a guild to protect their interests; it's the
first American labor organization on record. The guild was
authorized by the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Mass. Bay Company).
(HN, 10/18/98)(AP, 10/18/07)
1649 Mar 26, John Winthrop,
Puritan and 1st Gov. of Massachusetts, died. [see Apr 5]
(SS, 3/26/02)
1649 Apr 5, John Winthrop (61),
1st governor of the colony at Mass. Bay, died. [see Mar 26]
(MC, 4/5/02)
1649 Marblehead, Mass., was
founded by Cornwall fishermen.
(SFEC, 7/13/97, p.T7)
1651 Oct 14, Laws were passed
in Massachusetts forbidding the poor to adopt excessive styles of
dress.
(HN, 10/14/98)
1651 Dec 25, The General Court
of Boston levied a five shilling fine on anyone caught "observing
any such day as Christmas."
(HN, 12/25/98)
1652 Mar 28, Samuel Sewall,
British colonial merchant and one of the Salem witch trial judges,
was born.
(HN, 3/28/01)
1652 Jun 29, Massachusetts
declared itself an independent commonwealth.
(HN, 6/29/98)
1656 Jul 1, The 1st Quakers,
Mary Fisher and Ann Austin, arrived in Boston and were promptly
arrested.
(MC, 7/1/02)
1656 Oct 3, Myles Standish
(b.1654), Plymouth Colony leader, died.
(WUD, 1994 p.1386)(MC, 10/3/01)
1657 May 9, William Bradford,
Governor (Plymouth Colony, Mass), died.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1659 Quaker leader Mary Dyer
was sentenced to death by a Puritan court in Massachusetts Bay
Colony amid the Salem witch trials. She refused to leave the colony
and was hanged in 1660.
(SFC, 3/30/97, Z1. p.6)(SFEC, 1/16/00, Z1 p.1)
1659-1681 It was illegal to celebrate Christmas in
Massachusetts during this period.
(WSJ, 11/30/99, p.A24)
1661 Mar 24, William Leddra
became the last Quaker to be hanged in Boston. Quakers were last
hanged on Boston Common. Charles II ordered the executions stopped.
(WSJ, 4/4/01, p.A18)(MC, 3/24/02)
1662 Major Josiah Winslow
seized Wamsutta, the Algonquin grand sachem known as Alexander, and
demanded an exclusive land sale arrangement with the Plymouth
Colony. Alexander became sick and died and his brother Metacom (24),
known as Philip, became grand sachem.
(AH, 6/02, p.46)
1664 May 28, 1st Baptist Church
was organized (Boston).
(MC, 5/28/02)
1664 Jul 23, Wealthy non-church
members in Massachusetts were given the right to vote.
(HN, 7/23/98)
1664 Jul 23, 4 British ships
arrived in Boston to drive the Dutch out of NY.
(MC, 7/23/02)
1668 May 27, Three colonists
were expelled from Massachusetts for being Baptists.
(HN, 5/27/99)
1672 May 15, 1st copyright law
was enacted by Massachusetts.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1672 Jun 25, 1st recorded
monthly Quaker meeting in US was held at Sandwich, Mass.
(MC, 6/25/02)
1672 Dec 10, Gov. Lovelace
announced monthly mail service between NY and Boston.
(MC, 12/10/01)
1674 Oct 15, Robert Herrick,
British poet (Together), was born in Mass.
(MC, 10/15/01)
1675 Jun 8, Three Wampanoag
Indians were hanged in Plymouth, Massachusetts. On the testimony of
a Native American witness, Plymouth Colony arrested three
Wampanoags, including a counselor to Metacom, a Pokanoket sachem. A
jury among whom were some Indian members convicted them of the
recent murder of John Sassamon, an advisor to Metacom.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Philip%27s_War)
1675 Jun 20, King Philip’s War
began when Indians--retaliating for the execution of three of their
people who had been charged with murder by the English--massacred
colonists at Swansea, Plymouth colony. Abenaki, Massachusetts,
Mohegan & Wampanoag Indians formed an anti English front.
Wampanoag warriors attacked livestock and looted farms.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Philip%27s_War)(AH, 6/02, p.46)
1675 Jun 23, An English youth
shot a Marauding Wampanoag warrior.
(AH, 6/02, p.46)
1675 Sep 9, Colonial
authorities officially declared war on the Wampanoag Indians. The
war soon spread to include the Abenaki, Norwottock, Pocumtuck and
Agawam warriors.
(MC, 9/9/01)(AH, 6/02, p.47)
1675 Dec 19, Some 1,000
colonial troops attacked the Narragansett winter village in Rhode
Island. The Great Swamp Fight ended with some 80 English killed and
600 Indians dead, mostly women and children.
(AH, 6/02, p.48)
1675 In Boston, Mass., a law
forbade American Indians from setting foot in the city, as settlers
warred with area tribes. In 2005 although the law wasn’t enforced
for centuries it was a lingering source of anger for American
Indians.
(AP, 5/20/05)
1676 Feb 10, In King Philip’s
War Narragansett and Nipmuck Indians raided Lancaster, Mass. Over 35
villagers were killed and 24 were taken captive including Mary
Rowlandson (1637-1711) and her 3 children. Rowlandson was freed
after 11 weeks and an account of her captivity was published
posthumously in 1682.
(AH, 6/02, p.48)(Econ, 2/21/09,
p.83)(http://tinyurl.com/cvrhcv)
1676 Feb, Mohawk Indians
attacked and killed all but 40 of Wampanoag Indians under Philip. NY
Gov. Edmund Andros had urged the Mohawks to attack the Wampanoags.
(AH, 6/02, p.48)
1676 Mar 29, Wampanoag allies
destroyed Providence, Rhode Island.
(AH, 6/02, p.48)
1676 Apr 18, Sudbury,
Massachusetts was attacked by Indians.
(HN, 4/18/98)
1676 Mar 29, Wampanoag allies
destroyed Providence, Rhode Island.
(AH, 6/02, p.48)
1676 Aug 12, Indian chief King
Philip, also known as Metacom, was killed by a Pocasset Indian
named Alderman in the swamps of Rhode Island. This ended the King
Philip’s War. Benjamin Church, a Plymouth volunteer, ordered that
Philip be beheaded and quartered. [see Aug 28]
(AH, 6/02, p.50)
1676 Aug 28, Indian chief King
Philip, also known as Metacom, was killed by English soldiers,
ending the war between Indians and colonists. [see Aug 12]
(HN, 8/28/98)
1676 Nov 16, 1st colonial
prison was organized at Nantucket Mass.
(MC, 11/16/01)
1677 Mar 13, Massachusetts
gained title to Maine for $6,000.
(MC, 3/13/02)
1679 Sep 18, New Hampshire
became a county Massachusetts Bay Colony.
(MC, 9/18/01)
1684 Jun 21, King Charles II
revoked the 1629 Massachusetts Bay Colony charter. [see 1691]
(HNQ, 11/23/00)(MC, 6/21/02)
1689 Apr 19, Residents of
Boston ousted their governor, Edmond Andros.
(HN, 4/19/97)
1690 Feb 3, The first paper
money in America was issued by the colony of Massachusetts. The
currency was used to pay soldiers fighting a war against Quebec.
(SFC, 4/30/97, p.B3)(AP, 2/3/97)
1690 A newspaper called
“Publick Occurences Both Forreign and Domestick” was published in
Boston, Mass.
(WSJ, 12/29/07, p.A8)
1691 Sep 17, The Massachusetts
Bay Colony received a new charter. [see Oct 17]
(MC, 9/17/01)
1690 Sep 25, One of the
earliest American newspapers, “Publick Occurrences,” published its
first and last edition in Boston. The colonial governor and council
disallowed the pamphlet due to its contents.
(AP, 9/25/00)(WSJ, 3/8/06, p.D14)
1691 Oct 17, The Massachusetts
Bay Company along with Plymouth colony and Maine was incorporated
into the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
(HN, 10/17/98)(HNQ, 11/23/00)
1692 Feb 28, The Salem witch
hunts began.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1692 Feb 29, Sarah Goode and
Tituba were accused of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts, sparking
the hysteria that started the Salem Witch Trials.
(HN, 2/29/00)
1692 Mar 1, Sarah Goode, Sarah
Osborne and Tituba were arrested for the supposed practice of
witchcraft in Salem, Mass.
(HN, 3/1/98)
1692 Jun 10, Bridget Bishop was
hanged in Salem, Mass., for witchcraft. This was the first official
execution of the Salem witch trials.
(HN, 6/10/01)(WSJ, 1/18/08, p.W10)
1692 Aug 19, Five women were
hanged in Salem, Massachusetts after being convicted of the crime of
witchcraft. Fourteen more people were executed that year and 150
others are imprisoned.
(HN, 8/19/00)
1692 Sep 21, Two men and seven
women were executed for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts.
(MC, 9/21/01)
1692 Sep 22, The last person
was hanged for witchcraft in Salem, Mass.
(MC, 9/22/01)
1692 Oct 8, Massachusetts Bay
Governor Phipps ordered that spectral evidence no longer be admitted
in witchcraft trials. Twenty people had died in the Salem witch
trials. In 2005 Richard Francis authored “Judge Sewall’s Apology.”
Sewall was one of 3 judges presiding over the Salem trials. In 2006
the governor of Massachusetts signed legislation exonerating 5 women
executed in the Salem witch trials of 1692, whose names had not yet
been cleared.
(http://tinyurl.com/rlj1)(WSJ, 8/9/05, p.D8)(WSJ,
9/15/06, p.A10)
1697 In Boston’s Old South
Church Judge Sewall told the congregation that he accepted “blame
and shame” for the 1692 Salem witch trials. None of the other judges
joined him in repenting.
(Econ, 8/6/05, p.70)
1698 Jan 1, The Abenaki Indians
and the Massachusetts colonists signed a treaty ending the conflict
in New England.
(HN, 1/1/99)
1699 Jan 14, Massachusetts held
a day of fasting for wrongly persecuting "witches."
(MC, 1/14/02)
1699 Jul 6, Pirate Capt.
William Kidd was captured in Boston.
(MC, 7/6/02)
1704 Feb 28, Indians attacked
Deerfield, Mass. killing 40 and kidnapping 100.
(HN, 2/28/98)
1704 Apr 24, The Boston
News-Letter was established, first successful newspaper in U.S.
(HN, 4/24/98)
1704 May 1, Boston Newsletter
published the 1st US newspaper ad.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1706 Jan 17, Benjamin Franklin
(d.1790), American statesman, was born in Boston, the youngest boy
in a family of 17 children. He helped draft the Declaration of
Independence and wrote "Poor Richard’s Almanac." Carl Van Doren
portrays Franklin as a harmonious rationalist in his classic
biography. David Morgan writes of Franklin’s darker side in: "The
Devious Dr. Franklin, Colonial Agent." And Robert Middlekauff
describes Franklin as a trickster in his: "Benjamin Franklin and his
Enemies." Franklin believed in white superiority and said: "why
increase the Sons of Africa by planting them in America, when we
have so fair an opportunity, by excluding all the Blacks and
Tawneys, of increasing the lovely white.?" "If you would not be
forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things
worth reading, or do things worth the writing."
(WSJ, 8/8/95, p. A12)(SFC,12/897, p.A27)(AP,
1/17/98)(AP, 4/17/98)(HN, 1/17/99)(HNQ, 11/19/01)
1708 Aug 29, French Canadian
and Indian forces attacked the village of Haverhill, Mass., killing
16 settlers.
(AP, 8/29/08)
1709 Boston minister Thomas
Bannister donated the book "Complete History of England with
the Lives of All the Kings and Queens Thereof, Vol. 3" to Harvard
Univ. It was written by Bishop White Kennet and printed in 1706 in
London.
(SFC, 5/10/97, p.A8)
1711 In Massachusetts 14 women,
who in 1692 had been accused and hanged or killed for being witches,
were cleared in a general amnesty.
(WSJ, 9/15/06, p.A10)
1716 Sep 14, The 1st lighthouse
in US was lit in Boston Harbor.
(www.lighthouse.cc/boston/history.html)
1716 Nov 26, The 1st lion
exhibited in America was in Boston.
(MC, 11/26/01)
1717 Apr 26, Pirate Black Sam
Bellamy died along with 143 others when their ship, the Whydah, sank
off of Wellfleet, Cape Cod. 2 men on the Whydah survived as did 7
others aboard the Mary Anne, a smaller ship loaded with Madeira
wine. The slave ship Whydah had just been captured by Bellamy in
February as it left Ouidau, Benin, with a load of sugar and indigo
as well as chests of silver and gold. 6 or the 9 survivors were
later hanged for piracy in Boston. In 1984 the wreck of the ship was
discovered by Barry Clifford.
(SFC, 3/4/96, p.A4)(WSJ, 9/12/07, p.D9)
1721 Apr 19, Roger Sherman
(d.1793) of Connecticut, signer of the Declaration of Independence,
was born in Newton, Massachusetts. He was only man to sign the four
most important documents that were most significant in the formation
of the United States. Sherman signed the Association (the 1774
compact to boycott British goods), the Declaration of Independence,
Articles of Confederation and Constitution. Sherman was among the
first to declare that Parliament had no right to legislate for the
colonies. He was a delegate to the Continental Congress, served in
the first U.S. House of Representatives and was a U.S.
senator.
(HN, 4/19/97)(HNQ, 7/10/99)
1721 Jun 26, Dr. Zabdiel
Boylston gave the 1st smallpox inoculation in Boston. The epidemic
had arrived by ship from Barbados.
(ON, 3/05, p.4)
1721 Jul 21, Doctors in Boston
raised objections to a new practice of using live smallpox to
inoculate patients against the disease. A smallpox epidemic had
recently broken out in Boston and Cotton Mather (58), following some
study, encouraged the inoculation technique to prevent death from
the disease.
(ON, 3/05, p.4)
1721 Oct 6, Deaths from
smallpox in Boston reached 203 with 2,757 people infected.
(ON, 3/05, p.5)
1722 Cotton Mather authored “An
Account of the Method and Success of Inoculating the Small-Pox…”
This followed work in support of inoculation trials in Boston.
(WSJ, 11/22/08, p.W11)
1730 Smallpox returned to
Boston, but by this time inoculation was recognized as a viable
means of preventing death from the disease.
(ON, 3/05, p.5)
1733 Jan 18, The 1st polar bear
exhibited in America was in Boston.
(MC, 1/18/02)
1733 Jul 30, Society of
Freemasons opened their 1st American lodge in Boston.
(MC, 7/30/02)
1735 Jan 1, Paul Revere
(d.1818), U.S. patriot who rode through the streets of Boston during
the American Revolution, warning of the British landings, was born
to Apollos Rivoire and Deborah Hitchbourne, one of 13 children.
(HN, 1/1/99)(HNQ, 6/27/02)
1735 Aug 18, The Evening Post
began publishing in Boston, Mass.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1735 Oct 30, John Adams, second
president of the United States (1797-1801), was born in Braintree
(Quincy), Mass.
(AP, 10/30/97)(HN, 10/30/98)(MC, 10/30/01)
1737 Rev. Andrew Le Mercier, a
Huguenot living in Boston, set the first horses out to graze on
Sable Island, 100 miles east of Nova Scotia. A few decades later
Thomas Hancock of Boston plundered some 60 horses from Acadian
settlers expelled from Nova Scotia by British overlords, and settled
them on Sable Island. Hardy descendants of the horses still thrived
in 1998.
(SFC, 7/23/98, p.C3)
1738 Jul 3, John Singleton
Copley, finest colonial American artist, was born in Mass.
(MC, 7/3/02)
1742 Sep 24, The Faneuil Hall
in Boston opened to public.
(MC, 9/24/01)
1745 Mar 9, Bells for 1st
American carillon were shipped from England to Boston.
(MC, 3/9/02)
1746 Oct 7, William Billings,
hymn composer (Rose of Sharon), was born in Boston, Mass.
(HN, 10/7/00)(MC, 10/7/01)
1746 The first lectures on
electricity in the American colonies were given by John Winthrop IV
at Harvard in 1746. Winthrop, born in 1714, was the professor of
mathematics and natural philosophy at Harvard. Benjamin Franklin
began his experiments in electricity in 1747.
1746 Elisha Nims (26) died from
a musket ball at Fort Massachusetts during the French and Indian
War. His grave was discovered in 1852 and his last remains were
reburied in 2000.
(SFC, 11/11/00, p.A13)
1749 Jun 25, Massachusetts
residents were asked to fast due to a severe drought.
(SFC, 6/25/09, p.D8)
1750 A Welshman opened the
first modern shoe factory in Lynn, Mass.
(WSJ, 4/25/00, p.A24)
1753 Smallpox hit North America
and a 38% infection rate was recorded in Boston. Benjamin Franklin
lobbied for variolation.
(NW, 10/14/02, p.47)
1754 Jun 19, The Albany
Congress opened. New York colonial Gov. George Clinton called for
the meeting to discuss better relations with Indian tribes and
common defensive measures against the French. The attendees included
Indians and representatives from Connecticut, Maryland,
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode
Island. Benjamin Franklin attended and presented his Plan of Union,
which was adopted by the conference. The meeting ended on July 11.
(AH, 2/06,
p.45)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albany_Congress)
1755 Nov 18, The Cape Ann
(Boston) earthquake, estimated at 6.0-6.5, hit the east coast from
the Chesapeake Bay to Nova Scotia.
(http://geology.about.com/library/bl/blboston1755eq.htm)
1757 Jan 16, Samuel McIntire,
architect of Salem, Massachusetts, was born.
(HN, 1/16/99)
1760 Mar 20, The great fire of
Boston destroyed 349 buildings.
(HN, 3/20/98)
1762 The Nicholas Brothers
Chair Manufactory operated in Westminster, Mass. In 1900 the firm
moved to Gardner and around 1907 was renamed to Nicholas &
Stone.
(SFC, 3/29/06, p.G6)
1763 Aug 8, Charles Bulfinch,
1st US professional architect (Mass State House), was born in
Boston, Mass.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1764 May 24, Bostonian lawyer
James Otis denounced "taxation without representation" and called
for the colonies to unite in demonstrating their opposition to
Britain's new tax measures.
(HN, 5/24/99)
1764 Jan 25, Harvard Hall in
Cambridge, Mass., burned to the ground and destroyed most of the
5,000 volumes in its library.
(SFC, 5/10/97, p.A9)
1765 Aug 14, Massachusetts
colonists challenged British rule by an Elm (Liberty Tree).
(MC, 8/14/02)
1765 Aug 25, In protest over
the stamp tax, American colonists sacked and burned the home of
Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson. In 1774 he was exiled to
Britain. In 1974 Bernard Bailyn authored “The Ordeal of Thomas
Hutchinson.”
(HN, 8/25/98)(WSJ, 8/25/07, p.P9)
1765 Shaw Furniture of
Cambridge, Mass., was in business as early as this time and
continued operating into the 1920s. During the 18th century Shaw
made furniture using convict labor from Charleston State Prison.
(SFC, 10/29/08, p.G2)
1766 Sep 17, Samuel Wilson, the
future Uncle Sam, was born in Menotomy Mass. Menotomy later became
Arlington. Samuel moved to Troy, New York, where he and his brother
set up meat packing plants which later provided food for the US Army
during the War of 1812.
(WC, Summer ‘97, p.3)
1767 Jul 11, John Quincy Adams,
the sixth president of the United States (1825-1829), was born in
Braintree, Mass.
(AP, 7/11/97)(HN, 7/11/98 (PGA, 12/9/98)
1768 Oct 1, English troops
under general Gage landed in Boston.
(MC, 10/1/01)
1768 The Jeremiah Lee Mansion
was built in Marblehead. Lee later became a fatality of the
Lexington-Concord battle.
(SFEC, 7/13/97, p.T9)
1770 March 5, British troops
taunted by a crowd of colonists fired on an unruly mob in Boston and
killed five citizens in what came to be known as the Boston
Massacre. The fracas between a few angry Boston men and one British
sentry ended with five men dead or dying in the icy street corner of
King Street and Shrimton’s Lane. Captain Thomas Preston did not
order the eight British soldiers under his command to fire into the
hostile crowd. The nervous soldiers claimed to be confused by shouts
of "Why do you not fire?" coming from all sides. Versions of the
event rapidly circulated through the colonies, bolstering public
support for the Patriot cause. The British Captain Preston and seven
soldiers were defended by John Adams. The captain and five of the
soldiers were acquitted, the other two soldiers were found guilty of
manslaughter and were branded on the hand with a hot iron. The first
colonist killed in the American Revolution was the former slave,
Crispus Attucks, shot by the British at the Boston Massacre. The
event was later illustrated by Boston engraver Paul Revere.
(HFA, '96, p.26)(A&IP, Miers, p.18)(SFC,
12/18/96, p.A25)(AP, 3/5/98)(HN, 3/5/98)(HNPD, 3/5/99)(WSJ, 4/12/08,
p.W14)
1770 Dec 12, The British
soldiers responsible for the "Boston Massacre" were acquitted on
murder charges.
(HN, 12/12/98)
1772 Nov 2, The first
Committees of Correspondence were formed in Massachusetts under
Samuel Adams.
(HN, 11/2/98)
1773 Mar 26, Nathaniel Bowditch
(d.1838), mathematician, astronomer, polyglot, author (Marine
Sextant), was born in Salem, Mass. In 1802 he published "The New
American Practical Navigator."
(SS, 3/26/02)(AH, 12/02, p.22)
1773 Sep 1, Phillis Wheatley, a
slave from Boston, published a collection of poetry, "Poems on
Various Subjects, Religious and Moral," in London.
(HN, 9/1/99)
1773 Dec 16, Some 50-60 "Sons
of Liberty" of revolutionary Samuel Adams disguised as Mohawks
defied the 3 cents per pound tax on tea boarded a British East
India Tea Company ship and dumped 342 chests of British tea into the
Boston Harbor in what became known as the Boston Tea Party.
Parliament had passed the 1773 Tea Act not to regulate trade or make
the colonies pay their own administrative costs, but to save the
nearly bankrupt British East India Tea Company. The Tea Act gave the
company a monopoly over the American tea trade and authorized the
sale of 17 million pounds of tea in America at prices cheaper than
smuggled Dutch tea. In spite of the savings, Americans would not
accept what they considered to be taxation without representation.
Overreacting to the Boston Tea Party, the British attempted to
punish Boston and the whole colony of Massachusetts with the
Intolerable Acts of 1774--another in the series of events that
ultimately led to American independence. A bill for the tea ($196)
was paid Sep 30, 1961.
(HFA, '96, p.44)(A&IP, Miers,
p.18)(SFEC,11/23/97, Par p.14)(AP, 12/16/97) (HNPD, 12/16/98)(MC,
9/30/01)
1774 Mar 7, A 2nd Boston tea
party was held.
(SFEC,11/23/97, Par p.14)
1774 Mar 7, The British closed
the port of Boston to all commerce.
(HN, 3/7/98)
1774 Mar 25, English Parliament
passed the Boston Port Bill.
(MC, 3/25/02)
1774 Mar 28, Britain passed the
Coercive Act against Massachusetts. [see May 20]
(HN, 3/28/98)
1774 May 20, The British
Parliament passed the Coercive Acts to punish the colonists for
their increasingly anti-British behavior. The acts closed the port
of Boston. [see Mar 28]
(HN, 5/20/99)
1774 Sep 26, John Chapman
(d.1845), later known as Johnny Appleseed, was born in
Massachusetts. A pioneer agriculturalist of early America,
Chapman began his trek in 1797, collecting apple seedlings from
western Pennsylvania and establishing apple nurseries around the
early American frontier. Chapman was a Swedenborgian missionary, a
land speculator and an eccentric dresser (he hated shoes and seldom
wore them. He planted orchards across western Pennsylvania, Ohio,
and Indiana from seed.
(www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=94)(T&L, 10/1980,
p.42)(ON, 4/09, p.10)
1775 Feb 9, English Parliament
declared the Mass. colony is in rebellion.
(MC, 2/9/02)
1775 Feb 21, As troubles with
Great Britain increased, colonists in Massachusetts voted to buy
military equipment for 15,000 men.
(HN, 2/21/99)
1775 Apr 18, Several post
riders set out to warn colonists of the British attack that started
the American Revolution. One patriotic myth that grew out of that
movement began with a poem Henry Wadsworth Longfellow called "Paul
Revere's Ride." Paul Revere began his famous ride from Charlestown
to Lexington, Mass., warning American colonists that the British
were coming. American revolutionaries Paul Revere, William Dawes and
Samuel Prescott warned that "the British are coming". Only Prescott
galloped all the way to Concord. Revere was corralled by a British
cavalry patrol near Lexington, MA; Dawes and Prescott escaped. A
company of over 700 British troops marched toward Concord.
23-year-old church sexton Robert Newman hung two lanterns in the Old
North Church to warn riders that the British were leaving Boston by
boat to march on Concord. Every April, a descendant of the
18th-century patriot still climbs to the steeple of Old North Church
and hangs two small tin and glass lanterns.
(HN, 4/18/98)(ON, 3/01, p.2)(HNQ, 7/5/01)(AP,
4/18/07)
1775 Apr 19, Alerted by Paul
Revere the American Revolutionary War began at Lexington Common with
the Battle of Lexington-Concord. Capt. John Parker mustered 78
militiamen on the town green of Lexington to send a warning to the
700 British soldiers marching to Concord to seize weapons and
gunpowder. Maj. Gen. Thomas Gage sent a force of 700 British troops
to Concord, west of Boston, to capture colonial weapons and arrest
Patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock. Arriving at Lexington
on their way to Concord, the British were met on the town common by
about 70 Minutemen. The "shot heard ‘round the world" ignited the
American Revolutionary War. No one knows who fired the first shot,
but when the smoke cleared, eight Americans lay dead. The British
suffered more than 250 casualties as they opposed more than 1,500
Massachusetts men. The events are documented in the 1997 book
"Liberty by Thomas Fleming." Isaac Davis was among the first to die
at Lexington and Concord.
(HFA, '96, p.28)(V.D.-H.K.p.224)(AP,
4/19/97)(SFEC,11/23/97, Par p.14) (HN, 4/19/97)(HNPD, 4/19/99)(HNQ,
10/17/00)
1775 Apr 20, British troops
began the siege of Boston.
(HN, 4/20/98)
1775 Jul 3, Gen. George
Washington took command of the Continental Army at Cambridge, Mass.
(AP, 7/3/97)
1775 Jul 16, John Adams
graduated from Harvard.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1775 Jun 17, The Battle at
Bunker’s Hill was actually fought on Breed’s Hill near Boston.
It lasted less than 2 hours and was the deadliest of the
Revolutionary War. The British captured the hill on their third
attempt but suffered over 1,000 casualties vs. about 400-600 for the
Americans. Patriotic hero Dr. Joseph Warren died in the battle.
Patriot General William Prescott allegedly told his men, "Don't one
of you fire until you see the whites of their eyes!" British
casualties were estimated at 226 dead and 828 wounded, while
American casualties were estimated at 140 dead and 301 wounded.
(SFC, 4/2/97, Z1 p.6)(AP, 6/17/98)(HNQ,
4/1/99)(AH, 10/07, p.72)
1775 Oct 13, The U.S. Navy had
its origins as the Continental Congress ordered the construction of
a naval fleet. The Continental Congress authorized construction of
two warships. The 1st ship in the US Navy was the schooner Hannah.
It was commissioned by George Washington and outfitted at Beverly,
Mass. In 2006 Ian W. Toll authored “Six Frigates: The Epic History
of the Founding of the US Navy.
(AP, 10/13/97)(HN, 10/13/98)(SFC, 2/12/00,
p.B3)(Econ, 11/4/06, p.94)
1775 Nov 17, George Washington
was in Boston with his ragtag army facing 12,000 Redcoat regulars.
(SFEC, 10/15/00, p.T12)
1776 Mar 2, Americans began
shelling British troops in Boston. Henry Knox had managed to drag 58
canon and mortars from Fort Ticonderoga to the Dorchester Heights
above Boston.
(HN, 3/2/99)(WSJ, 5/20/05, p.W10)
1776 Mar 5, A terrific storm
wrecked British hope of a counterattack on Dorchester Heights in
Boston, Mass.
(WSJ, 5/20/05, p.W10)
1776 Mar 17, British forces
evacuated Boston to Nova Scotia during the Revolutionary War.
Suffolk Ct. Massachusetts declared this day Evacuation Day
(AP, 3/17/97)(HN, 3/17/98)(SFEC, 4/25/99, Z1 p.8)
1776 Apr 3, George Washington
received an honorary doctor of law degree from Harvard College.
(AP, 4/3/97)
1777 Jul 8, The Continental
frigate Hancock was captured by the British ships Rainbow and Flora.
The prisoners, including cabin-boy John Blatchford, were taken to
Halifax.
(ON, 1/00, p.4)
1779 John Adams drafted most of
the Massachusetts state constitution.
(WSJ, 12/22/98, p.A16)
1779 The captured journal of
British officer Henry De Berniere was published by John Gill, member
of the Sons of Liberty. Gill had printed many anti-British pamphlets
including the rebel newspaper Boston Gazette.
(AH, 10/01, p.56)
1782 Jan 18, Daniel Webster
(d.1852, aka Black Dan) American political leader, Senator and
orator, lawyer, statesman, administrator and diplomat, was born in
Salisbury, N.H. In 1830 he proclaimed "Liberty and Union, now and
forever, one and inseparable!" He was Secretary of State before the
Civil War.
(HFA, '96, p.22)(AHD, p.1452)(WSJ, 9/30/97,
p.A20)(AP, 1/18/98)(HN, 1/18/99)
1782 Dec 29, 1st nautical
almanac in US was published by Samuel Stearns in Boston.
(MC, 12/29/01)
1786 Aug 29, Shay’s Rebellion
began in Springfield, Mass. Daniel Shay led a rebellion in
Massachusetts to protest the seizure of property for the non-payment
of debt. Shay was a Revolutionary War veteran who led a short-lived
insurrection in western Massachusetts to protest a tax increase that
had to be paid in cash, a hardship for veteran farmers who relied on
barter and didn‘t own enough land to vote. The taxes were to pay off
the debts from the Revolutionary War, and those who couldn‘t pay
were evicted or sent to prison.. [see Jan 25, 1787]
(HNQ, 7/6/00)(www.shaysnet.com/dshays.html)
1786 Oct 20, Harvard University
organized the 1st astronomical expedition in US.
(MC, 10/20/01)
1787 Jan 25, Shays' Rebellion
suffered a setback when debt-ridden farmers led by Capt. Daniel
Shays failed to capture an arsenal at Springfield, Mass. Small
farmers in Springfield, Massachusetts led by Daniel Shays continued
their revolt against tax laws. Federal troops broke up the
protesters of what later became known as Shay’s Rebellion. [see Aug
29, 1786]
(AP, 1/25/98)(HN,
1/25/99)(www.sjchs-history.org/Shays.html)
1787 Feb 4, Shay’s Rebellion,
an uprising of debt-ridden Massachusetts farmers, failed.
(HN, 2/4/99)
1787 Nov 18, The 1st Unitarian
minister in US was ordained in Boston.
(MC, 11/18/01)
1788 Feb 6, Massachusetts
became the sixth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
(AP, 2/6/97)(HN, 2/6/99)
1788 "The Narrative of John
Blanchford" was published. Blanchford (15), a Massachusetts
cabin-boy, had been captured by the British and sent to prison in
Halifax and later to Sumatra from where he escaped after a 6 year
ordeal.
(ON, 1/00, p.5)
1789 Massachusetts commenced
work on the Middlesex Canal. It was completed in 1808.
(Panic, p.12)
1789-1794 Samuel Adams (1722-1803) served as Lt.
Gov. of Mass. He was also a propagandist, political figure,
revolutionary patriot and statesman who helped to organize the
Boston Tea Party.
(AHD, 1971, p.14)(HN, 9/27/98)(MC, 9/27/01)
1790 Aug 2, The enumeration for
the first US census began. It showed that 3,929,326 people were
living in the US of which 697,681 were slaves, and that the largest
cities were New York City with 33,000 inhabitants; Philadelphia,
with 28,000; Boston, with 18,000; Charleston, South Carolina, with
16,000; and Baltimore, with 13,000. Census records for Delaware,
Georgia, New Jersey, and Virginia were lost sometime between 1790
and 1830.
(AP,
8/2/06)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1790_United_States_Census)
1791 Mar 10, John Stone of
Concord, Mass, patented a pile driver.
(MC, 3/10/02)
1791 A document was released in
2004 from Pittsfield, Mass., that contained a 1791 bylaw to protect
the windows of a new meeting house from baseball players.
(SFC, 5/12/04, p.A2)
1792 Feb 23, Humane Society of
Massachusetts was incorporated. It erected life-saving stations for
distressed mariners.
(MC, 2/23/02)
1794 Apr 11, Edward Everett,
governor of Massachusetts, statesman and orator, was born.
(HN, 4/11/98)
1794 George Washington
established the first national armory at Springfield, Mass.
(WSJ, 9/12/97, p.A20)
1795 Samuel Adams and Paul
Revere laid the cornerstone for the Massachusetts State House in
Boston.
(AH, 10/07, p.73)
1797 Sep 20, The US frigate
Constitution (Old Ironsides) was launched in Boston. [see Oct 21]
(MC, 9/20/01)
1797 Oct 21, The 44-gun
204-foot U.S. Navy frigate USS Constitution, also known as Old
Ironsides, was launched in Boston's harbor. It was never defeated in
42 battles. 216 crew members set sail again in 1997 for its 200th
birthday. [see Sep 20]
(AP, 10/21/97)(SFC, 7/22/97, p.A1)(SFC,10/22/97,
p.A6)
1797 Mrs. Gannett of Mass.
(1760-1827), born as Deborah Sampson, authored her memoir. She had
fought in the American Revolution as a man under the alias Robert
Shurtleff. In 2004 Alfred F. Young authored "Masquerade: The Life
and Times of Deborah Sampson, Continental Soldier.”
(www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/sampson.html)(SSFC, 4/11/04,
p.M4)
1798 The Massachusetts State
House was built in Boston on land owned by patriot merchant John
Hancock, It was designed by Charles Bullfinch (1763-1844), who later
designed the US Capitol in Washington.
(AH, 10/07,
p.72)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bulfinch)
1803 Oct 2, Samuel Adams
(b.1722), former Gov. of Mass. (1793-1797), died. He was a
propagandist, political figure, revolutionary patriot and statesman
who helped to organize the Boston Tea Party. In 2008 Ira Stoll
authored “Samuel Adams: A Life.”
(AHD, 1971, p.14)(WSJ, 11/3/08,
p.A17)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Adams)
1804 Jul 4, Nathaniel Hawthorne
(1804-1864) American novelist and short-story writer, was born in
Marblehead, [Salem], Massachusetts. Hawthorne was born to a
prominent but decaying family. One of his ancestors, a judge in the
Salem witchcraft trials, became the model for the accursed founder
of The House of the Seven Gables. Hawthorne would often wonder
whether the decline of his family’s fortune was a punishment for the
sins of his "sable-cloaked steeple-crowned progenitors. "Marblehead
is also the location of the house in his book "The House of Seven
Gables." He also wrote "The Scarlet Letter."
(WUD, 1994, p.651)(SFEC, 7/13/97, p.T9)(HN,
7/4/98)(IB, 12/7/98)
1805 Dec 10, William Lloyd
Garrison (d.1879), abolitionist publisher, was born in Newburyport,
Mass. In 1831 he published "The Liberator." In 1998 Henry Mayer
published "All On Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of
American Slavery."
(SFEC, 1/3/99, BR p.1)(MC, 12/10/01)
1805 The Massachusetts state
Legislature staged a mock impeachment trial of Pres. Jefferson. His
affair with Sally Hemmings was one of the charges.
(SFEC, 11/1/98, p.A1)
1805 As early as 1805,
Bostonian Frederic Tudor considered ways to make money by exporting
ice, a valueless commodity in New England, to the tropics. Tudor
supported technical innovations, like the horse-drawn sleigh with
saw-like runners, which improved the cutting, shipping and storage
of large ice blocks. Recognizing that people living in warm climates
were not familiar with cool food and drinks, Tudor traveled to
prospective markets making ice cream and providing free ice for
barkeepers. By 1856, Tudor's role as the "Ice King" was firmly
established as 146,000 tons of ice shipped from Boston transformed
the eating habits of people from the Philippines to the southern
United States.
(HNPD, 4/13/99)
1806 Dec 6, The African Meeting
House was dedicated in Boston. It was later used by Frederick
Douglass and other prominent abolitionists to rail against slavery.
In 1974 it was named as a National History Landmark. In 2011 a $9
million restoration was completed.
(SFC, 11/28/11,
p.A5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Meeting_House)
1807 Dec 17, John Greenleaf
Whittier, American poet, was born in Haverhill, Mass. He was an
abolitionist, reformer and founder of the Liberal Party.
(HN, 12/17/99)(AP, 12/17/07)
1808 Mar 6, 1st college
orchestra in US was founded at Harvard.
(MC, 3/6/02)
1808 Jul 9, A leather-splitting
machine was patented by Samuel Parker of Billerica, MA.
(MC, 7/9/02)
1809 Jan 19, Edgar Allan Poe
(d.1949), American writer, was born in Boston. His father, David
Poe, was an Irish-American actor and abandoned his family shortly
after Edgar’s birth. His mother, Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins, died in
1811 and he grew up with a foster family. Poe studied briefly at the
University of Virginia, but then he quarreled with his foster father
and went to Boston in 1827, where he published his first volume of
poetry anonymously. In the early 1840s Poe became known for his
lyrical, brooding poems and detective stories, such as "The Gold
Bug" and "Murders at the Rue Morgue." In fact, he is recognized as
the father of the modern detective story. Poe was unafraid to
criticize literary practices of the time, stressing the importance
of artistic value more than moral value. After battles with
alcoholism and his wife Virginia's illness and death, Poe became
depressed but continued to write. He became engaged again in 1849
but soon died at the age of 40. His best known stories include:
"Fall of the House of Usher " and "The Tell-Tale Heart." His most
famous poems are "The Raven" and Annabel Lee."
(CFA, '96,Vol 179, p.38)(SFEC,
1/12/97, p.T5) (AP, 1/19/98)(HNPD, 1/19/99)
1809 Dec 30, Wearing masks at
balls was forbidden in Boston.
(MC, 12/30/01)
1809 Boston’s Exchange Coffee
House, which also contained a hotel and offices, opened and was said
to be the largest building in the country. It burned down in 1818.
(Econ, 11/24/07,
p.91)(www.nmrls.org/news/nov07/mhl.shtml)
1810-1813 Boston-based whalers slaughtered an
estimated 150,000 fur seals on the Farallon Islands, 28 miles west
of San Francisco. Russian hunters followed and occupied the islands
for the next 25 years during which they wiped out the remaining fur
seals. Fur seals began to return around 1977, but their first pup
wasn’t born until 1996.
(Bay, 4/07, p.33)
1811 Jan 2, US Sen Timothy
Pickering (1745-1829) of Massachusetts became the 1st US senator to
be censured. He had revealed confidential documents communicated by
the president of the US.
(http://tinyurl.com/8yj6dmb)
1811 Judge Joseph Story (32),
speaker of the State House of Rep., had a Federal style house built
in Salem and was appointed by Pres. Madison as associate justice to
the US Supreme Court.
(WSJ, 7/28/00, p.W10)
1811 Francis Cabot Lowell, an
American industrialist, moved to England and gathered information on
mill details. He returned to the US and started the textile industry
in New England and the Massachusetts mill town of his name.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R50)
1811 Jan 6, Charles Sumner
(d.1874), leading anti-slavery senator and author, was born in
Boston. He was active in the movement to outlaw war, opposed the
Mexican War and was a founder in 1848 of the Free-Soil party. A
senator from Massachusetts, Sumner was an ardent abolitionist and
helped organize the Republican party. In c1867 Massachusetts Senator
Charles Sumner popularized the name Alaska for the territory that
had been known as Russian America in a famous Senate speech
supporting the treaty to purchase Russian America: "There is the
National flag. He must be cold, indeed, who can look upon its folds
rippling in the breeze without pride of country. If in a foreign
land, the flag is companionship, and country itself, with all its
endearments."
(HNQ, 9/28/98)(AP, 6/14/97)(HNQ, 11/17/98)
1812 Feb 11, Massachusetts Gov.
Elbridge Gerry signed a re-districting law that favored his
party, giving rise to the term "gerrymandering." His district was
shaped like a salamander.
(AP, 2/11/97)(Econ, 10/9/10, p.20)
1812 Maine separated from the
state of Massachusetts.
(WSJ, 8/6/99, p.W12)
1812 The 1st New England cotton
mill was erected in Fall River, Mass.
(Panic, p.8)
1813 Jan 24, Theodore Sedgwick
(b.1746), arch-Federalist and former Massachusetts Senator
(1796-1799), died. In 2007 John Sedgwick authored “In My Blood: Six
Generations of Madness and Desire in an American Family.”
(http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=S000222)(WSJ,
1/6/07, p.P13)
1814 Oct 19, Mercy Otis Warren
(b.1728), Massachusetts playwright, died.
(WSJ, 2/5/08,
p.A16)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercy_Otis_Warren)
1814 Nov 23, Elbridge Gerry
(b.1744), former Massachusetts governor (1810-1811), died in office
as vice-president of the US under Madison (1812-1814).
(WSJ, 10/22/04,
p.W5)(www.ushistory.org/declaration/signers/gerry.htm)
1815 John Roulstone of
Sterling, Mass., penned the first 3 stanzas of the poem "Mary Had a
Little Lamb" after his classmate Mary Sawyer came to school followed
by her pet lamb.
(SFC, 8/24/98, p.B6)
1816 Dec 13, Patent for a dry
dock was issued to John Adamson in Boston.
(MC, 12/13/01)
1816 Henry Hall, a Cape Cod
farmer, discovered that sand spread over wild cranberry plants
induced good growth.
(Econ, 12/18/04, p.123)
1817 Jul 12, Henry David
Thoreau (d.1862), essayist, naturalist and poet, was born in
Concord, Mass. His work included "On Walden Pond." He referred to
the three Greek goddesses of fate: Clotho (spinner of the thread of
destiny), Lachesis (disposer of lots) and especially Atropos (who
holds the scissors that will cut endeavor short). "We have
constructed a fate, an Atropos, that never turns aside." He was also
the author of the essays "Civil Disobedience and Slavery in
Massachusetts."
(AHD, p.1339)(Civil., Jul-Aug., '95, p.66)(HFA,
'96, p.34)(HN, 7/12/98)
1817 Aug 18, Gloucester, Mass,
newspapers told of a wild sea serpent seen offshore.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1818 May 10, Paul Revere
(b.1735) American patriot, died in Boston. Revere, best known for
his midnight ride, fathered 16 children-eight by his first wife
Sarah Orne and eight by his second wife, Rachel Walker. Born to
Apollos Rivoire and Deborah Hitchbourne, Paul Revere was one of 13
children.
(AP, 5/10/97)(HNQ, 7/26/99)
1818 Aug 13, Suffragist Lucy
Stone, women's rights activist, founder of Woman's Journal, was born
in West Brookfield, Mass.
(AP, 8/13/97)(HN, 8/13/98)
1819 Jul 9, Elias Howe
(d.1867), inventor of the sewing machine, was born in Spencer, Mass.
Howe, a machinist, developed his sewing machine in 1843-45 and
patented it in 1846. Although Howe's machine sewed only short,
straight lines, tailors and seamstresses saw it as a threat to their
jobs. Unable to market his machine in America, Howe took it to
Britain where he sold the rights to an English manufacturer in 1847.
Upon his return to the United States, Howe discovered that his
patent had been infringed upon by other sewing machine
manufacturers, such as Isaac Singer. After a lengthy court battle,
Howe's patent was upheld and royalties from sewing machine sales
made him a wealthy man.
(WUD, 1994, p.689)(HN, 7/9/99)(MC, 7/9/02)
1819 Sep 16, Dr. John Jeffries,
who crossed the English Channel (1785) with Frenchman Jean-Pierre
Blanchard for the first time in a hydrogen balloon, died in Boston.
(HN, 5/15/98)(HN, 1/7/99)
1819 Nov, Nantucket whalers
lost their ship to a white whale and attempted to make landfall on
the coast of South America. 8 crewmen survived after they consumed 7
of their mates. [see Owen Chase in 1821]
(WSJ, 4/28/00, p.W6)
1819 The Pilgrim Society was
established in Plymouth and undertook to build Pilgrim Hall.
(AM, 11/00, p.16)
1820 Feb 15, American
suffragist Susan B. Anthony (d.1906) was born in Adams, Mass. Her
biography by Lynn Sherr was titled: "Failure Is Impossible."
(SFEC, 9/21/97, Par p.4)(AP, 2/15/98)(HN,
2/15/98)
1820 An American whaling ship
from Brighton, Massachusetts, was later believed to be the first to
enter Japanese waters.
(Econ, 12/22/07, p.64)
1821 Owen Chase wrote
"Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of
the White-Whale ship Essex." The story inspired Herman Melville’s
"Moby Dick." In 2000 Nathaniel Philbrick authored "In the Heart of
the Sea," a complete investigation into the Nantucket whaler’s story
and "the taboo of gastronomic incest."
(WSJ, 4/28/00, p.W6)
1821 The Inquirer and Mirror
newspaper began publishing on Nantucket.
(SFEC, 8/13/00, p.T5)
1821 Amherst College was
founded in Amherst, Mass.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amherst_College)
1821 The Boston English High
School, the first US public high school, held its opening classes.
(HNQ, 7/5/00)
1822 Feb 23, Boston was granted
a charter to incorporate as a city.
(AP, 2/23/98) (HN, 3/19/98)
1822 Mar 19, Boston was
incorporated as a city.
(HN, 3/19/98)
1824 Lydia Maria Child of
Wayland, Mass., authored "Hobomok," a novel of a Puritan girl who
falls in love with an Indian after her fiancé is lost at sea.
She later founded Juvenile Miscellany, the 1st children’s magazine
in the US. She later authored "The Frugal Housewife" and "An Appeal
in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans" (1833) and the
poem: "The New England’s Boy’s Song About Thanksgiving Day" (Over
the river, and through the woods…). In 1994 Carolyn Karcher authored
her biography: "The First Woman in the Republic."
(WSJ, 11/21/02, p.A1)
1825-1858 The Suffolk Bank operated a clearing
house in Boston that served the New England region, and required all
country banks doing business in Boston to maintain clearing
deposits.
(WSJ, 2/5/98, p.A23)
1825-1888 Sandwich glass, also known as pressed
glass, was made by the Boston and Sandwich Glass Works in Sandwich,
Mass. They made the original dolphin-based glassware.
(SFC, 7/9/97, Z1 p.3)
1826 Feb 13, The American
Temperance Society formed in Boston.
(MC, 2/13/02)
1826 Jul 4, John Adams died at
age 90 in Braintree [Quincy], Mass, just a few hours after
Jefferson. Because communications was slow in those days, Adams and
Jefferson, at their death, thought the other was still alive. Adams'
last words were, "Thomas Jefferson still survives." It was 50 years
to the day after the Declaration of Independence was adopted. Adams
was the 2nd president of the US. A multi-generational biography of
the Adams family was later written by Paul C. Nagel: "Descent from
Glory." The Joseph Ellis book The Passionate Edge" helped restore
Adams to his rightful place in the American pantheon. The 1972
musical film 1776 focused on Adams’ efforts to get an independence
resolution through Congress. In 1998 C. Bradley Thompson published
"John Adams and the Spirit of Liberty." In 2001 David McCullough
authored "John Adams." In 2005 James Grant authored “John Adams:
Party of One.”
(A&IP, p.29)(AP, 7/4/97)(SFC, 7/4/98,
p.E4)(IB, Internet, 12/7/98)(WSJ, 12/22/98, p.A16)(WSJ, 5/30/01,
p.A20)(WSJ, 3/24/05, p.D8)
1826 Oct 7, The first railway
in the United States opened at Quincy, Massachusetts.
(HN, 10/7/98)
1827 Luther Roby, a Concord
printer, published "A Journal Kept By Mr. John Howe While He Was
Employed As A British Spy during the Revolutionary War; Also While
He Was Engaged In The Smuggling Business." The book was later
thought to based on the journal of British officer Henry De Berniere
and published by John Gill, member of the Sons of Liberty, in 1779.
(AH, 10/01, p.56)
1829 Mar 2, New England Asylum
for the Blind, 1st in US, was incorporated in Boston.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1829 Jul 4, In Boston, Mass.,
abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879) gave a passionate
antislavery sermon at the Park Street Church and was attacked by a
white supremacist mob who dragged him from the pulpit and beat him
nearly to death. Garrison published the anti-slavery newspaper, the
Liberator, from 1831-1865.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1561.html)(AH,
10/07, p.72)
1829 Aug 16, The original
Siamese twins, Chang and Eng Bunker, arrived in Boston aboard the
ship Sachem to be exhibited to the Western world.
(AP, 8/16/97)
1829 Sep 28, Walker's Appeal, a
racial antislavery pamphlet, was published in Boston.
(MC, 9/28/01)
1829 Oct 16, Tremont Hotel, 1st
US modern hotel, opened in Boston.
(MC, 10/16/01)
1830 Jan 1, William Lloyd
Garrison published the first edition of a journal entitled The
Liberator, calling for the complete and immediate emancipation of
all slaves in the United States. [see 1831]
(HN, 1/1/99)
1830 Dec 10, Emily Dickinson
(d.1886), American poet, was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. Perhaps
the best-known woman poet in the United States today, Dickinson led
a rather secluded life. After studying at Amherst Academy and then
for one year at the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, she lived with
her family and never married. The few friends that Emily Dickinson
did have received regular gifts of poetry and letters from her.
Although she wrote poetry constantly, she never seriously pursued
publishing her work. Only about 10 poems were published in her
lifetime, and those were submitted for publication without her
permission. After her death in 1886, more than 1,700 of her poems,
which she had bound together in bundles, were discovered and
published. "They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think
of Him as somewhat of a recluse."
(HNPD, 12/8/98)(AP, 1/10/99)
1830 A year after leaving
office as the sixth president of the United States, the Plymouth
district of Massachusetts unexpectedly elected John Quincy Adams to
the House of Representatives, where he served until he suffered a
stroke on the House floor in 1848. He died two days later. Adams at
the time enjoyed the distinction of having been the only son to
follow his father to the presidency.
(HNQ, 5/31/01)
1830 A Massachusetts spice
trading ship was seized by pirates in Sumatra. In 2001 "Drums of
Quallah Battoo: Salem Pepper Traders and Sumatran Pirates" by
Charles P Corn (d.2001) was to be published.
(SFC, 3/20/01, p.A19)
1830 Commercial bottling
operations for ketchup began in Boston.
(SFC, 8/27/03, p.E4)
1830 Samuel Morrill, a
newspaper printer, cooked up a new ink in his kitchen in Andover,
Mass., forming a company that ultimately become Sun Chemical. In
2004 it was the largest maker of ink in the world.
(SFC, 7/26/04, p.F4)
1831 Jan 1, William Lloyd
Garrison, 24-year-old reformer of Massachusetts, began publishing
his newspaper The Liberator, dedicated to the abolition of slavery.
Garrison's stridency and uncompromising position on both the
institution of slavery and slave owners offended many in the North
and South, but he vowed to continue the fight until slavery was
abolished. In the first issue of his newspaper, he wrote, "I am
aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there
not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as
uncompromising as justice. On this subject I do not wish to think,
or speak, or write, with moderation. No! No!" Garrison once burned a
copy of the U.S. Constitution, condemning it as "a covenant with
death and an agreement with hell" because it did not forbid slavery.
The Liberator ceased publication in 1865 after the 13th Amendment
was passed, outlawing slavery. [see 1830]
(HNPD, 12/31/98)
1831 Jul 4, "America (My
Country 'Tis of Thee)" was 1st sung in Boston. [see Jul 4, 1832]
(Maggio, 98)
1831 Aug 10, William Driver of
Salem, Massachusetts, was the first to use the term "Old Glory" in
connection with the American flag, when he gave that name to a large
flag aboard his ship, the Charles Daggett.
(HN, 8/10/98)
1832 Jul 4, The song "America"
was sung publicly for the first time at a Fourth of July celebration
by a group of children at Park Street Church in Boston. The words
were written on a scrap of paper in half an hour by Dr. Samuel
Francis Smith, a Baptist minister, and were set to the music of "God
Save the King."
(IB, Internet, 12/7/98)
1832 Jul 25, The 1st US
railroad accident was at Granite Railway, Quincy, Mass., and 1 died.
(SC, 7/25/02)
1833 Jan 8, Boston Academy of
Music, 1st US music school, was established.
(MC, 1/8/02)
1835 Dec 13, Phillips Brooks,
the American Episcopal bishop, was born in Boston. He wrote the
words to "O Little Town of Bethlehem."
(AP, 12/13/99)
1835 The Paine Furniture Co.
began operations in Boston, Mass. It later moved to Cape Cod changed
its name to Paine’s Patio.
(SFC, 10/1/08, p.G6)
1836 In Boston a small group of
New England intellectuals began gathering at the home of minister
George Ripley to discuss issues of religious and philosophical
importance. The group, known as the Transcendental Club, disbanded
in 1840. In 2007 Philip F. Gura authored “American
Transcendentalism: A History.”
(SSFC, 12/2/07, p.M3)
1837 Oct 1, Robert Gould
Shaw, commander of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, first unit of
black soldiers in Civil War, was born to a prominent abolitionist
family. He was later asked by the governor of Massachusetts to
organize the first regiment of black troops in a Northern state.
Shaw recruited free blacks from all over New England. On May 13,
1863, the 54th Massachusetts Regiment was mustered into service in
the Union Army with Shaw as its commanding officer. After leading
the regiment in a handful of smaller actions, Shaw and the 54th
joined two brigades of white troops in an assault on Confederates
holding Battery Wagner on the South Carolina coast. Although the
action was unsuccessful and Shaw himself died leading the charge,
the courage of black troops under fire was proven beyond any doubt.
This Kurz and Allison print honors Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts
at Fort Wagner.
(HNPD, 10/1/98)(HN, 10/1/98)
1837 Nov 8, Mount Holyoke
Seminary, the 1st US college exclusively for women, opened in South
Hadley, Massachusetts.
(AP, 11/8/00)
1838 Aug 23, One of the first
colleges for women, Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley,
Mass., graduated its first students.
(AP, 8/23/97)
1839 Mar 23, 1st recorded use
of "OK" [oll korrect] was in Boston's Morning Post.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1839 Nov 27, The American
Statistical Association was founded in Boston.
(AP, 11/27/97)
1840 The whaling ship Lydia,
was built in Rochester, Mass. In 1978 sewer construction along the
southern Embarcadero of SF unearthed the Lydia.
(SFC, 8/5/05, p.F2)
1840 The ship General Harrison
was built in Newbury Port., Mass. It sailed the Horn to SF and
burned up in the 1851 SF fire. Remains were uncovered in 2001.
(SFC, 9/8/01, p.A11)
1841 Mar 8, Oliver Wendell
Holmes Jr. (d.1935), Supreme Court Justice, the "Great Dissenter,"
was born in Boston. "To have doubted one's own first principles, is
the mark of a civilized man."
(AP, 3/8/98)(HN, 3/8/98)(WSJ, 6/22/99, p.A22)(AP,
3/6/00)
1841 William Whitfield, captain
of the whaling ship John Howland, from Fairhaven, Mass., picked up 5
castaways from Japan’s Torishima Island, including a boy named
Manjiro, who returned with Whitfield to Fairhaven. Manjiro later
returned to Japan, and translated Nathaniel Bowditch’s “The New
American Navigator,” known to mariners as the “seaman’s bible.” In
1854 Manjiro acted as interpreter with Commodore Perry and in 1860
joined the 1st Japanese embassy to America.
(Econ, 12/22/07, p.66)
1842 Mar 3, 1st US child labor
law regulating working hours was passed in Massachusetts.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1842 Nov 17, A grim
abolitionist meeting was held in Marlboro Chapel, Boston, after the
imprisonment under the Fugitive Slave Bill (1793) of a mulatto named
George Latimer, one of the first fugitive slaves to be apprehended
in Massachusetts. Four hundred dollars was collected to buy his
freedom, and plans to storm the jail were prepared as an alternative
to secure his release.
(HN, 11/17/98)
1843 Dec 4, Manila paper (made
from sails, canvas & rope) was patented in Mass.
(MC, 12/4/01)
1843 The Fruitlands utopia in
rural Massachusetts was begun by Bronson Alcott, his wife Abby,
Englishman Charles Lane and others. Members called themselves the
Consociate Family. It was marked by anti-materialistic credos,
anti-hierarchical family structures, home-schooling and a vegan
diet. Louisa May Alcott later recalled her experiences there in
"Little Women."
(SFC, 12/7/99, p.C1)(ON, 7/03, p.11)
1844 Jan 30, Richard Theodore
Greener became the first African American to graduate from Harvard
University.
(HN, 1/30/99)
1844 Apr 4, Charles Bulfinch
(80), 1st US professional architect (Mass State House), died.
(MC, 4/4/02)
1844 Henry David Thoreau
translated the Lotus Sutra from French to English and published it
in the Transcendentalist journal Dial..
(SSFC, 7/8/01, p.B5)
1845 Jul 4, American writer
Henry David Thoreau began his 26 month experiment in simple living
at Walden Pond, near Concord, Mass. He chose this day to move to a
rustic hut in the peace and quiet of Walden Pond. He doubted that
there was a spot in Massachusetts where one could not hear a train
whistle. The Fitchburg trains passed Walden Pond about a hundred
rods south of his cabin. He lived there until September 6, 1947. His
writings about his thoughts and experiences there are still read and
remembered by millions around the world. "I went to the woods
because I wished to see if I could not learn what it [life] had to
teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
(Civil., Jul-Aug., '95, p.76) (NOHY, Weiner,
3/90, p.53)(AP, 7/4/97)(IB, 12/7/98)
1845 In Boston the Eastern
Hotel became the first building heated by steam. Radiators were
used.
(SFEC,12/28/97, Z1 p.2)
1845 Boston outlawed bathing
unless it was done under a doctor’s orders.
(WSJ, 12/11/02, p.B1)
1846 Feb 21, Sarah G. Bagley
became the first female telegrapher, taking charge at the newly
opened telegraph office in Lowell, Mass.
(AP, 2/21/00)
1846 Jun 27, New York City and
Boston were linked by telegraph wires.
(AP, 6/27/07)
1846 Aug 14, Henry David
Thoreau was jailed for tax resistance.
(MC, 8/14/02)
1846 Sep 10, Elias Howe of
Spencer, Mass., received a patent for his first workable lockstitch
sewing machine. Howe, a Massachusetts machinist, developed his
sewing machine in 1843-45 and patented it in 1846. Although Howe's
machine sewed only short, straight lines, tailors and seamstresses
saw it as a threat to their jobs. Unable to market his machine in
America, Howe took it to Britain where he sold the rights to an
English manufacturer in 1847. Upon his return to the United States,
Howe discovered that his patent had been infringed upon by other
sewing machine manufacturers, such as Isaac Singer. After a lengthy
court battle, Howe's patent was upheld and royalties from sewing
machine sales made him a wealthy man.
(CFA, '96, p.54)(AP, 9/10/97)(HNPD, 7/9/98)
1846 Sep 30, Dentist William
Morton used ether as an anesthetic for the first time on a patient
in Boston, (Charleston) Massachusetts.
(AP, 9/30/97)(HN, 9/30/01)
1846 Oct 16, Sulphurous ether
was first administered in public at the Massachusetts General
Hospital in Boston by dentist Dr. William Thomas Green Morton during
an operation performed by Dr. John Collins Warren. Morton was the
1st to take public credit for the use of ether in a medical
procedure and applied for a patent on its use, which was later
nullified. In 2001 Julie M. Fenster authored “Ether Day,” an account
of Dr. Morton and ether. [see Sep 30]
(HN, 10/16/98)(WSJ, 8/21/01, p.A17)
1847 Sep 6, Henry David Thoreau
left Walden Pond and moved back into town, to Concord,
Massachusetts.
(HN, 9/6/00)
1847 Oct 1, Maria Mitchell
(29), American astronomer living on Nantucket Island, discovered a
new comet that was named after herself. In 1848 she was elected to
the American Academy of Arts, the first woman to be so honored.
Frederick VI, the King of Denmark awarded her a gold medal for her
discovery.
(HN, 10/1/98)(ON, 2/07, p.9)
1848 Jan 26, Henry David
Thoreau (1817-1862) of Massachusetts presented an essay at the
Concord Lyceum that explained his motives for refusing to pay taxes.
In 1849 it was published as “Resistance to Civil Government.”
(ON, 10/09, p.12)
1848 Feb 15, Sarah Roberts was
barred from a white school in Boston.
(440 Int’l., 2/15/99)
1848 Nov 23, The Female Medical
Educational Society was established in Boston, Mass., the same year
the all-male American Medical Association formed.
(AP, 11/23/02)
1848 Samuel Gregory, a pioneer
in medical education for women, founded the Boston Female Medical
School. The school opened with an enrollment of 12 students. The
establishment merged 26 years later with the Boston University
School of Medicine, to form one of the first coed medical schools in
the world.
(HNQ, 12/27/02)
1849 Mar 7, Horticulturist
Luther Burbank was born in Lancaster, Mass.
(AP, 3/7/98)
1849 Nov 23, Harvard chemistry
Prof. John Webster murdered Dr. George Parkman. In 1991 Simon Schama
authored “Dead Certainties,” which chronicled the murder and trial,
in which Webster was convicted and sentenced to hanging. Dental
identification played a key role in the trial.
(WSJ, 11/10/07,
p.W8)(http://jimfisher.edinboro.edu/forensics/webster1.html)
1849 Henry David Thoreau
published “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.” It described
a camping trip made with his brother in 1839.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Week_on_the_Concord_and_Merrimack_Rivers)
1850 Apr 20, Daniel Chester
French (d.1931), sculptor, was born. He had his estate in
Stockbridge, Mass. His work included the Lincoln Memorial and the
Minute Man. His Chesterwood estate became a museum with an annual
6-month summer season. [413-298-3579]
(HN, 4/20/98)(WSJ, 5/4/99, p.A20)
1850 Aug 23, The 1st national
women's rights convention convened in Worcester, Mass.
(MC, 8/23/02)
1850 Sep 18, Congress passed
the second Fugitive Slave Bill into law (the first was enacted in
1793) as part of Compromise of 1850. It allowed slave owners to
reclaim slaves who had escaped to other states. The Fugitive Slave
Act of 1850 set fines up to $1,000 for facilitating a slave’s
flight.
(AP, 9/18/97)(HN, 9/18/98)(WSJ, 1/30/03,
p.D8)(AH, 10/02, p.50)
1850 Marshall Field (16)
started working a dry goods clerk in Pittsfield, Mass. In 1855 he
moved to Chicago. In 1947 John Tebbel authored "The Marshall Fields:
A Study in Wealth." In 2002 Axel Madsen authored "The Marshall
Fields: The Evolution of an American Business Dynasty."
(WSJ, 10/9/02, p.D8)
1850s John Augustus of Boston
persuaded the courts to release young offenders into his custody
instead of sending them to prison. This was the start of the
practice of probation.
(SFEC, 11/21/99, Z1p.2)
1851 Feb 15, Black
abolitionists invaded a Boston courtroom to rescue a fugitive slave.
(440 Int’l., 2/15/99)
1851
Nov 11, Alvan Clark of Cambridge, Massachusetts, patented a
telescope. Clark, a portrait painter interested in astronomy, had
made several small lenses and mirrors as a hobby. The fact that he
could detect the small residual errors in one of the best lenses
Europe could offer convinced him that he could make them as well.
After he gained a reputation in Europe the American orders started
to come in. The Alvin Clark Company became one of the foremost
producers of some of the largest lenses for telescopes in the
1800's.
(www.todayinsci.com/)
1851 Dec 29, The first American
Young Men's Christian Assn. was organized, in Boston.
(AP, 12/29/97)
1851 The MassMutual Financial
Group was begun in Massachusetts. The 2005 the company employed
27,000 people and managed assets of $350 billion.
(WSJ, 8/19/05, p.A1)
1852 May 18, Massachusetts
ruled that all school-age children must attend school.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1852 Aug 3, In the 1st
intercollegiate rowing race, Harvard beats Yale by 4 lengths.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1852 Oct 24, Daniel Webster
(70), lawyer, speaker and senator from Massachusetts, died. In 1997
Robert V. Remini wrote his biography: "Daniel Webster."
(WSJ, 9/30/97, p.A20)(MC, 10/24/01)
1852 Dec 29, Emma Snodgrass was
arrested in Boston for wearing pants.
(MC, 12/29/01)
1852 Anson Burlingame was
elected to the Mass. legislature.
(Ind, 8/11/01, 5A)
1852 Smith & Wesson founded
its business in Springfield, Mass. Horace Smith, a toolmaker, and
Daniel Wesson, a former apprenticed gunsmith, combined their skills
to produce a revolutionary handgun.
(WSJ, 9/12/97, p.A20)(SSFC, 1/28/07, p.F3)
1853 Mar 5, Arthur W. Foote,
organist, composer (Suite for Strings in E), was born in Salem,
Mass.
(MC, 3/5/02)
1853 In Boston Sarah Parker
Remond was thrown out of a theater for refusing to be seated in an
area reserved for blacks. She fell and filed suit and was awarded
monetary compensation. The theater was later desegregated.
(SFEC, 4/5/98, BR p.5)
1854 Aug 9, Henry David Thoreau
published "Walden," in which he described his experiences while
living near Walden Pond on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.
(Hem, Dec. 94, p.44)(AP, 8/9/97)
1854 Nov 13, George Whitfield
Chadwick, composer, was born in Lowell Mass.
(MC, 11/13/01)
1854 The New England Emigrant
Aid Society was created to colonize Kansas with Northern
abolitionists. The Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society, founded by
Eli Thayer of Worcester, Massachusetts, promoted the settlement of
anti-slavery groups in Kansas, with the ultimate objective of making
it a free state. Adhering to the cause of "popular sovereignty," the
organization-which was reincorporated in February, 1855 as the New
England Emigrant Aid Company-founded the town of Lawrence and other
Free State communities. Active into 1857, it helped settle some
2,000 people in Kansas.
(WSJ, 3/27/98, p.W10)(HNQ, 10/5/99)
1855 May 3, Macon B. Allen
became the first African American to be admitted to the Bar in
Massachusetts.
(HN, 5/3/99)
1855 Dwight L. Moody, Biblicist
and later founder of the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, embraced
Jesus as his personal savior in a Boston shoe store.
(WSJ, 7/7/99, p.A1)
1855 Oct 9, Joshua Stoddard of
Worcester, Mass., patented the 1st calliope.
(MC, 10/9/01)
1855 Anderson Preserve Co.
incorporated. It sold Boston Market Catsup throughout the US.
(SFC, 8/27/03, p.E4)
1856 May 20, Massachusetts
Senator Charles Sumner (d.1874), an outspoken antagonist against
slavery, gave the "Crime Against Kansas" speech. [see May 22]
Sumner, born on January 6, 1811, helped form the Republican Party.
(HNQ, 7/7/99)
1856 May 22, Massachusetts
Senator Charles Sumner was assaulted on the Senate floor by South
Carolina’s Preston Brooks. Representative Brooks, a pro-slavery
Democrat from South Carolina, used a cane to attack Senator Charles
Sumner, a Republican abolitionist from Mass. Sumner was beaten
unconscious and was unable to resume duties for 3 years. Brooks
resigned from his seat but was re-elected. Sumner's injuries in the
attack compelled his absence from the Senate until December, 1859.
(SFC, 7/25/98, p.A6)(HNQ, 7/7/99)
1858 Feb 21, Edwin T. Holmes
installed the 1st electric burglar alarm in Boston, Mass.
(MC, 2/21/02)
1858 Oct 15, John L. Sullivan,
heavyweight boxing champ (1882-92), was born in Mass.
(MC, 10/15/01)
1859 Jul 12, William Goodale
patented a paper bag manufacturing machine in Mass.
(MC, 7/12/02)
1859 In Plymouth construction
began on an 81-foot tall monument to the Pilgrims and their virtues:
"Law, Education Freedom and Morality."
(AM, 11/00, p.17)
1859 John Augustus, Boston
businessman, died. He had instituted a practice called probation and
helped spare some 2,000 convicted offenders from prison sentences.
In 1891 the Mass. state legislature established the 1st official
judicial probation system. In 1925 the US Congress passed the
National Probation Act.
(ON, 5/02, p.5)
1860 Feb 22, Shoe-making
workers of Lynn, Mass, struck successfully for higher wages. The
strike in Lynn and Natick, Massachusetts, spread throughout New
England and involved 20,000 workers. The strike was for higher wages
and included women. The workers won their major demands.
(HNQ, 8/3/98)(MC, 2/22/02)
1860 Jul 25, The 1st US
intercollegiate billiard match was between Harvard and Yale.
(SC, 7/25/02)
1860 Oct 13, The 1st US aerial
photo was taken from a balloon over Boston.
(HFA, ‘96, p.40)(MC, 10/13/01)
1860 Cornelius Felton
(1807-1862), professor of Greek literature, succeeded James Walker
as president of Harvard.
(www.nndb.com/people/711/000107390/)
1860 Milton Bradley started a
lithograph company in Springfield, Mass. In 1866 Bradley launched
the board-game industry in North America with “The Checkered Game of
Life,” which innovated on earlier representations of life as a board
game. By 1880 he expanded into manufacturing jigsaw puzzles. Hasbro
bought Milton Bradley in 1992.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_of_Life)(SFC, 6/11/08, p.G3)
1861 Feb 22, Edward Weston left
Boston on a bet to walk to Lincoln's inauguration.
(MC, 2/22/02)
1861 The Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) was founded in response to the
increasing industrialization of the United States.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology)
1861 Pres. Lincoln appointed
Anson Burlingame, congressman from Mass., as ambassador to China.
(Ind, 8/11/01, 5A)
1862 Feb 26, Cornelius Felton
(b.1807), president of Harvard Univ., died in Chester, Pen., after 2
years in office.
(WSJ, 2/21/06,
p.A3)(www.nndb.com/people/711/000107390/)
1862 Apr 21, Ellen Price Wood's
"East Lynne," premiered in Boston.
(MC, 4/21/02)
1862 May, Henry David Thoreau
(44), American writer, died of tuberculosis. In 1999 his unfinished
manuscript "Wild Fruits," a catalog of his observations on local
plants and fruits, was published.
(WP, 1952, p.42)(SFC, 9/7/99, p.A3)
1863 May 28, The 54th
Massachusetts, the first black regiment from the North, left Boston
headed for Hilton Head, South Carolina, to fight in the Civil War.
(AP, 5/28/97)(HN, 5/28/99)
1863 Ebeneezer Butterick, a
Massachusetts tailor, created the first graded sewing pattern.
(SSFC, 11/7/10, p.N1)
1864 Mar 1, Rebecca Lee
(1831-1895) became the first black woman to receive an American
medical degree, from the New England Female Medical College in
Boston.
(AP,
3/1/00)(www.nlm.nih.gov/changingthefaceofmedicine/physicians/biography_73.html)
1865 Feb 20, MIT was formed as
the 1st US collegiate architectural school.
(MC, 2/20/02)
1865 Jul 8, C.E. Barnes of
Lowell, MA, patented the machine gun.
(MC, 7/8/02)
1865 Dec 26, James H. Nason
(Mason) of Franklin, Mass., received a patent for a coffee
percolator.
(AP, 12/26/97)(MC, 12/26/01)
1865 The Dante Club formed in
Boston to help Henry Wadsworth Longfellow complete the 1st top-notch
English translation of Dante’s "Inferno."
(SSFC, 2/2/03, p.M6)
1866 Apr 14, Anne Sullivan
(d.1936), teacher to Helen Keller, was born in Feeding Hills, Mass.
(ON, 2/10,
p.10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Sullivan_Macy)
1866 Jul 10, The Indelible
pencil was patented by Edson P. Clark of Northampton, Mass.
(MC, 7/10/02)
1866 The Boston Yacht Club was
founded.
(SFEC, 7/13/97, p.T7)
1868 Feb 23, William Edward
Burghardt Du Bois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
W.E.B. Du Bois was the first African American to earn a doctorate
from Harvard University. As a sociologist, he focused on the problem
of race for blacks in the United States. He became an influential
leader of black Americans, presenting an alternative to Booker T.
Washington, whose policies Du Bois considered too conservative and
too accommodating to whites. Du Bois, believing that blacks could
achieve progress only through protest, encouraged black nationalism
and supported Pan-Africanism. He founded the National Negro
Committee which eventually became the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People. Du Bois also founded the Niagara
Movement, served as the NAACP's director of research and editor of
its magazine Crisis, and taught and published his philosophy at
Atlanta University from 1896-1910. In 1961 he renounced his American
citizenship and spent his last remaining years in the West African
country of Ghana. W.E.B. Du Bois died in Accra, Ghana August 27,
1963 at the age of 95.
(HNPD, 2/23/99)(HNQ, 5/11/99)
1868 Louisa May Alcott (d.1888)
authored "Little Women," while living in Concord, Mass. In 1998
"Little Women" premiered in Houston as an opera by Mark Adomo.
(WSJ, 8/29/01, p.A12)(SSFC, 9/18/05, p.E2)
1869 Aug 17, Oxford beat
Harvard on the Thames River in the 1st international boat race.
(SC, 8/17/02)
1869 Oct 16, A hotel in Boston
became the 1st to have indoor plumbing.
(MC, 10/16/01)
1870 Feb 23, Anton Burlingame,
former Mass., legislator, former US ambassador to China and current
Chinese diplomat, died in Russia. He was returned to Boston for
burial.
(Ind, 8/11/01, 5A)
1870 George Grant (d.1910)
became the 1st black graduate from Harvard Dental School. He got the
1st patent for a golf tee in 1899.
(ST, 2/20/04, p.C1)
1871 Aug 26, The Boston Revere
Railroad Depot collision left 32 people dead on a single track
railroad with no telegraph communications.
(THC, 12/2/97)
1872 Nov 9, Fire destroyed
nearly 800 buildings in Boston.
(AP, 11/9/08)
1872 In Cambridge, Mass., the
Metaphysical Club was founded as a discussion group and included
Oliver Wendall Holmes, Charles Sanders Pierce, William James and
Chauncy Wright. In 2001 Louis Menand authored "The Metaphysical
Club: A Story of ideas in America," which traced the American
development of pragmatism.
(SSFC, 6/10/01, DB p.70)(SFC, 6/15/01, p.C15)
1873 May 8, Melvil Dewey
(d.1931) presented the 1st draft of his decimal classification
system to the Amherst College Library Committee. [see 1876]
(ON, 3/04, p.12)
1873 May 12, The penny postal
card, issued by the Post Office Department, was first put on sale in
Springfield, Mass., and in other cities a day later.
(www.dailymail.com/static/specialsections/lookingback/lb0201.htm)
1873 Boston, Mass., established
a mounted police unit, the first such unit in the country. The unit
was disbanded in 2009 due to budget cuts.
(SFC, 6/29/09, p.A4)
1873 Lydia Pynkham developed
and began to produce and sell the Lydia Pynkham Vegetable Compound
for problems that ailed women in Marblehead, Mass.
(SFEC, 7/13/97, p.A10)
1875 Oct 25, Tchaikovsky’s 1st
Piano Concerto premiered in Boston.
(MC, 10/25/01)
1876 Feb 15, A historic Elm at
Boston was blown down.
(440 Int’l., 2/15/99)
1876 Mar 10, Alexander Graham
Bell made what was, in effect, the first telephone call. He
found a way of converting words into electrical current and back
again and sent his first message using his new variable-liquid
resistance transmitter. Bell's telephone caused the current to vary
smoothly in proportion to the pressure created on a microphone by
human speech and got a patent. His assistant, in an adjoining room
in Boston, heard Bell say over the experimental device: "Mr. Watson,
come here, I want to see you."
(I&I, Penzias, p.97)(CFA, '96, p.42)(SFEM,
1/11/98, p.12) (AP, 3/10/98) (HN, 3/10/98)
1876 Apr 1, The first
official NL baseball game took place. Boston beat Philadelphia
6-5.
(OTD)
1876 Jul 31, US Coast Guard
officers' training school was established at New Bedford, MA.
(MC, 7/31/02)
1876 Dec 5, Daniel Stillson
(Mass) patented the 1st practical pipe wrench.
(MC, 12/5/01)
1876 The Moxie Nerve Food Co.
introduced a medicine to be taken with a spoon. The medicine was
later changed to a carbonated drink, produced in Salem, Mass. Moxie
produced a lot of items for advertising that became valuable as
collectibles.
(SFC, 7/15/98, Z1 p.3)
1876 Melvil Louis Dewey
(b.1851), Amherst College librarian, published the 1st edition of
the “Dewey Decimal System.” He had created "A Classification and
Subject Index for Cataloguing and arranging the Books and Pamphlets
of a Library" using his Dewey Decimal System. [see May 8, 1873]
(HN, 12/10/98)(SSFC, 4/14/02, p.C18)(ON, 3/04,
p.12)
1877 Feb 12, The 1st news
dispatch by telephone was made between Boston and Salem, Mass.
(MC, 2/12/02)
1877 Albert Pope founded his
Pope Manufacturing Co. in Boston, Mass. He started making tricycles
in 1883.
(SFC, 2/14/07, p.G3)
1878 May 24, The first American
bicycle race was held in Boston.
(HN, 5/24/98)
1878 Sep 1, Emma M. Nutt became
the first female telephone operator in the United States, for the
Telephone Despatch Co. of Boston.
(AP, 9/1/03)
1878 Thomas Gold Appleton,
poet, artist and scion of one of Boston’s first families, published
his essay “The Kingdom of the Common-Place,” in which he argued that
New Englanders must reconcile themselves to “the fatal poison” of
modernity.
(WSJ, 11/9/05, p.D16)
1878 Danvers State Hospital
opened in Danvers, Mass. It closed in 1992. In 2005 AvalonBay
purchased the property and planned to turn it into apartments.
(WSJ, 7/27/05, p.B4)
1879 Radcliffe College was
established as the "Harvard Annex" for women who were denied access
to Harvard. Its name was changed to Radcliffe in 1894 in honor of
Ann Radcliffe.
(SFC, 4/21/99, p.A2)
1879 Mary Baker Eddy
(1821-1910), founded the Church of Christ, Science.
(WSJ, 9/26/03, p.W17)
1880 Francis W. Parker (d.1902
at 64), a pioneer in progressive elementary education, became
supervisor of the Boston school system and later established the
Chicago Institute. He experimented with methods while teaching in
various places during the American Civil War in an attempt to change
the prevailing rigidity of U.S. schools. He later went to Germany in
1872 where he studied educational methods in use there. Upon
returning, he became school superintendent for Quincy,
Massachusetts, where he introduced science, arts and crafts into the
curriculum. Parker stressed children‘s individuality and promoted
self-expression, socialized activity and a more informal atmosphere.
An endowment enabled him to establish the Chicago Institute in 1899.
(HNQ, 9/6/00)
1881 Aug 12, Cecil B. DeMille
(d.1959), pioneering motion picture director, was born in Mass.
Before becoming a household name in the early days of movie-making,
he attended the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts and in 1900 began
working on plays with his older brother William. The director,
producer and screenwriter was most famous for his movie "The Ten
Commandments."
(HNPD, 8/12/98)(HN, 8/12/98)(SC, 8/12/02)
1881 Oct 22, Boston
Symphony Orchestra gave its 1st concert.
(www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/BSO.htm)
1881 A Massachusetts lighthouse
was erected in Wellfleet. It was later moved by the Coast Guard from
Wellfleet to Yerba Buena, Calif., and to Point Montara, Ca., in
1928.
(AP, 6/5/08)(SFC, 6/14/08, p.B2)
1882 Dec 11, Boston's Bijou
Theatre, the first American playhouse to be lighted exclusively by
electricity, gave its first performance: Gilbert and Sullivan's
"Iolanthe, Or The Peer and the Peri."
(AP, 12/11/08)
1883 Jan 4, Benjamin Butler
(1818-1893) began serving as the 33rd governor of Massachusetts and
continued until January 3, 1884.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin_Butler_%28politician%29)
1883 Feb 28, 1st US vaudeville
theater opened in Boston.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1883 The W.S. Reed Co. of
Leominster, Mass., produced a couple of cast-iron mechanical banks,
that never made it to mass production. One sold at auction in 1998
for $426,000.
(WSJ, 5/15/98, p.W12)
1884 Mar 27, The first
long-distance telephone call was made, between Boston and New York
City.
(AP, 3/27/97)(HN, 3/27/98)
1884 Aug 4, Thomas Stevens
(1853-1935) arrived in Boston after 104 days from SF in the 1st
bicycle trip to cross the US. He later continued around world (2 yrs
9 mos) on a trip financed with articles for "Outing and the
Wheelman" magazine.
(MC, 4/22/02)(ON, 9/03, p.12)
1884 Charles Eliot, president
of Harvard, captured the prevailing impatience with the
old-fashioned curriculum: Are our men being educated for the work of
the twentieth century of the seventeenth."
(WSJ, 1/28/02, p.A13)
1884 Episcopalian Rev. Endicott
Peabody founded the Groton School in Massachusetts. He was backed by
affluent figures of the time, such as the Rt. Rev. Phillips Brooks,
the Rev. William A. Lawrence, William Crowninshield Endicott, J.P.
Morgan, and his father, Samuel Endicott Peabody. Peabody received
pledges of $39,000 for the construction of a schoolhouse, if an
additional $40,000 could be raised as an endowment.
(WSJ, 1/6/07,
p.P13)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groton_School)
1885 Apr 30, Boston Pops
Orchestra formed.
(MC, 4/30/02)
1885 May 19, First mass
production of shoes (Jan Matzeliger in Lynn, Massachusetts).
(DT, 5/19/97)
1885 The Concord, Mass., public
library banned "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain.
(SFC, 1/21/04, p.D2)
1885-1920 Sisters Frances and Mary Allen of
Deerfield, Massachusetts, began their careers as schoolteachers, but
when deafness forced a change of profession, they turned to
photography. Their work shows everyday activities in a rural
community. Self-taught in their craft, the Allen sisters
achieved remarkable success. During their photography career from
1885 to 1920, their work appeared in numerous books and magazines as
covers, illustrations and frontispieces.
(HNPD, 1/3/00)
1886 Mar 6, The 1st US
alternating current power plant started in Great Barrington, MA.
(MC, 3/6/02)
1886 May 15, Poet Emily
Dickinson (b.1830) died in Amherst, Mass., where she had lived in
seclusion for the previous 24 years. In 2001 Alfred Habegger
authored her biography: "My Wars Are laid Away in Books." In 2008
Brenda Wineapple authored “White Heat: The Friendship of Emily
Dickinson & Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911). In 2010
Lyndall Gordon authored “Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and
her Family Feuds,” in which he presents evidence that Dickinson
suffered from congenital epilepsy.
(AP, 5/15/97)(HN, 5/15/01)(WSJ, 11/2/01,
p.W11)(Econ, 7/26/08, p.96)
1887 Sep 16, Nadia Boulanger
(d.1979), conductor, was born in Paris, France. She became the 1st
woman to conduct Boston Symphony (1939).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadia_Boulanger)(www.glbtq.com/arts/boulanger_n.html)
1888 Mar 6, Louisa May Alcott
(b.1832) died in Boston just hours after the burial of her father.
Her novels included "Little Women" (1868). In 1998 "Little Women"
premiered in Houston as an opera by Mark Adomo. In 2010 Susan
Cheever authored “Louisa May Alcott: A Personal Biography.”
(WSJ, 8/29/01, p.A12)(SSFC, 12/5/10, p.F3)
1888 Sep 6, Joseph P. Kennedy,
Boston Mass, diplomat, father of JFK, RFK & Teddy, was born.
(MC, 9/6/01)
1888 In Massachusetts the
Searles Castle was built in Great Barrington on commission by Mary
Hopkins (d.1891), the widow of railroad tycoon Mark Hopkins. Its
seven turrets and blue dolomite exterior created a
60,000-square-foot fortress at the end of Main Street. Mary Hopkins
hired noted interior decorator Edward Searles for the project, and
the two married a year before it was finished. In 2007 it sold for
$15 million.
(AP, 5/19/07)
1888 Massachusetts introduced
the secret ballot. Most US states had moved to secret ballots soon
after the presidential election of 1884.
(http://tinyurl.com/6fxlatg)
1889 Jun 28, Maria Mitchell
(b.1818), American astronomer, died in Lynn, Mass.
(ON, 2/07, p.10)
1890 Mar 18, The 1st US state
naval militia was organized in Massachusetts.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1891 Nov 10, The 1st Woman's
Christian Temperance Union meeting was held in Boston.
(MC, 11/10/01)
1891 The Canadian, Dr. James B.
Naismith, sports figure, inventor, teacher, invented the game of
basketball at the YMCA in Springfield, Mass. A janitor provided
peach baskets instead of the requested boxes.
(Hem, Dec. 94, p.126)(DT internet 11/28/97)
1891 Pierre Lallemont (47),
French mechanic, died in Boston. In 1866 he was granted a US
patented for his velocipede, a rotary crank bicycle.
(ON, 2/10, p.3)
1892 Jan 15, The rules of
basketball were published for the first time, in Springfield, Mass.,
where the game originated.
(AP, 1/15/00)
1892 Aug 4, Lizzie Borden’s
father and stepmother, Andrew and Abby Durfee Gray Borden, were
killed with an ax in Fall River, Mass. Based on strong
circumstantial evidence, Sunday school teacher Lizzie (32), Andrew
Borden's daughter from a previous marriage, was charged and
acquitted of the murders by an all-male jury. Later an opera titled
"Lizzie Borden" by Jack Beeson drew a portrait of family pathology
that depicted her as guilty of the crime.
(WSJ,3/13/95, p.A-13)(AP, 8/4/97)(SFC, 9/17/97,
p.A16)(HNPD, 8/4/98)
1892 Sep 8, An early version of
"The Pledge of Allegiance" appeared in "The Youth’s Companion,"
published in Boston and edited by Francis Bellamy, a Christian
socialist, and cousin of writer Edward Bellamy. James Upham
(d.1906), Bellamy’s supervisor, collaborated on the pledge. Frank E.
Bellamy (1876-1915) of Cherryvale High School in Kansas had authored
a 500-word patriotic essay which included the words of the Pledge of
Allegiance and instructions on saluting the American Flag. His
teacher entered the "Salute to the Flag" in a contest sponsored by
the popular scholastic publication The Youth's Companion. His essay
won first place in this national school contest. [see Oct 12]
(AP, 9/8/97)(SSFC, 6/30/02,
p.A3)(www.leatherockhotel.com/FrankBellamy.htm)(WSJ, 7/6/04, p.A23)
1893 Jun 20, A jury in New
Bedford, Mass., found Lizzie Borden innocent of the ax murders of
her father and stepmother.
(AP, 6/20/97)
1893 Aug 12, Howard Smith,
actor (Harvey Griffin-Hazel), was born in Attleboro, Mass.
(SC, 8/12/02)
1893 Sep 22, Bicycle makers
Charles and Frank Duryea showed off the first American automobile
produced for sale to the public by taking it on a maiden run through
the streets of Springfield, Massachusetts.
(HN, 9/22/00)
1893 The first automobile
license plates were issued this year in Paris, France. The
first American city to require drivers to be licensed and register
their vehicle was Boston a few years later.
(HNQ, 7/18/00)
1893-1924 Henry Cabot Lodge was the Republican
senator from Massachusetts.
(SFC, 5/7/96, p.A-6)
1894 May 14, Fire in Boston
bleachers spread to 170 adjoining buildings.
(MC, 5/14/02)
1894 Jul 25, Walter Brennan,
actress (Real McCoys, At Gun Point), was born in Swampscott, Mass.
(SC, 7/25/02)
1894 Dec 17, Arthur Fiedler,
conductor (Boston Pops), was born in Boston, Mass.
(MC, 12/17/01)
1895 Feb 9, Volleyball was
invented by W.G. Morgan in Massachusetts. A game called "mintonette"
was created by William George Morgan, physical director at the YMCA
in Holyoke, Mass., to accommodate players who thought basketball was
too strenuous. The objective was to hit a basketball over a rope. It
was the predecessor to volleyball.
(SFC,11/15/97, p.C4)(HNQ, 11/26/99)(MC, 2/9/02)
1895 Apr 24, Joshua Slocum
(1844-1909), a Canadian-American sailor, began a voyage around the
world from Boston in a 37-foot rebuilt fishing boat called the
Spray. He ended on Jun 27, 1898, at Newport, Rhode Island. His
record was not beaten until 1938. In 1899 Slocum authored "Sailing
Alone Around the World."
(www.millicentlibrary.org/slocum.htm)(WSJ,
3/9/00, p.A27)(WSJ, 6/21/08, p.W8)
1895 Jul 4, The words to
"America the Beautiful" appeared for the first time in "The
Congregationalist", a Boston magazine; the author was Katherine Lee
Bates (1819-1910), a Wellesley professor, who penned it in 1893. It
has often been suggested that this song be adopted as the national
anthem of the US since it is easier to sing than the "The Star
Spangled Banner." In 1904 Clarence Barbour adapted it to the melody
of Samuel Ward’s “Materna” (1890). Bates’ final version was
completed in 1911. In 2001 Lynn Sherr authored "America the
Beautiful."
(WSJ, 9/28/01, p.W13)(SSFC, 10/21/01, Par
p.8)(AH, 10/04, p.26)
1895 George Henderson founded
Dorchester Pottery outside Boston. Charles A. Hill, his
brother-in-law, was the plant manager and decorator. It went out of
business in 1979.
(SFC, 6/17/98, Z1 p.3)(SFC, 12/26/07, p.G3)
1896 Oct 30, Ruth Gordon,
actress (Rosemary's Baby, Harold & Maude), was born in Mass.
(MC, 10/30/01)
1897 Apr 19, The first Boston
Marathon was run from Ashland, Mass., to Boston. Winner John J.
McDermott ran the course in 2 hours, 55 minutes and 10 seconds.
(AP, 4/19/97)
1897 Sep 1, The first section
of Boston’s subway system was opened. The Park St. Station in Boston
was the nation’s first subway station. The Boylston Street subway
opened in 1897.
(AP, 9/1/97)(BS, 5/3/98, p.5R)(HNQ, 5/17/99)
1898 Feb 8, John Ames Sherman
patented the 1st envelope folding & gumming machine in Mass.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1898 Nov 26, The SS Portland, a
280-foot side-wheeler, left Boston for Cape Cod. A major storm arose
that killed over 400 people in the next 36 hours [see Nov 27].
(AH, 6/02,
p.53)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_Gale)
1898 Nov 27, The SS Portland,
under Capt. Hollis H. Blanchard, sank overnight in the Portland Gale
off New England and all 192 people aboard were killed. In 2002 John
Rousmaniere authored “After the Storm: True Stories of Disaster and
Recovery at Sea.”
(AH, 6/02,
p.55)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_Gale)
1898 Frederick Law Olmsted
(d.1903), the architect of Central Park in NYC, was confined to the
McLean Asylum in Waverly, Mass., for dementia. He had earlier
designed the grounds for the asylum.
(WSJ, 5/21/99, p.W5)
1899 May 24, The 1st US auto
repair shop opened in Boston.
(MC, 5/24/02)
1899 Dec 12, George F. Bryant
of Boston patented the wooden golf tee.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1899 In Cambridge the Semitic
Museum of Harvard Univ. was founded.
(AM, 7/97, p.68)
1900 Aug 17, Quincy Howe,
newscaster (CBS Weekend News), was born in Boston, Mass.
(SC, 8/17/02)
1900 Aug 23, Booker T.
Washington formed the National Negro Business League in Boston,
Massachusetts.
(HN, 8/23/98)
1900 Oct 15, Boston’s Symphony
Hall, one of the world's most highly regarded concert halls, was
inaugurated. It was the 1st to be built in known conformity with
acoustical laws described by Harvard physicist Wallace Sabine.
(www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/BSO.htm)(WSJ, 4/24/02,
p.D9)
1900 Nov 18, Dr. Howard
Thurman, theologian and first African American to hold a full time
position at Boston University, was born.
(HN, 11/18/98)
1901 Jan 28, Byron Bancroft
Johnson announced that the American League would play the 1901
baseball season as a major league and would not renew its membership
in the National Agreement. The new league would include Baltimore
and Washington, DC, recently abandoned by the National League. The
league would also invade 4 cities where National League teams
existed: Boston, Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia. The 8 charter
teams included: the Baltimore Orioles, Boston Americans, Chicago
White Stockings, Cleveland Blues, Detroit Tigers, Milwaukee Brewers,
Philadelphia Athletics, and Washington Senators.
(ON, 6/09,
p.11)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_League)
1901 Apr 5, Chester Bowles,
ambassador, writer (Conscience of a Liberal), was born in Mass.
(MC, 4/5/02)
1901 Sep 3, Miss Ellen Stone, a
Protestant missionary from Haverhill, Mass., was kidnapped in
Bulgaria by a Macedonian revolutionary gang, who demanded $110,000
in gold. Katerina Tsilka, her pregnant Bulgarian companion, was also
kidnapped and gave birth during her captivity to a baby girl. In
2003 Teresa Carpenter authored "The Miss Stone Affair: America's
First Modern Hostage Crisis."
(SSFC, 6/22/03, p.M4)
1901 Edith Wharton purchased
113 acres in Lenox, Mass., and built The Mount. The Berkshire Hills
house, modeled on a 17th century design by Christopher Wren, was her
first laboratory for experiments in architecture and interior
design.
(WSJ, 9/13/99, p.A42)(WSJ, 9/13/02, p.W11)
1901 The Indian Motorcycle
Manufacturing Co. of Springfield, Mass., produced the first
commercially marketed gasoline-powered bike in the US. The last
Indian motorcycle was made in 1953. A 2nd generation of the company
started up in 1998 but folded in 2002.
(WSJ, 4/16/99, p.W14)(SFC, 7/27/04, p.D1)
1902 Jan 1, The L Street
Brownies swim club began diving into South Boston’s Carson Beach in
what became an annual affair.
(SFC, 1/2/01, p.A3)
1902 Aug 23, Fanny Farmer,
among the first to emphasize the relationship of diet to health,
opened her School of Cookery in Boston.
(HN, 8/23/00)
1902 Sep 3, US Secret Service
agent William Craig was killed when a speeding trolley car rammed
into the open-air horse carriage carrying Pres. Theodore Roosevelt
in Pittsfield, Mass.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Craig_%28Secret_Service%29)
1903 Oct 13, Boston defeated
Pittsburgh in baseball’s first World Series. In 2003 Roger I. Abrams
authored "The First World Series and the Baseball Fanatics of 1903;"
Louis P. Masur authored "Autumn Glory: Baseball's First World
Series;" and Bob Ryan authored "When Boston Won the World Series."
(WSJ, 7/8/96, p.A8)(HN, 10/13/98)(WSJ, 3/28/03,
p.W9)(SSFC, 6/8/03, p.M6)
1903-1906 The United Shoe Manufacturing Plant was
built. It was pioneering reinforced concrete structure in Beverly,
Mass., devised by the engineer Ernest L. Ransome. He patented a way
to embed twisted square iron rods in concrete.
(WSJ, 10/2/97, p.A16)
1904 Jan 10, Ray Bolger, actor,
dancer (Scarecrow-Wizard of Oz), was born in Dorchester, Mass.
(MC, 1/10/02)
1904 Mar 2, Theodor Seuss
Geisel [Dr. Seuss] was born in Springfield, Mass. He was the
Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Cat in the Hat," "Green Eggs
and Ham," "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" and other children's
books.
(HC, Internet, 2/3/98)(HN, 3/2/99)(SSFC, 5/26/02,
Par p.8)
1904 May 5, Denton True "Cy"
Young of the Boston Red Sox pitched the first perfect game against
the Philadelphia Athletics in Boston.
(HFA, ‘96, p.30)(SFC, 9/27/99, p.A23)
1904 Jul 18, Hiram Washington
Hayden (b.1820), American inventor, died in Massachusetts. In 1851
he had patented a design for brass kettles.
(SFC, 6/11/08, p.G3)(http://tinyurl.com/5trd82)
1904 Nov 4, Harvard Stadium
became the 1st stadium built specifically for football.
(MC, 11/4/01)
1904 Roger Babson (1875-1967),
investment advisor, founded his “Office of Roger W. Babson.” Babson
was later famed for predicting “The Great Wall Street Crash” in 1929
and for prior positioning of his clients’ assets. On September 5,
1929, he gave a speech saying, "Sooner or later a crash is coming,
and it may be terrific." Later that day the stock market declined by
about 3%. This became known as the "Babson Break". The Wall Street
Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression soon followed.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Babson)(Econ,
9/11/10, p.88)(www.babson.com/)
1904 The Newburyport Silver Co.
was founded in Newburyport, Mass. In 1905 it move to Keene, New
Hampshire. The operation closed in 1914.
(SFC, 7/26/06, p.G2)
1905 Feb 16, 1st US Esperanto
club was organized in Boston. Dr. Lazarus Ludwig Zamenhof
(1859-1917), a Polish ophthalmologist, invented the artificial
language in 1885.
(MC, 2/16/02)(SFCM, 6/8/03, p.18)
1906 Dec 24, Canadian physicist
Reginald A. Fessenden became the first person to broadcast a music
program over radio, from Brant Rock, Mass.
(AP, 12/24/97)
1907 Nov 28, Future movie
producer Louis B. Mayer opened his first movie theater, in
Haverhill, Mass.
(AP, 11/28/07)
1907 Whiting & Davis Co. of
Plainville, Mass., established in 1896, developed a chain mail mesh
machine about this time and became the world’s largest manufacturer
of mesh products.
(SFC, 7/11/07,
p.G4)(http://bagladyemporium.com/BLU/index.php?n=Main.WhitingDavisCo)
1908 Apr 12, Fire devastated
the city of Chelsea, Massachusetts.
(AP, 4/12/08)
1908 Jun 29, American composer
Leroy Anderson (d.1975), known for light orchestral pieces such as
"The Typewriter" and "The Syncopated Clock," was born in Cambridge,
Mass.
(AP,
6/29/08)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leroy_Anderson)
1908 Jul 2,
Thurgood Marshall (d.1993), first African-American US Supreme Court
Justice, was born in Baltimore. He served on the US Supreme Court
from 1967-1991. As a civil rights lawyer in the 1950s he maintained
a confidential relationship with the FBI.
(SFC, 12/3/96, p.A3)(HN, 7/2/98)(AP, 7/2/08)
1908 Mary Baker Eddy founded
the Christian Science Monitor in Boston.
(SFC, 7/14/99, p.A17)
1908 The Harvard Graduate
School of Business Administration was established (the world's first
MBA program) with a faculty of 15, 33 regular students, and 47
special students.
(Econ, 6/6/09,
p.68)(www.hbs.edu/about/history.html)
1909 Apr 1, Eddie Duchin,
society pianist, bandleader (Eddie Duchin Orch), was born in Mass.
(MC, 4/1/02)
1909 Sigmund Freud‘s only visit
to the United States was to accept an honorary degree at Clark
University in 1909. G. Stanley Hall, the president of the university
in Worcester, Massachusetts, had invited Freud to "[set] forth your
own views" in a series of lectures at a conference honoring Clark‘s
20th anniversary. Following a visit to New York City, Freud
delivered five lectures at Clark, all of them in German. He then
went on to visit Niagara Falls and the Adirondacks before returning
to Europe.
(HNQ, 6/4/00)
1910 Oct 1, Mass. 1st state
fair was the Berkshire Cattle Fair in Pittsfield.
(MC, 10/1/01)
1910 The Loeb Classical Library
was founded.
(SFEC, 8/20/00, p.B12)
1911 Mar 8, Alan Hovhaness,
composer (Lousadzak, Ukiyo), was born in Somerville, Mass.
(MC, 3/8/02)
1911 Freud and Jung visited NYC
as a prelude to their lectures at Clark Univ. [see 1909]
(SFEC, 4/4/99, BR p.3)
1911 Rev. William Wolcott
willed paintings by Monet, Pissarro and 14 other artists to the
Daniel White Fund to "create and gratify a public taste for fine
art, particularly among the people of Lawrence." He requested that
the paintings be housed in a museum until a gallery was built.
(WSJ, 9/9/99, p.A25)
1912 Jan 1, A Massachusetts law
reducing the work-week from fifty-six to fifty-four hours for women
and children, went into effect. Workers struck spontaneously on Jan
12 when the mill owners reduced wages to coincide with the reduced
work-week.
(www.fortunecity.com/tinpan/parton/2/johngold.html)
1912 Jan 12, In Lawrence,
Mass., over 20,000 textile factory workers went on strike to protest
wage cuts.
(www.socialistworld.net/eng/2002/07/12history.html)
1912 Mar 24, The “Bread and
Roses” textile workers strike in Lawrence, Mass., ended. Mill
owners, fearing that government intervention and investigation would
jeopardize the high tariff on woolens, had finally agreed to
bargain. Offers of pay increases from five to twenty-five percent,
time-and-a-quarter for overtime, and no discrimination against
strikers led to the end of the strike.
(www.fortunecity.com/tinpan/parton/2/johngold.html)
1912 Jun 4, Massachusetts
passed the 1st US minimum wage law.
(MC, 6/4/02)
1912 Jul 1, Drama critic
Harriet Quimby (b.1875) took a passenger up in her new
Blériot monoplane from Boston to fly over Dorchester Bay at
the Harvard-Boston Aviation Meet. As she descended for landing, the
plane went into a dive and, without seat belts, she and her
passenger were thrown out into the shallow water of the bay, where
they struck the muddy bottom and were crushed to death. Quimby was
the first American to receive a pilot's license (1911) and was the
first woman to solo across the English Channel (1912). Her interest
in flight was piqued at an aviation meet in 1910.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Quimby)(HNPD, 7/31/98)(ON,
1/00, p.11)
1912 Fenway Stadium, home of
the Boston Red sox, opened.
(SFEC, 8/28/98, p.T4)
1912-1913 Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969), later
revolutionary head of Vietnam, lived in the US and worked as a baker
at the Parker House Hotel in Boston.
(SSFC, 6/15/08, p.E5)
1913 A Massachusetts state law
prohibited non-residents from getting married in the state if their
union would not be legal in their home state. The law was repealed
in 2008.
(SFC, 5/19/04, p.A3)(SFC, 8/1/08, p.A4)
1914 Jul 10, The Boston Red Sox
purchased Babe Ruth (19) from the Baltimore Orioles for 30 pieces of
gold.
(Hem., 4/97, p.105)(MC, 7/10/02)
1914 Jul 11, Babe Ruth debuted
in the major leagues with the Boston Red Sox. He earned $2,900 in
his rookie season.
(MC, 7/11/02)
1915 Jan 3, Jack Levine,
artist, was born in Boston, Mass. His social realist and
expressionist art included political and satirical undertones.
(SFC, 7/24/04, p.E1)
1915 May 6, Babe Ruth made his
pitching debut with the Red Sox hit his 1st HR, but lost to Yanks
4-3 in 15 innings.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1916 Nov, Ray Conniff (d.2002),
bandleader and composer, was born in Attleboro, Mass.
(SFC, 10/19/02, p.A21)
1917 May 29, John Fitzgerald
Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States (1961-1963), was
born at 83 Beals St. in Brookline, Mass. He was assassinated in his
first term.
(AP, 5/29/97)(HN, 5/29/99)(SSFC, 9/8/02, p.C12)
1917 Sep 2, Cleveland Amory,
conservationist and TV reviewer (TV Guide), was born in Nahant,
Mass.
(MC, 9/2/01)
1917 Edith Wharton authored the
novel "Summer." It was the story of a woman's sexual awakening. In
1999 it premiered as an opera by the Berkshire Opera Company.
(WSJ, 9/13/99, p.A42)
1917 In Ashland, Mass., a plant
run by various textile companies began operations. Nyanza Inc.
operated it as a dye manufacturing plant from 1965 until the company
went bankrupt in 1978. during this period Nyanza released
manufacturing waste containing such substances as mercury, chromium,
lead and cadmium into unlined lagoons and nearby streams. The site
was added to the federal Superfund list in 1983. In 2006 a 7-year
study confirmed that children who swam or waded in the water near
the now-closed dye plant ran an increased risk of cancer.
(AP, 5/11/06)
1918 May 9, Mike Wallace,
newscaster (Biography, 60 Minutes), was born in Brookline, Mass.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1918 Jul 21, The residents and
coastguardsmen of Orleans, Massachusetts, were amazed to see the
German U-boat, U-156, firing at an American tug and four barges just
off shore.
(HNQ, 2/1/02)
1918 Aug 25, Leonard Bernstein,
conductor and composer who initiated the television series "Young
People's Concerts," was born in Lawrence, MA.
(WUD, 1994, p.141)(HN, 8/25/98)(MC, 8/25/02)
1918 Oct 12, The 1st use of
iron lung was at Boston's Children Hospital.
(MC, 10/12/01)
1919 Jan 2, Calvin Coolidge
(1872-1933) was inaugurated as governor of Massachusetts.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_Coolidge)
1919 Jan 15, In Boston an
explosion opened a tank of molasses and the cylindrical sides
toppled outward knocking down 10 nearby buildings. 2 million gallons
of molasses oozed onto the streets and killed 21 people. Another 50
were injured [see 1872].
(www.snopes.com/horrors/freakish/molasses.asp)
1919 May 14, The first
transatlantic flight by a U.S. Navy seaplane began at Chatham Naval
Air Station in Mass. [see May 27]
(WSJ, 9/10/99, p.W6)
1919 May 9, James Reese Europe
(b.1881), jazz band leader and founder of the NYC Clef Club, died
after he was stabbed during the intermission of a performance at
Mechanic’s Hall in Boston. Europe led the Clef Club Symphony
Orchestra before WW I and during the war led a US Army band in the
all-black 369th Infantry Regiment, which was attached to the French
Army. In 1995 Reid Badger authored “A Life in Ragtime,” a biography
of Europe.
(WSJ, 11/10/05,
p.D7)(www.jass.com/Others/europe.html)
1919 May 27, The first
transatlantic flight was completed by a U.S. Navy seaplane. U.S.
Navy Curtiss flying boat NC-4, piloted by Lt. Cmdr. Albert C. Read,
arrived safely in Lisbon, Portugal, to become the first aircraft to
complete a transatlantic flight. Three aircraft, designated NC-1,
NC-3 and NC-4--called "Nancy" boats--had taken off from New York's
Rockaway Naval Air Station [Chatham Naval Air Station in Mass.] for
Lisbon on May 8, with intermediate stops planned for Newfoundland
and the Azores. Only NC-4 completed the 3,925-mile transatlantic
flight. Heavy rain and fog forced NC-1 down at sea, where it sank on
May 17. NC-3, came down in rough seas and taxied 200 miles into the
harbor at Horta in the Azores.
(HN, 5/27/98)(HNPD, 5/27/99)(WSJ, 9/10/99, p.W6)
1919 Sep 9, Most of Boston's
1,500-member police force went on strike. The city’s police
commissioner fired the strikers and Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933), who
was running for governor, came out in support of the firings.
(AP, 9/9/99)(AH, 6/07,
p.67)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_Coolidge)
1919 Carl Linder won the Boston
Marathon. He was rejected for military service due to flat feet.
(SFEC, 7/9/00, Z1 p.2)
1919 Charles Ponzi of Boston
hatched a scheme that defrauded thousands of investors in a
postal-coupon scam in the 1920s. He bilked investors in a scheme of
high return similar to the "520% Miller" con of 1899. He was
convicted and spent 13 years in prison and was deported to Italy in
1934.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R42)(WSJ, 7/23/99, p.A14)(WSJ,
7/10/02, p.A8)(SSFC, 7/14/02, p.G2)
1920 Jan 3, The Red Sox sold
Babe Ruth to the Yankees for $100,000, twice the amount of any
previous player transaction. The deal also included a $300,000 loan
secured by a mortgage on Fenway Park, a contractual clause that made
the Yankees owners the Red Sox's landlords.
(http://espn.go.com/sportscentury/features/00242487.html)
1920 Jan 8, Massachusetts’ Gov.
Calvin Coolidge stated: "There is a limit to the taxing power of the
state beyond which increased rates produce decreased revenues."
(www.calvin-coolidge.org/html/address_to_the_general_court_b.html)
1920 Apr 15, A paymaster and
his guard at a shoe factory in Braintree, Massachusetts, were killed
in a robbery. Italian immigrants Sacco and Vanzetti were accused of
the crime.
(HN, 8/23/98)(WSJ, 8/18/07, p.P8)
1920 Jun 12, Republicans in
Chicago nominated Warren G. Harding for president and Calvin
Coolidge, governor of Massachusetts, for vice president.
(HN, 6/12/98)(WSJ, 6/16/98, p.A17)
1920 Aug 17, Georgia Gibbs,
singer (Ballin the Jack, Kiss of Fire), was born in Worcester, Mass.
(SC, 8/17/02)
1920 Nov 3, "Emperor Jones"
opened at Provincetown Theater.
(MC, 11/3/01)
1920 Dec 6, In Boston, Mass., a
dog with spectacles was shown at the annual fair of the Animal
Rescue League.
(http://tinyurl.com/5hbur6)
1920 Harvard University, under
president A. Lawrence Lowell (1909-1933), conducted a clandestine
court and “tried” 30 male students and staff members for the “crime
of homosexuality.” As a result 2 men committed suicide and the lives
of most of the others were shattered. In 2005 William Wright
authored “Harvard’s Secret Court: The Savage 1920 Purge of Campus
Homosexuals.”
(SSFC, 11/13/05, p.M5)
1920 The Dalton Plan, a
secondary education technique based on individual learning, was
developed in Massachusetts. The plan grew out of the reaction of
some progressive educators to the fact that students learned at
different speeds. The Dalton Plan divided each subject in the
curriculum into monthly assignments and the students had to finish
one assignment before starting another. They were given
freedom in planning their work schedules and were encouraged to work
in groups. Its popularity in the United States waned, but it gained
influence in England and France.
(HNQ, 9/8/00)
1920 Charles Ponzi (37), an
immigrant from Italy, began selling notes in Boston with 50%
interest payments payable in 45 days. In 1921 he pleaded guilty to
mail fraud. He was released from prison in 1924 and went to Florida
for the land boom offering investors profits of 200%. He again spent
time in jail and was eventually deported and died broke. In 2005
Michael Zuckoff authored “Ponzi’s Scheme.”
(WSJ, 3/4/05, p.W6)
1921
Sep 19, WBZ in Springfield, Mass., made its first radio broadcast.
It operated under one of the first three "commercial licenses" for
broadcasting in the new 360 meter frequency.
(www.hammondmuseumofradio.org/wbz.html)
1922 Apr 1, William Manchester,
historian (Death of a President), was born in Attleboro, Mass.
(MC, 4/1/02)
1924 Sep 24, Boston,
Massachusetts, opened its airport.
(MC, 9/24/01)
1924 Three Boston securities
executives pooled their money together to create Massachusetts
Investors Trust, the first modern US mutual fund. A Dutch merchant
had cobbled together the earliest mutual-style fund, Eendragt Maakt
Magt (Unity creates Strength) in 1774.
(Econ, 4/21/07,
p.83)(http://mutualfunds.about.com/cs/history/a/fund_history.htm)(WSJ,
1/3/07, p.R6)
1925 Feb 8, Jack Lemmon, actor
(Days of Wine & Roses, Missing), was born in Boston, Mass.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1925 Jul 4, 44 died when
Dreyfus Hotel in Boston collapsed.
(Maggio, 98)
1925 Nov 20, Robert F. Kennedy,
U.S. Attorney General and Senator, was born in Brookline, Mass.
While at Harvard during World War II, Robert F. Kennedy joined the
U.S. Naval Reserve and served as a seaman on the destroyer Joseph P.
Kennedy, Jr. The ship was named for Kennedy’s eldest brother, who
had been killed in battle during World War II. Kennedy died from an
assassin’s bullet June 6, 1968, in Los Angeles after proclaiming
victory in California’s Democratic Party primary election.
(AP, 11/20/97)(HNQ, 7/14/98)(HN, 11/20/98)
1926 Mar 16, Rocket science
pioneer Robert H. Goddard successfully tested the first
liquid-fueled rocket, in Auburn, Mass. It went 184' (56 meters).
(HN, 3/16/98)(AP, 3/15/07)
1926 Johnny Miles (d.2003 at
97) of Canada won the Boston Marathon.
(BS, 6/26/03, 7A)
1927 May 18, The Ritz Hotel
opened in Boston.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1927 Aug 6, A Massachusetts
high court heard the final plea from Sacco and Vanzetti, two
Italians convicted of murder.
(HN, 8/6/98)
1927 Aug 23, Italian-born
anarchist immigrants Nicola Sacco (right) and Bartolomeo Vanzetti,
convicted of murder in 1921, were executed in Boston in spite of
worldwide protests. On April 15, 1920, a paymaster and his guard at
a shoe factory in Braintree, Massachusetts, were killed in a
robbery. In the national climate of suspicion of anarchists,
communists and foreigners in general, Sacco and Vanzetti, two
admitted radicals, were arrested for the crime and convicted on
flimsy circumstantial evidence in a trial presided over by the
openly prejudiced Judge Webster Thayer. For six years, the two
gained support as they attempted to obtain a new trial, but their
request was denied even after a convicted killer confessed to the
1920 murders. In April 1927, Judge Thayer sentenced Sacco and
Vanzetti to die in the electric chair. In 1977 Sacco and Vanzetti
were vindicated when Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis
established a memorial in the victims’ honor. In 2007 Bruce Watson
authored “Sacco & Vanzetti.”
(TMC, 1994, p.1927)(AP, 8/23/97)(HNPD,
8/23/98)(HN, 8/23/98)(WSJ, 8/18/07, p.P8)
1928 Jan 2, Vaughn Beals, later
CEO of Harley Davidson motorcycle, was born in Cambridge, Mass.
(www.definition-of.net/who-is-Vaughn%2BBeals)
1928 Jun 3, Commander Amelia
Earhart departed with pilot Bill Stultz from Boston Harbor to
Halifax, Nova Scotia, and then to Trepassey, Newfoundland. From
there on June 17 they embarked on a trans-Atlantic flight from
Newfoundland to Wales.
(AP, 6/17/97)(HNQ, 3/8/02)(ON, 12/07, p.8)
1928 Nov 17, The Boston Garden
officially opened.
(MC, 11/17/01)
1929 Jul 4, Al Davis (d.2011),
NFL team owner, was born in Brocton, Mass. In 1982 he moved the
Oakland Raiders to Los Angeles. The team moved back to Oakland in
1995.
(SFC, 1/22/03, p.A10)(SSFC, 10/9/11, p.A18)
1929 Sep 16, Boston Mayor
Nichols banned the performance of Eugene O'Neill play "Strange
Interlude" on the grounds that it was obscene. The play had never
been banned anywhere, and many Bostonians wanted to see it, but the
mayor would not change his mind. The mayor of neighboring Quincy,
Mass., allowed the play to be performed there on September 30th, and
it played to sold-out crowds for a month. This was later among
events covered in the book “Censorship of the American Theatre in
the 20th Century” (2003).
(http://tinyurl.com/2ejfsl2)
1930 American industrialist
Charles R. Crane bought 18 brass bells from the Soviet government,
saving them from being melted down in Josef Stalin's purges that saw
thousands of monks executed and churches and monasteries destroyed
or turned into prisons, orphanages or animal barns. They hung for
decades in the towers at Lowell House and Harvard Business School's
Baker Library. In 2007 Harvard returned the largest of the bells,
the Everyday Bell, to the Danilovsky Monastery and planned to return
the rest in 2008.
(AP, 9/12/07)
1931 Mar 13, Rosalind Elias,
mezzo-soprano, was born in Lowell, Mass.
(MC, 3/13/02)
1931 Mar 26, Leonard Nimoy,
actor (Spock-Star Trek, Mission Impossible), was born in Boston, MA.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1931 Apr 6, Richard Alpert,
later known as the spiritual leader Ram Dass, was born in Boston.
(SFEC, 5/23/99, Z1 p.5)
1931 Jun 20, Olympia Dukakis,
actress (Moonstruck, Cemetery Club), was born in Lowell, Mass.
(MC, 6/20/02)
1932 Jul 18, The Matson luxury
liner "Lurline" was christened in Quincy, Mass. by Lurline M.
Roth, daughter of company founder Capt. William Mattson.
(Ind, 11/4/00,5A)
1932 Eugene O’Neill’s play,
"Strange Interlude," opened in Quincy. The crowds saved the
restaurant across the street owned by Howard Johnson.
(SFEC, 12/6/98, Z1p.10)
1933 Jan 5, The 30th president
(1923-1929) of the United States, Calvin Coolidge, died in
Northampton, Mass., at age 60. In 1998 Robert Sobel published his
biography: "Coolidge: An American Enigma." Robert Ferrell published
"The Presidency of Calvin Coolidge." In 2006 David Greenberg
authored “Calvin Coolidge.”
(AP, 1/5/98)(WSJ, 6/16/98, p.A17)(WSJ, 8/7/98,
p.W13)(WSJ, 12/12/06, p.D8)
1933 Jul, Rodolphe Agassiz,
recently acquitted of insider trading by the Mass. state supreme
court, died. The court ruled that his 1926 purchase of Cliff Mining
stock, based on a geologist’s estimates, was a perk.
(WSJ, 7/3/02, p.B1)
1933 Oct 30, Michael S.
Dukakis, (Gov-D-Mass) and presidential candidate (D-1988), was born.
(MC, 10/30/01)
1933-1953 James Conant ran Harvard Univ. He took
what was a regional, parochial and snobbish institution, resistant
to Jews and women, and turned it into a national, meritocratic
university.
(Econ, 2/25/06, p.38)
1934 Dec 27, The 1st youth US
hostel opened at Northfield, Mass.
(MC, 12/27/01)
1934 Hound & Horn,
originally subtitled "a Harvard Miscellany", folded. It was a
literary quarterly founded by Harvard undergrads Lincoln Kirstein
(1906-1996) and Varian Fry in 1927.
(WSJ, 2/17/07,
p.P18)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hound_&_Horn)
1935 May 25, Babe Ruth hit his
last three and 714th and final home run for the Boston Braves in a
game against the Pittsburgh Pirates.
(AP, 5/25/97)(SC, 5/25/02)
1936 May 12, Frank Stella,
painter, was born in Massachusetts.
(HN, 5/12/01)(SFC, 6/17/04, p.E5)
1938 Walter Gropius
(1883-1969), German architect and Bauhaus founder, built his modern
style Gropius House in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Gropius had fled
Germany in 1934.
(WSJ, 8/18/07, p.P14)
1938 Massachusetts inventor
Earl Silas Tupper left the Du Pont company in 1938 to form the
Tupper Plastics Company. The material called "Poly-T" used to create
Tupperware was developed from a black, putrid, rock-hard oil
refining waste product called polyethylene slag. He refined and
purified the slag into a higher quality plastic. He then turned his
attention to replacing the widely used glass and metal food
containers with his waterproof and airtight seal introduced in 1947.
(HNQ, 2/13/99)
1939 Mar 2, The Massachusetts
legislature voted to ratify the Bill of Rights, 147 years after the
first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution had gone into effect.
(AP, 3/2/98)
1939 Earl Tupper (d.1983), a
Massachusetts tree surgeon and inventor, founded Tupperware. In 1942
he introduced a polyethylene container with a fitted cap. The
containers took off in 1951 when he hired Brownie Wise (d.1992), a
secretary from Detroit, who developed a sales network based on patio
parties. Tupper forced Wise out in 1958 and sold the company to
Rexall Drugs. [see 1938]
(WSJ, 2/18/04, p.A9)
1941 Robert McCloskey (d.2003),
author and illustrator, wrote "Make Way for Ducklings." It was set
in Boston and became a children's classic.
(WSJ, 7/2/03, p.D8)
1942 Nov 28, 491 people died in
a fire that destroyed the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston. The
cause of the fire was never officially determined, though many
blamed a busboy who had survived the blaze.
(AP, 11/28/97)(DT internet 11/28/97)
1943 William Whyte (d.2000 at
86) authored "Street Corner Society," a study of Italian gangs in
Boston’s North End.
(SFC, 7/20/00, p.C2)
1946 Nov 5, John F. Kennedy
(D-Mass) was elected to House of Representatives.
(MC, 11/5/01)
1946 Nov 13, The 1st artificial
snow was produced from a natural cloud at Mt. Greylock, Mass.
(MC, 11/13/01)
1946 The Boston Red Sox lost
the World Series.
(SFC, 10/28/04, p.A7)
1946 Georges Doriot
(1899-1987), a French-born Harvard professor, took public his
Boston-based American Research & Development Corporation,
America’s first venture fund. In 1972 ARD was taken over by
Textron. In 2008 Spencer E. Ante authored “Creative Capital: Georges
Doriot and the Birth of Venture Capital.”
(WSJ, 5/21/08, p.A17)(Econ, 3/14/09, SR p.9)
1947 Feb 14, Donna Halper,
Boston-based historian, author, educator and radio consultant, was
born. Since 1984, Halper has been the advocate for an adult with
autism. She continues to do presentations on such topics as media
history, women’s history, and popular culture at museums, schools,
and historical societies.
(www.donnahalper.com/dlh.htm)
1947 Feb 15, John Adams,
composer (Nixon in China), was born in Worcester Mass.
(MC, 2/15/02)
1947 Jun 5, Secretary of State
George C. Marshall in a speech at Harvard Univ. called for a
European Recovery Program to be initiated by the European powers and
supported by American aid (Marshall Plan). The program was intended
to assist European nations, including former enemies, to rebuild
their economies. From 1947 to 1952 it helped Western Europe recover
by providing some $13 billion worth of technical and economic aid.
In 2007 Greg Behrman authored “The Most Noble Adventure: The
Marshall Plan and the Time When America Helped Save Europe.”
(SFEC, 5/25/97, p.A10)(AP, 6/5/97)(HN,
6/5/98)(Econ, 9/29/07, p.89)
1947 Joseph Lloyd "Wally"
Walcott (d.1998 at 101) opened Wally’s Paradise in Boston’s South
End neighborhood. He attracted jazz stars from New York to play
there.
(SFC, 3/24/98, p.B2)
1947 Congressman Tommy
D'Alesandro Jr. was elected mayor of Baltimore. He was the city's
first Italian-American and Catholic mayor and served for 12 years.
In 2002 his daughter Nancy Pelosi became the 1st woman to lead a
party in the US Congress after Democrats voted 177-29 in support of
the liberal from SF.
(http://tinyurl.com/u6bdk)(SFC, 11/15/02, p.A1)
1947 Massachusetts executed its
last inmate and functionally abolished capital punishment.
(WSJ, 4/8/06, p.P8)
1948 Sep 2, Christa McAuliffe,
the first civilian passenger on a space mission, was born in Boston,
Mass. During that 1986 mission, she and the six other crew members
on the space shuttle Challenger perished in an explosion shortly
after launch.
(HN, 9/2/98)
1948 In Boston, Mass., Bess. L.
Hawes (1921-2009) and Jacqueline Steiner co-wrote the political hit
“Charlie on the MTA.’’ The song became a big hit for the Kingston
Trio in 1959.
(http://tinyurl.com/ygtrqh8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.T.A.)
1948 William Rosenberg (d.2002
at 86) opened a doughnut shop called Open Kettle in Quincy. Mass. 2
years later the name was changed to Dunkin’ Donuts. In 1955 he began
selling franchises and helped create the Int’l. Franchise Assoc.
(SFC, 9/23/02, p.B5)
1948 The US government launched
a heart study in Framingham, Mass., amid an epidemic of heart
disease, to compile reams of health data on a group of people in
their 30s, 40s and 50s, and hope that over time links would emerge
between their lifestyles and heart health. Discoveries by the long
term study included: Cigarette smoking, high blood pressure and high
cholesterol and diabetes raise the risk of heart disease, and
physical exercise lowers the risk. In 2009 researchers reported that
the data showed that loneliness spreads very much like a
communicable disease.
(AP, 11/30/07)(Econ, 12/12/09, p.90)
1948 Richard Bolt and Leo
Beranek, professors at MIT, established a small acoustics consulting
firm and soon added a former student of Bolt’s, Robert Newman. In
1949 BBN won its first major consulting contract, designing the
acoustics for the UN General Assembly Hall. In 2008 Leo Beranek
authored “Riding the Waves: A Life in Sound, Science and Industry.”
(www.bbn.com/about/timeline/)(WSJ, 5/22/08,
p.A13)
1949 Oct 9, Harvard Law School
began admitting women.
(HN, 10/9/98)
1949 William Schwann (d.1998 at
85) began a record catalog in Cambridge, Mass., that grew to become
the Schwann Opus Catalog.
(SFC, 6/19/98, p.B6)
1950 Jan 17, In Boston 11 men
robbed the Brink's office of $1.2M cash & $1.5M securities. The
1978 film "The Brink’s Job" starred Peter Falk and Peter Boyle. It
was based on the nonfiction book "The Big Stick-Up at Brink’s" by
Noel Behn.
(SFC, 8/1/98,
p.A19)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Brinks_Robbery)
1950 Jan 29, Ann Jillian,
actress (Mr. Mom, Jennifer Slept Here), was born in Cambridge, Mass.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0422713/)
1950 The DeCordova Museum and
Sculpture Park opened on the former estate of Julian DeCordova, a
Boston entrepreneur and supporter of the arts.
(WSJ, 5/21/99, p.W2)
1951 The 8-inch Ginny dolls
were introduced by Vogue Dolls Inc. of Bedford, Mass.
(SFC,11/12/97, Z1 p.7)
1952 Feb 18, Two tanker ships
broke apart off Cape Cod. 14 men died in the wrecks, 9 of 41 on the
Pendleton and 5 of 43 on the Fort Mercer.
(SSFC, 2/1/09, p.B7)
1953 Mar 18, The Braves
baseball team announced that they were moving from Boston to
Milwaukee.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1953 Jun 7, The 1st color
network telecast in compatible color was in Boston, Mass.
(SC, 6/7/02)
1953 Jun 9, About 100 people
died when a tornado struck Worcester, Mass. The tornado from the
Midwest roared into Massachusetts. By the time it left, 94 people
were dead, and more than $58 million in property damage occurred. It
was the worst tornado in New England history.
(AP, 6/9/97)(http://tinyurl.com/yg8dhcd)
1953 Sep 12, Senator John
Fitzgerald Kennedy (36) of Massachusetts married Jacqueline Lee
Bouvier (24).
(AP, 9/12/03)
1953 Nov 11, The Polio virus
was identified and photographed for the first time in Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
(HN, 11/11/98)
1953-1971 Nathan Marsh Pusey (1907-2001), served
as president of Harvard Univ.
(SFC, 11/22/01, p.A29)
1954 Feb 26, 1st typesetting
machine (photo engraving) used at Quincy, MA.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1954 Jun 28, US Sen. John F.
Kennedy wrote a letter to Gunilla von Post, a Swedish woman he had
met on the French Riviera in August 1953, and suggested sailing with
her for 2 weeks around the Mediterranean. Kennedy was 36 when he met
Post (21). In 1997 Post authored a book, “Love, Jack,” that detailed
her long-distance affair with Kennedy. In 2010 an auction house put
11 letters and 3 telegrams of their correspondence up for sale.
(SFC, 2/17/10, p.A9)
1954 Jul 3, In Salem Mass.,
champion female athlete Mildred "Babe" Didrikson Zaharias
(1911-1956) won the US Women's Open. She had just come back from a
battle with cancer, yet won the event by 12 strokes.
(www.uswomensopen.com/2004/press/whatta-gal.html)
1954 Dec 23, Dr. Joseph Murray
led a team of surgeons at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston in
the 1st successful organ transplant. Ronald Herrick donated a kidney
to his twin brother, Richard. In 1990 Dr. Murray was warded a Nobel
Prize for his work.
(SFEC, 1/30/00, p.A14)(SFC, 12/3/01, p.A17)(SSFC,
12/19/04, Par p.7)
1955 Nov 28, Boston Red Sox
General Manager Joe Cronin announced the purchase of the SF Seals
baseball team for $150,000.
(SFC, 11/25/05, p.F2)
1955 Gov. Christian Herter sent
a National Guard tank to quell a Charlestown prison riot led by
Theodore "Teddy" Green (d.1998 at 82). Green’s daughter (17)
persuaded her father to surrender and ended the 85-hour standoff. He
was sent to Alcatraz after the riot. Green later bragged of robbing
20 banks and making 40 prison break attempts.
(SFC, 2/23/98, p.A21)
1955 Sen. John Kennedy began
seeing Dr. Janet Graham Travell for his back pain. Travell later
became the 1st woman to serve as White House physician.
(SFC, 11/22/04, p.A2)
1956 Feb 26, Writers Sylvia
Plath and Ted Hughes met at a party in Cambridge.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1956 Jul 25, The Italian liner
Andrea Doria collided with the Swedish passenger ship Stockholm off
the New England coast late at night and began sinking in 200 feet of
water 50 miles southeast of Nantucket Island, Mass. 51 people died
as a result of the impact. The Dorea was headed from Genoa, Italy,
to NY. The Andrea Doria sank eleven hours after the crash.
(WSJ, 5/30/97, p.A1)(SFC, 1/1/99, p.A16)(SFC,
7/30/99, p.D5)(AP, 7/25/07)
1957 Jun 13, The Mayflower 2, a
replica of the ship that brought the Pilgrims to America in 1620,
arrived at Plymouth, Mass., after a nearly two-month journey from
England.
(AP, 6/13/07)
1957 National Geographic
Magazine published a picture of flamingos that inspired Donald
Featherstone of Leominster, Mass., to start a business making
plastic models for yard ornaments. The plastic flamingo was designed
at Union Products in Mass. In 1958.
(SFEC, 11/24/96, zone 1 p.2)(SFC, 7/14/99, p.8)
1957 Sarah Caldwell (b.1924)
founded the Opera Company of Boston.
(WSJ, 6/16/04, p.D8)
1958-1960 The city of Boston evicted some 7,000
people from the West End and sold the land to a builder, who put up
luxury high-rise apartments.
(WSJ, 8/23/00, p.A1)
1959 The Central Artery freeway
was erected in Boston. It was scheduled to come down in 2004 the
completion of the "Big Dig" underground freeway.
(SFC, 12/20/02, p.J12)
1959 Allan Calhamer, a Harvard
undergrad, published Diplomacy, a war strategy board game about
pre-World War I Europe.
(WSJ, 7/2/10, p.W9)
1960 Jan 2, Sen. John F.
Kennedy of Massachusetts announced his candidacy for the Democratic
presidential nomination.
(AP, 1/2/98)
1960 Jun 27, Chlorophyll "A"
was synthesized at Cambridge, Mass.
(SC, 6/27/02)
1960 Oct 5, A Lockheed Electra
turbo-prop crashed in Boston Harbor and 62 people died. The plane
had flown into a flock of starlings.
(MC, 10/5/01)(SFC, 8/16/03, p.A21)
1960 Nov 8, Massachusetts Sen.
John F. Kennedy was elected 35th president by 118,550 popular votes.
He defeated Richard Nixon in the US pres. elections. Popular legend
later held that the political machine of Richard Daley in Chicago
provided the necessary votes for Kennedy to win Illinois (27
electoral votes) and the elections. The Electoral College result was
303 to 219.
(SFEC, 8/31/97, p.B5)(AP, 11/8/97)(SFEC, 1/18/98,
Par p.2)(HN, 11/6/98)
1960s Taj Mahal began
performing with his R&B band around Boston coffeehouses and
later earned a degree in animal husbandry.
(SFEC, 8/31/97, DB p.9)
1960s Edward Lorenz, MIT
meteorologist, popularized the notion of the butterfly effect: where
a small turbulence, such as a butterfly flapping its wings, can set
in motion atmospheric events that can climax in a hurricane.
(SFC, 8/15/03, p.A6)
1961 Jan 20, Francis Poulenc's
"Gloria," premiered in Boston.
(MC, 1/20/02)
1962 Apr 24, The Massachusetts
Institute of Technology achieved the first satellite relay of a
television signal, between Camp Parks, Ca., and Westford, Mass.
(AP, 4/24/02)
1962 Aug 14, Robbers held up a
U.S. mail truck in Plymouth, Mass., making off with more than $1.5
million.
(AP, 8/14/97)
1962 Nov 6, Edward M. Kennedy
(1932-2009) of Massachusetts was 1st elected as US Senator (D) to
fill the vacancy caused by the 1960 resignation of his brother, John
Fitzgerald Kennedy, for the term ending January 3, 1965. Pres.
Kennedy had persuaded the governor of Massachusetts to appoint his
college roommate, Benjamin A. Smith II, until Edward turned 30.
(http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=K000105)(Econ,
8/29/09, p.30)
1962 Herbert Gans authored "The
Urban Villagers," a study of the working-class in Boston’s West End.
(WSJ, 8/23/00, p.A6)
1962 Steve Russell at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology created "Spacewar!", one of
the earliest video games for a digital computer.
(AFP, 10/20/06)
1962-1964 The Boston Strangler killed 13 women
during this period. [see DeSalvo, 1967, 1973]
(SFC, 7/10/99, p.A3)
1963 Jan 29, Poet Robert Frost
(b.1874) died in Boston at age 88. In 1999 Jay Parini published
"Robert Frost: A Life." Lawrance Thompson authored a 3-volume
biography (1966-1976).
(AP, 1/29/98)(SFEC, 4/18/99, BR p.3)
1963 Mar 11, Bessie Goldberg
was murdered at her home in Belmont, a Boston suburb. Roy Smith, an
ex-convict who had been sent to clean the home, was convicted of the
murder and sentenced to life in prison. In 1976 Gov. Dukakis
commuted his sentence. Smith died of cancer 3 days after his parole.
In 2006 Sebastian Junger authored “A Death in Belmont” an account of
the case.
(WSJ, 4/8/06, p.P8)
1963 Jun 18, 3,000 blacks
boycotted Boston public school.
(MC, 6/18/02)
1963 Julia Child made her TV
debut as "The French Chef" on Boston's WGBH-TV. PBS picked up the
show a year later.
(SFEM, 8/10/97, p.23)
1963 Harvey R. Ball (d.2001 at
79), advertising executive, created the yellow smiley face (happy
face) for the Massachusetts based State Mutual Life Assurance
Company of America. He was paid $45 for the artwork and never
applied for a trademark or copyright. In 2006 Darrin M. McMahon
authored “Happiness: A History.”
(SFC, 4/17/01, p.A20)(Econ, 1/14/06, p.82)
1963 The Lestoil Co. of
Holyoke, Mass., began selling its liquid cleaner in special-edition
reproduction glass flasks, which resembled 19th century whiskey
flasks. The special edition ended in 1964.
(SFC, 5/28/08, p.G2)
1964 Jan, Mary Sullivan was
raped and strangled in her Boston apartment. In 2001 there was
evidence that she was not killed by Albert DeSalvo, the suspected
Boston Strangler.
(SFC, 12/7/01, p.A2)
1964 Jun 2, Rolling Stones made
their 1st US concert tour debut in Lynn, Mass.
(SC, 6/2/02)
1965 Mar 12, Edward "Teddy"
Deegan was found dead in an alley in Chelsea, Mass. A week later an
FBI memo named 6 men, including Vincent J. Flemmi and Joseph "The
Animal" Barboza, as the killers. Barboza became a star witness and
provided false testimony to convict 4 innocent men. The New England
Mafia shotgunned Barboza in SF in 1976. Over the next 3 decades FBI
informants in Boston murdered over 20 people.
(SSFC, 7/28/02, p.A5)(SFC, 11/21/03, p.A3)
1965 Nov 26, Arlo Guthrie (17)
was arrested in Stockbridge, Mass., for dumping some trash following
a Thanksgiving feast at a restaurant run by Alice Brock. He wrote a
song about the event that became a folk classic and was turned into
a movie in 1969.
(WSJ, 11/22/06, p.A1)
1965 Thomas Winship (d.2002 at
81) succeeded his father, Lawrence Winship, as editor of the Boston
Globe.
(SFC, 3/16/02, p.A22)
1966 Mar 21, Supreme Court
reversed Massachusetts ruling that Fanny Hill" is obscene.
(MC, 3/21/02)
1966 Nov 8, Republican Edward
Brooke of Massachusetts was the first African-American elected to
the Senate by popular vote in 85 years.
(AP, 11/8/97)(HN, 11/6/98)
1966 The Standells song “Dirty
Water,” an ode to Boston and its polluted waterways, reached No. 11
on the Billboard’s Top 40 chart. In 2006 the group filed a suit
against Anheuser-Busch for illegal use of the song in commercials.
(SFC, 6/12/06, p.D11)
1967 Jan 10, Edward W. Brooke,
R-Mass., the first black elected to the U.S. Senate by popular vote,
took his seat.
(AP, 1/10/98)
1967 Jan 18, Albert DeSalvo,
who claimed to be the "Boston Strangler," was convicted in
Cambridge, Mass., of armed robbery, assault and sex offenses.
Sentenced to life, DeSalvo was killed by a fellow inmate in 1973.
DeSalvo had confessed to being the Boston Strangler and killing 13
women. He was never convicted of murder. A portrait of him with
police interviews was made in 1996 for the TV show Biography. In
1999 DNA evidence was sought to confirm DeSalvo's claims.
(SFC, 6/6/96, E9)(AP, 1/18/98)(SFC, 7/10/99,
p.A4)
1967 May 28, Francis Chichester
arrived home at Plymouth from a round-the-world, one man sailboat
trip.
(MC, 5/28/02)
1967 Jun 2, Race riots took
place in the Roxbury section of Boston.
(http://ksgaccman.harvard.edu/hotc/DisplayPlace.asp?id=11607)
1967 The film “Titicut Follies”
was directed by Frederick Wiseman. It was banned by the
Massachusetts Supreme Court for its stark portrayal of inmate
conditions in Bridgewater, Mass.
(WSJ, 11/11/06, p.P2)
1967 The Boston Red Sox lost
the World Series.
(SFC, 10/28/04, p.A7)
1967 Arlo Guthrie recorded the
18.5 minute ballad "Alice’s Restaurant." It was about his arrest for
dumping garbage that had piled up at the former Episcopal Church
where Alice and Ray Brock lived in Great Barrington, Mass. Guthrie
bought the building in 1991 for $300,000 and set up a foundation to
promote understanding among religious traditions. "It’s a bring your
own god church."
(SFC, 1/5/02, p.A2)
1968 May 20, The US Supreme
Court (United States v. United Shoe Machinery Corp., 391 U.S. 244)
ruled for the breakup of United Shoe Machinery Company in Mass.
(http://supreme.justia.com/us/391/244/)(WSJ,
10/2/97, p.A16)
1968 Jun 14, Four of the Boston
Five were convicted of conspiracy in their organized draft protest.
Mitchell Goodman (1924-1997) organized the protest that included the
burning of draft cards. Dr. Benjamin Spock (1903-1998), American
pediatrician, was one of the defendants and the trial came to be
known as the "Spock trial." The convictions were later overturned.
(SFC, 2/7/97,
p.A28)(www.stg.brown.edu/projects/1968/reference/timeline.html)
1968 Jul 31, In Boston 4 men
were convicted for shooting Edward "Teddy" Deegan in a Chelsea,
Mass., alley in 1965. In 2007 a federal judge in Boston ordered the
government to pay a record nearly $102 million for the FBI's role in
the wrongful murder convictions of the 4 men. Two of the men
convicted, Louis Greco and Henry Tameleo, died behind bars. The
others, Peter Limone (73) and Joseph Salvati (74) spent three
decades in prison.
(www.justicedenied.org/issue/issue_27/fbi%27s_legacy_of_shame.html)
1969 Jan 22, In Massachusetts
Francis Sargent (1915-1998) became governor after John Volpe was
made transportation secretary in the Nixon administration.
(SFC, 10/24/98,
p.A22)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_W._Sargent)
1969 Mar 2, Phil Esposito of
the Boston Bruins became the 1st NHL Player to score 100 points in a
season.
(www.nhl.com/history/030269.html)
1969 Jul 18, A car driven by
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (1932-2009), D-Mass., plunged off a bridge on
Chappaquiddick Island near Martha's Vineyard. His passenger,
28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, died. Kennedy did not report the
accident until it was discovered 9 hours later.
(TMC, 1994, p.1969)(AP, 7/18/97)(Econ, 8/29/09,
p.30)
1969 Aug 17, Donald E. Wahlberg
Jr., rocker (New Kids-Hangin' Tough), was born in Boston.
(www.donniewahlberg.com/bio.htm)
1969 Oct 12, Nancy Ann
Kerrigan, figure skater, was born in Woburn, Mass. In 1994 she won
an Olympics silver medal.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0449872/bio)
1969 Nov 22, Jonathan Beckwith
and others of Harvard Univ. announced the isolation of a single gene
of E. coli.
(http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/extract/359/18/1970)
1969 In Boston the City Hall
Plaza was built. 1,246,343 bricks covered the 9 acres.
(WSJ, 1/22/00, p.A1)
1969 Smith & Wesson began a
school for training police and law enforcement officials from around
the world.
(WSJ, 9/12/97, p.A20)
1969 The Harvard faculty voted
to exile ROTC because of the Vietnam War.
(WSJ, 10/4/01, p.A1)
1969 The Leonard Silver
Manufacturing Company was started by Leonard Florence in Chelsea,
Massachusetts, to market silver plate holloware. Products were
manufactured by firms in India. The company was acquired by Towle
Silversmiths in 1978. At that time, the headquarters were moved to
Boston, Mass. The Leonard Silver line is now a part of International
Silver Company (Syrtech Corp.).
(www.livingvictorian.com/askrenipm/askreninov03.html)
1970 Apr 29, Uma Thurman,
actress, was born in Boston, Mass. Her films included “The
Adventures of Baron Munchausen” (1988) and “Pulp Fiction” (1994).
(http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000235/)
1970 Aug 1, The dance piece
"The Fugue," created by Twyla Tharp (b.1941), premiered at the Univ.
of Massachusetts in Amherst.
(WSJ, 10/17/96,
p.A20)(www.abt.org/education/archive/ballets/fugue.html)
1970 Nov, Rev. Robert Drinan
(1920-2007), a Jesuit priest, was elected US congressman from
Massachusetts. He later became the 1st member of Congress to call
for the impeachment of Pres. Nixon due to the administration’s
undeclared war in Cambodia.
(SFC, 1/30/07,
p.B5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Drinan)
1970s Antitrust laws forced the
breakup of the United Shoe Company.
(WSJ, 10/2/97, p.A16)
1971 Mar 21, Daniel Ellsberg
obtained a copy of the Pentagon Papers, commissioned by then-Defense
Secretary Robert McNamara, from his former pentagon colleagues and
showed it to Neil Sheehan, a young New York Times reporter, at
Cambridge, Massachusetts.
(SFC, 7/7/96, BR
p.6)(www.topsecretplay.org/index.php/content/timeline)
1971-1991 Derek Bok ran Harvard Univ. In 2006 he
returned as interim president following the resignation of Larry
Summers.
(Econ, 2/25/06, p.37)
1972 Apr 17, A handful of women
were first accepted as entrants to the Boston marathon.
(SFC, 3/10/00,
p.D8)(www.boston.com/marathon/history/1972.shtml)
1972 Jun 20, Joseph Yandle
drove the getaway car after his partner robbed a Mystic Bottled
Liquors store in Medford and killed manager Joseph Reppucci. Yandle
was sentenced to life in prison but was released after 23 years when
he reported that he was a Vietnam veteran addicted to heroin at the
time of the crime. In 1998 the story was found to be a hoax and
Yandle went back to prison.
(SFC, 8/27/98, p.A4)
1972 John Kerry lost a bid for
Congress and enrolled in Boston College Law School.
(SSFC, 8/29/04, p.J5)
1973 Nov 25, Albert DeSalvo,
Boston strangler, was stabbed to death in prison. DeSalvo, the
self-admitted Boston strangler, had been tried and convicted on
unrelated assaults. 13 women were killed in Boston between
1962-1964. DNA evidence was sought in 1999. Susan Kelly wrote a book
in 1995 on the Boston Strangler.
(SFC, 7/10/99,
p.A3)(www.us.imdb.com/name/nm1108915/)
1973 Gene Sharp (b.1928),
Boston based scholar, authored his 902-page “Politics of Nonviolent
Action.” Following a 1992 trip to Burma (Myanmar) he authored “From
Dictatorship to Democracy,” a 90-page work that offered a list of
198 methods of nonviolent action. His writings impacted political
action in numerous dictatorial regimes.
(WSJ, 9/13/08, p.A10)
1974 Sep 9, In Boston,
Massachusetts, a group called Restore Our Alienated Rights
(R.O.A.R.) held a rally at City Hall Plaza a few days before the
start of school. When Senator Ted Kennedy took the stage to speak in
favor of busing, the crowd reacted in anger. Protests and violence
continued for three years.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/mlk/maps/maps_pop.html)
1974 Sep 12, The start of
court-ordered busing to achieve racial integration in Boston's
public schools was marred by violence in South Boston. The Boston
desegregation plan had been drafted by Robert Dentler (1928-2008)
and Marvin Scott of Boston Univ.
(AP, 9/12/99)(SFC, 4/8/08, p.B5)
1974 Oct 4, Anne Sexton
(b.1928), American poet, committed suicide in Massachusetts. In 1991
Diane Middlebrook (1939-2007), authored “Anne Sexton: A Biography.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Sexton)(SSFC,
12/16/07, p.A1)
1974 Oct 15, National Guard
mobilized to restore order in Boston school busing.
(MC, 10/15/01)
1974 Michael Dukakis defeated
Francis Sargent for the governorship.
(SFC, 10/24/98, p.A22)
1975 Apr 21, Bill Rodgers won
the Boston Marathon, the 1st local winner in 30 years.
(WSJ, 9/30/02,
p.R3)(http://boston.com/marathon/history/1975.shtml)
1975 Sep 8, Boston's public
schools began their court-ordered citywide busing program amid
scattered incidents of violence.
(AP, 9/8/97)
1975 The Boston Globe under
Thomas Winship won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the busing
crises.
(SFC, 3/16/02, p.A22)
1975 The Boston Red Sox lost
the World Series.
(SFC, 10/28/04, p.A7)
1975 The USS Constitution (aka
Old Ironsides) was restored and reopened to the public in Boston
Harbor.
(SFEC, 7/13/97, Par p.14)
1975 Harvard voted to cut off
all university funding for ROTC because of the military policy on
gays.
(WSJ, 10/4/01, p.A1)
1975 The Board of Trustees of
Smith College selected Jill Ker Conway, an Australian resident of
Canada, as their 1st woman president. In 2001 Conway authored the
3rd volume of her autobiography "A Woman’s Education."
(SSFC, 11/11/01, p.M3)
1976 Dec 21, The
Liberian-registered tanker Argo Merchant ran aground near Nantucket
Island, spilling millions of gallons of oil into the North Atlantic.
(AP, 12/21/97)
1976 Massachusetts moved its
primary from late April to early March. New Hampshire reacted by
moving the due date to February and then to late January.
(SSFC, 1/25/04, p.D6)
1976 James Anthony Martin was
believed to have escaped to Canada after he shot and killed Edward
Paulsen. Canadian authorities later charged Martin with 31 crimes
over the next 24 years.
(SFC, 12/27/00, p.C18)
1977 Seiji Ozawa left the SF
Symphony to lead the Boston Symphony.
(SFEC, 8/10/97, p.B9)
1978 In Massachusetts Aveline
(d.2001 at 78) and Michio Kushi founded the Kushi Institute to teach
macrobiotics. Aveline later authored her autobiography "Aveline: The
Life and Dream of the Woman Behind Macrobiotics Today."
(SFC, 7/14/01, p.C2)
1978 Nicholas Mavroules
(d.2003) was elected as US Congressman from Massachusetts.
(SFC, 12/27/03, p.A18)
1978 Edwin Dickinson (b.1891),
American painter, died in Wellfleet, Mass. His work included "The
Cello Player" (1924-1926).
(SFC, 12/4/00, p.B1)
1979 Jul 10, Conductor Arthur
Fiedler, who had led the Boston Pops orchestra for a half-century,
died in Brookline, Mass., at age 84.
(AP, 7/10/99)
1979 Oct 1, Pope John Paul II
arrived in Boston for the start of a U.S. tour.
(AP, 10/1/99)
1979 Oct 20, The John F.
Kennedy Library was dedicated in Boston.
(AP, 10/20/99)
1979 Oct, Stephen Howard Fagan
(37) abducted his two daughters, aged 2 & 4, from his former
wife, Barbara Kurth. Fagan told his daughters that their mother had
died and raised them in Florida. He was arrested in 1998 for
kidnapping and brought back to Boston to answer charges.
(SFEC, 4/19/98, p.A17)
1979 In Boston Joseph P.
Kennedy launched the Citizen’s Energy Corp., a tax-exempt social
welfare program that later depended on for-profit subsidiaries. The
initial idea was to ease heating bills during the oil crises. The
group signed its 1st crude oil contract with Venezuela. By 2007 the
company had expanded to 16 states delivering los-cost oil to as many
as 400,000 households. In 1987 Kennedy was elected as a
Massachusetts Representative to Congress and served until 1999.
(WSJ, 3/25/98, p.A1,10)(SFC, 2/17/07, p.A3)
1980 Apr 21, At the Boston
Marathon, Rosie Ruiz was the first woman to cross the finish line;
but she was disqualified as a fraud when officials discovered she
had jumped into the race about a mile from the finish.
(AP, 4/21/00)
1980 Dec 11, Massachusetts Sec.
of State Michael Connolly banned the sale of Apple Computer stock
arguing that the $22 price per share was too high.
(SFC, 12/9/05, p.F6)
1980 Stephen Bernard (d.2009 at
61) and his wife Lynn founded his kettle-cooked Cape Cod Potato
Chips brand. The company was sold to Anheuser-Busch in 1985, but
they reacquired it when the brewer sold its Eagle Snacks division to
Lance Inc. in 1999.
(SFC, 3/13/09, p.B7)
1981 State Supreme Court cases
in Massachusetts and New Jersey ruled that husbands can be
prosecuted for raping their wives.
(NW, 6/30/03, p.44)
1981 Roger Wheeler, chairman of
Telex Corp. and owner of World Jai Alai, was shot execution style at
a Tulsa country club. In 2001 2 reputed Boston mobsters, James
Bulger and Stephen Flemmi, were charged. Jai Alai executive John B.
Callahan was murdered in Aug 1982 in Miami.
(SFC, 3/15/01, p.A8)
1982 John Kerry was elected
lieutenant governor of Mass.
(SSFC, 8/29/04, p.J5)
1983 Mar 6, In a case that drew
much notoriety, a woman in New Bedford, Mass., reported being
gang-raped atop a pool table in a tavern; four men were later
convicted.
(AP, 3/6/98)
1983 May 15, The Madison Hotel
in Boston, Mass., was destroyed by implosion.
(http://tinyurl.com/2j8cul)
1983 Jul 20, The US House
censured Reps. Gerry Studds of Massachusetts and Daniel B. Crane of
Illinois for having sexual relations with pages. Studds, a liberal
Democrat who acknowledged having sex with a 17-year-old male page in
1973 and making sexual advances to two others, admitted an error in
judgment but did not apologize. The first openly gay member of
Congress went on to win re-election until his retirement in the
mid-1990s. Crane admitted having sex several times with a
17-year-old female page in 1980. He apologized to the House in a
quavering voice "for the shame I have brought down on this
institution." The conservative Republican was defeated a year later.
(AP,
9/30/06)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Congressional_page_sex_scandal)
1983 Oct 5, Earl Tupper
(b.1907), a Massachusetts tree surgeon, inventor and founder of
Tupperware [see 1938], died in Costa Rica. In 2008 Bob Kealing
authored “Tupperware: Brownie Wise, Earl Tupper, and the Home Party
Pioneers.”
(WSJ, 2/18/04,
p.A9)(www.ideafinder.com/history/inventors/tupper.htm)(WSJ, 7/30/08,
p.A13)
1983 Napoleon Crepeau Jr. was
convicted for the kidnapping and rape of a 17-year-old Dartmouth
woman. He was convicted for 16 years in prison. He told
psychologists in prison that he would attack more women if released.
He was released in 1998.
(SFC, 6/9/98, p.A5)
1983 Dennis Maher was convicted
in Boston of raping 3 women and spent the next 19 years in prison.
In 2003 DNA evidence proved his innocence.
(SFC, 4/4/03, p.A3)
1983 Boston Cardinal Humberto
Medeiros died and was replaced by Cardinal Bernard Law.
(SFC, 4/27/02, p.A3)
1983-1990 David Saxon (1920-2005), president of
the Univ. of California, left to serve as chairman of MIT Corp. and
served there until 1990.
(SFC, 12/9/05, p.B5)
1984 In Mass. District Attorney
Scott Harshbarger brought the first child-sex-abuse charges against
the Amiraults, owners of the Fells Acres Day School in Malden. A new
trial was ordered in 1998 due to flawed techniques in interviewing
the young accusers. Gerald Amirault served 18 years in prison and
was released in 2004.
(WSJ, 10/14/97, p.A22)(SFC, 6/13/98, p.A3)(WSJ,
5/28/04, p.A8)
1984 Massachusetts banned the
death penalty.
(SFC, 11/21/00, p.A7)
1984 John Kerry was elected as
US senator for Mass.
(SSFC, 8/29/04, p.J5)
1985 Mar 3, Kevin McHale of
Memphis State University set a Boston Celtics scoring record this
night as he poured in 56 points in a 138-129 win over the Detroit
Pistons.
(http://celticsbandwagon.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html)
1985 J. Anthony Lukas (d.1997)
published “Common Ground,” an exploration of school desegregation
through the experiences of three Boston families.
(SFEC, 10/5/97, BR p.1)
1985 Charles Taylor escaped
from a Plymouth County jail in Massachusetts while awaiting
extradition to Liberia, where he was accused of embezzling money as
an official in the dictatorship of Samuel Doe. Charges against
Taylor were dropped in 1999.
(SFC, 7/3/99, p.A10)
1986 Oct 25, Michael Sergio
parachuted into Shea Stadium during game 6 of the World Series. In
game 6 of the Baseball World Series a slowly hit ball trickled
through the legs of Bill Buckner and cost the Red Sox the game. They
lost game 7 and the NY Mets won the series.
(WSJ, 7/23/98, p.A1)(MC, 10/25/01)
1986 The Boston Red Sox lost
the World Series.
(SFC, 10/28/04, p.A7)
1986 The Hearst Corp. acquired
WCVB-TV in Boston.
(SFC, 8/7/99, p.A9)
1987 Jun 2, Georges Doriot
(b.1899), a French-born Harvard professor, died in Boston. In 1946
he took public his American Research & Development (ARD)
company. In 2008 Spencer E. Ante authored “Creative Capital: Georges
Doriot and the Birth of Venture Capital.”
(WSJ, 5/21/08,
p.A17)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Doriot)
1987 Aug 9, In Worcester Audrey
Santo (3) fell into a backyard swimming pool and was left inert and
bedridden. Later Masses were celebrated at her home and pilgrims
began visiting her and claimed to be cured of illnesses.
(SFEC, 8/28/98, p.A8)
1987 Sep 30, Two top campaign
aides to Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis resigned after one of
them, campaign manager John Sasso, admitted leaking an attack
videotape that helped bring down the presidential candidacy of
Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden. Sasso returned to the campaign a year
later.
(AP, 9/30/97)
1987 Will Fitzhugh began
publishing the Concord Review, an academic journal dedicated to the
work of high school students.
(WSJ, 5/26/00, p.W15)
1987 The US Congress approved a
$6.4 billion budget for "the Big Dig" in Boston. Its 85% support
later shrank to 55%, as costs in 2002 rose to $14.6 billion.
(SFC, 12/20/02, p.J12)
1988 Jun 18, Vice President
George Bush launched a sharp attack against Democratic presidential
candidate Michael Dukakis, accusing the Massachusetts governor of
coddling criminals by allowing some convicts out of prison on
weekend furloughs.
(AP, 6/17/98)
1988 Jul 21, Massachusetts Gov.
Michael Dukakis accepted the Democratic presidential nomination at
the party's convention in Atlanta, declaring, "this election isn't
about ideology; it's about competence."
(AP, 7/21/98)
1988 Sep 24, Members of the
eastern Massachusetts Episcopal diocese elected Barbara C. Harris
the first female bishop in the church's history.
(AP, 9/24/98)
1988 Nov 8, The US held
elections and Republican VP George Bush defeated Massachusetts Gov.
Michael Dukakis. Bush was elected the 41st president with 54% of the
popular vote. He and Dan Quail were elected over Dukakis and
Bentson. There have been 14 American vice presidents who have gone
on to serve as president. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van
Buren, John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester A.
Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry S. Truman,
Richard M. Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, George Bush.
(WSJ, 8/5/96, p.A10)(AP, 11/8/98)(HN,
11/6/98)(HNQ, 2/20/00)
1988 John Kerry, US senator for
Mass., sold his cookie business.
(SSFC, 8/29/04, p.J5)
1989 Jul 17, Isidore Feinstein
Stone (b.1907), author (I.F. Stone's Weekly), died in Boston. In
2006 Myra MacPherson authored “All Governments Lie,” a biography of
Stone. In 2009 D.D. Guttenplan authored “American Radical: The Life
and Times of I.F. Stone.”
(http://tinyurl.com/nm97z)(WSJ, 9/30/06,
p.P8)(Econ, 5/16/09, p.90)
1989 Sep 1, A. Bartlett
Giamatti (51), Baseball Commissioner, died of heart attack at his
summer home in Martha's Vineyard, Mass.
(AP, 9/1/99)
1989 Oct 23, In a case that
inflamed racial tensions in Boston, Charles Stuart claimed he and
his pregnant wife, Carol, had been shot in their car by a black
robber. Carol Stuart and her prematurely delivered baby died;
Charles Stuart later died, an apparent suicide, after he was
implicated.
(AP, 10/23/99)
1989 Oct 29, Angelo Mercurio
(1936-2006), an FBI informant, attended a Mafia induction ceremony
at a suburban Boston home. His evidence helped bring down the crime
family led by Raymond “Junior” Patriarca.
(SFC, 2/13/07, p.B4)(http://tinyurl.com/36ccng)
1989 Nov 6, Kitty Dukakis, wife
of Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, was hospitalized after
ingesting rubbing alcohol.
(AP, 11/6/99)
1989 The Loeb Classical Library
was taken over by Harvard Univ. Press.
(SFEC, 8/20/00, p.B12)
1990 Mar 18, There was a theft
of art work from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. 2
men dressed as policemen made off with masterworks that included
Rembrandt’s "The Storm on the Sea of Galilee," Vermeer’s "The
Concert," Manet’s "Chez Tortoni," and 5 paintings and drawings by
Edgar Degas and a 1200 BC Chinese bronze beaker valued at $300
million. The theft led Sen. Edward Kennedy to sponsor the museum
theft provision of the 1994 Omnibus Crime Act. In 2009 Ulrich Boser
authored “The Gardner Heist.”
(WSJ, 8/9/96, p.A8)(WSJ, 5/13/97, p.A21)(SFC,
8/26/97, p.A3)(SFC,12/15/97, p.A3)(WSJ, 2/20/09, p.W10)
1990 May 20, In Massachusetts
the body of Cheryl Kosilek (35) was found in her car at a North
Attleborough shopping mall. Robert Kosilek (41) was convicted of her
murder in 1993 and while in prison demanded that the state of
Massachusetts provide him or her with a sex-change operation.
(SFC, 11/24/09,
p.A9)(www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-8176530.html)
1990 Dec 28, 33 people were
injured in a trolley collision in Boston.
(AP, 12/28/00)
1990 William Weld was elected
governor of Massachusetts.
(www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9004742/)
1990 The state civil commitment
law was repealed by the legislature because it was possibly
unconstitutional.
(SFC, 6/9/98, p.A6)
1991 Sep 24, Children's author
Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, died in La Jolla,
Calif., at age 87. In 2002 Springfield, Mass., his childhood home,
opened a $6.2 million sculpture garden in his memory.
(AP, 9/24/97)(SFC, 5/27/02, p.A2)
1991 Oct 28, The Andrea Gail, a
72-foot swordfish boat from Gloucester, Mass., disappeared off the
coast of Nova Scotia. Six fishermen were lost. In 1997 Sebastian
Junger authored "The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the
Sea." A film version followed in 2000.
(SFC, 6/21/08,
p.A3)(www.imdb.com/title/tt0177971/)
1992 Aug 7, The luxury liner
Queen Elizabeth 2 ran aground off Massachusetts.
(AP, 8/7/97)
1992 Nicholas Mavroules
(d.2003) lost his Congressional seat to Peter Torkildsen after being
indicted on bribery and racketeering charges. He pleaded guilty in
1993 and served 11 months.
(SFC, 12/27/03, p.A18)
1993 Mar 3, Howard Stern radio
show premiered in Boston on WBCN 104.1 FM-evenings.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1993 Jul 27, Boston Celtics
star Reggie Lewis died after collapsing on a Brandeis University
basketball court during practice; he was 27.
(AP, 7/27/98)
1993 Sep 15 Katherine Ann
Power, former 60s radical who spent 23 years in hiding, surrendered
to authorities at Boston College law school in Newton. She faced
charges stemming from a 1970 bank robbery in which Boston police
officer Walter Schroeder Sr. (42) was killed. Power pleaded guilty
to charges of armed robbery and the reduced charge of manslaughter.
On October 6, 1993, she received a five-year federal term, to run
concurrently with an 8-12 year state sentence. She was released in
1999.
(AP, 9/15/98)(www.holysmoke.org/sdhok/dep11.htm)
1993 Dec 6, A judge in New
Bedford, Mass., sentenced former priest James R. Porter, who'd
admitted molesting 28 children in the 1960s, to 18 to 20 years in
prison for sexual assault.
(AP, 12/6/98)
1993 Composer John Williams
retired from the Boston Pops. He composed the music for the Star
Wars films.
(WSJ, 5/13/99, p.A28)
1993 Jim Koch, founder of
Boston Beer co., the maker of Samuel Adams beer, set a new bar by
creating Triple Bock, a beverage with 17.5% alcohol by volume. In
the early 2000s, Dogfish Head responded with beverages of their own
that went to 22%. In 2009 Boston Beer released an updated version of
its biennial beer Utopias, to date the highest alcohol content beer
on the market. It was 27% alcohol by volume and $150 a bottle.
(AP, 11/30/09)
1993 The Boston Globe was
purchased by the New York Times for $1.07 billion.
(WSJ, 8/9/99, p.B9)
1994 Jan 5, Former House
speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill died in Boston at age 81.
(AP, 1/5/98)
1994 Dec 23, John Connolly, FBI
agent, came to the Winter Hill gang’s headquarters in a Boston
liquor store and warned Kevin Weeks of pending FBI arrests for
mobsters James Bulger, Stephen Flemmi and Francis Salemme. Connolly
was convicted for corruption in 2002 and sentenced to 121 months.
(SFC, 5/29/02, p.A3)(SFC, 9/17/02, p.A5)
1994 Dec 30, John Salvi opened
fire at two abortion clinics in suburban Boston and killed 2 clinic
receptionists, Lee Ann Nichols and Shannon Lowney. He was convicted
on two accounts of first-degree murder in Mar, 1996. Salvi committed
suicide in prison on Nov 29, 1996. His conviction was voided in 1997
because he died before his appeal was heard.
(WSJ, 3/19/96, p.A-1)(SFC, 11/30/96,
p.A1,15)(SFEC, 2/2/97, p.A3)(AP, 12/30/99)
1995 Jan 5, A warrant was
issued for the arrest of James “Whitey” Bulger (b.1929), top mobster
of Boston’s Winter Hill Gang. He had disappeared with his girlfriend
just days before the warrant was issued. Bulger was linked to 21
murders and in 2000 became a fixture on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted”
list. In 2007 Kevin Weeks authored “Brutal: The Untold Story Of My
Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob.”
(http://tinyurl.com/2c8u37f)(SSFC, 1/30/05,
p.A13)(http://tinyurl.com/29unfq4)
1995 Jul 17, Thirty-two people
were injured when a Boston Green Line trolley rammed another train
under Copley Square.
(AP, 7/17/00)
1995 Aug 23, Alfred Eisenstaedt
(96), "Life" magazine photographer, died on Martha’s Vineyard. His
picture of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square became one of
the best-known images of America's joy at the end of World War Two.
(AP,
8/23/00)(www.cnn.com/EVENTS/year_in_review/passages/)
1996 Samuel Huntington, a
Harvard professor, authored his best-selling book: "The Clash of
Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order."
(WSJ, 11/7/96, p.A18)(Econ, 10/24/09, SR p.10)
1996 US Congress named the
842-square mile Gerry E. Studds Stellwagen Bank National Marine
Sanctuary after Massachusetts Representative Gerry E. Studds
(d.2006) in recognition of his work protecting the marine
environment.
(AP, 10/14/06)
1996 A train hauled away the
360 ton reactor vessel of the Yankee Rowe nuclear plant.
(SFC, 8/7/99, p.A3)
1997 Feb 9, In Newton, Mass.,
an 8-month old baby died while under the care of a 19-year-old
British nanny. Louisa Woodward, pleaded innocent, but was tried and
convicted on 2nd-degree murder charges in Oct.
(SFC,10/31/97,
p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_Woodward)
1997 Apr 20, Lameck Aguta of
Kenya won the Boston Marathon with a time of 2:10:34. Ethiopia’s
Fatuma Roba won the women’s best time at 2:26:24.
(WSJ, 4/22/97, p.A1)
1997 Jul 9, Louise Woodward
failed to respond to a wrongful death suit filed by the parents of
Matthew Eappen, the baby she was convicted of killing, and this
allowed a federal court to automatically rule against her.
(www.courttv.com/trials/woodward/070998.html)
1997 Jul, AT&T agreed to
pay Wellesley Congregational Church $2,500 per month for a decade
for the right to install wireless transmission equipment in the
church steeple. An annual $6,000 bonus was included plus costs for
rebuilding the steeple. Rev. Lee Woofenden of the New Jerusalem
Church in Bridgewater also made a deal and stated: "Doing business
in this world is part of religion."
(WSJ, 12/23/97, p.A1)
1997 Sep, MIT student Scott
Krueger fell into a coma and died following a drinking binge at the
Phi Gamma Delta fraternity. In 1998 the fraternity was charged with
homicide.
(SFC, 9/18/98, p.A3)
1997 Oct 30, A jury in
Cambridge, Mass., convicted British au pair Louise Woodward of
second-degree murder in the death of 8-month-old Matthew Eappen. The
judge, Hiller B. Zobel, later reduced the verdict to manslaughter
and set Woodward free.
(HN, 10/30/98)
1997 Oct, Jeffrey Curley (10)
was smothered to death with a gasoline rag after resisting sexual
advances from Salvatore Sicari and Charles Jaynes. Sicari and Jaynes
were convicted of murder and imprisoned. In 2000 Curley’s family was
awarded a $328 million wrongful death judgement.
(SFC, 8/24/00, p.A10)
1997 Nov 10, The English nanny,
Louise Woodward, had her murder conviction reduced to manslaughter
by Mass. judge Hiller Zobel. Her sentence was reduced to the 279
days she had already spent in custody.
(SFC,11/11/97, p.A1)
1997 Dec 28, In Medford a fire
in a 3-story building left 6 people dead including 4 children.
(SFC,12/30/97, p.A9)
1997 Massachusetts Gov. Weld,
1st elected in 1990, resigned after Pres. Clinton named him
ambassador to Mexico.
(Econ, 8/27/05, p.27)
1998 Apr 20, Moses Tanui of
Kenya won the 102nd Boston Marathon in 2 hrs, 7 min . and 43 sec.
Fatuma Roba of Ethiopia won among the women in 2:23:21.
(WSJ, 4/21/98, p.A1)
1998 Apr 24, The American
Health for Women magazine reported that Seattle was the healthiest
city for women and that SF rated # 2 and Boston # 3.
(SFC, 4/25/98, p.A5)
1998 Apr 26, In New Bedford
police killed one of 2 gunmen who robbed a McDonald’s restaurant.
The other gunman got away with 2 captives who later escaped.
(SFC, 4/28/98, p.A3)
1998 Jun 1, Rev. Eugene F.
Rivers had his picture on the cover of Time Mag. for his youth
ministry work in Dorchester. His Operation 2006 planned to put an
adult volunteer into the life of every at-risk child in Dorchester,
who needed help, by the year 2006.
(WSJ, 6/5/98, p.W13)
1998 Jun 6, In Boston Cardinal
Bernard Law announced that he defrocked retired priest, John
Geoghan, who was accused of sexually molesting more than 50 children
over 3 decades. The church had already paid millions to settle
claims brought by dozens of alleged victims. Geoghan went on trial
in 2002 and was convicted for fondling a boy in 1992. Geoghan was
sentenced 9-10 years in prison for molesting a 10-year-old boy.
(SFEC, 6/7/98, p.A8)(WSJ, 1/18/02, p.W18)(SFC,
1/19/02, p.A2)(SFC, 2/22/02, p.A3)
1998 cJun 14, The Boston Globe
asked for the resignation of columnist Patricia Smith due to
fabricated quotations and people in her column. The New Republic
recently reported that writer Stephen Glass had fabricated parts or
all of 27 of 41 articles.
(SFC, 6/29/98, p.A4)
1998 Jun 16, Massachusetts'
highest court cleared the way for Louise Woodward to return home to
England, upholding a judge's ruling that freed the au pair convicted
of killing a baby.
(AP, 6/16/99)
1998 Jul 1, The state Board of
Education voted not to pass some 260 people who flunked the
first-ever certification test for prospective teachers.
(SFC, 7/2/98, p.A10)
1998 Nov 21, Isao Okawa,
chairman of CSK Corp., and Sega Enterprises, donated $27 million to
MIT for the creation of a center for children founded on the belief
that new digital technology will drive fundamental changes in
education.
(SFC, 11/23/98, p.A5)
1998 Nov, Thomas Johnson was
discovered to be living in a 3-room underground home on Boy Scout
property on Nantucket Island.
(SFC, 1/4/99, p.A3)
1998 Dec 1, In Walpole Irene
Kennedy (75) was bludgeoned and stabbed to death in Bird Park near
Bird Pond.
(SFC, 12/3/98, p.A10)
1998 Dec 30, Walker Hancock,
sculptor, died in Gloucester. His work included statues of Douglas
MacArthur, John Paul Jones, and the Stone Mountain Memorial to
Confederate heroes.
(SFC, 1/2/99, p.C2)
1998 William F. Weld, former
governor, published his first political novel: "Mackerel by
Moonlight."
(WSJ, 11/4/98, p.A20)
1998 Lois Orswell (b.1904), art
collector, died. She donated her collection to Harvard’s Fogg Art
Museum.
(WSJ, 1/30/03, p.D8)
1999 Feb 24, In Lynn a
triple-decker home was burned down and 5 people died. The next day
the boyfriend of a resident was arrested and charged with violating
a restraining order.
(SFC, 2/26/99, p.A3)
1999 Feb 24, Andre Dubus, short
story writer, died in Haverhill, Mass., at age 62. His work included
the novel: "The Lieutenant" (1967), the short story collection
"Dancing after Hours" and essays "Meditations from a Movable Chair."
Dubus became crippled in 1986 when he stopped to help a motorist and
was hit by a passing car.
(WSJ, 2/26/99, p.A1)(SFC, 2/27/99, p.C2)
1999 Mar 8, It was reported
that the new US Courthouse on Boston harbor was recently completed.
It was designed by Henry Cobb.
(WSJ, 3/9/99, p.A20)
1999 Apr 6, In Massachusetts
Maria Grasso (54), a Chilean immigrant working as a baby sitter for
a millionaire, won the $197 million Big Game jackpot.
(SFC, 4/15/99, p.A2)
1999 Apr 20, Radcliffe Univ.
announced that it would merge fully with Harvard and become the
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, a graduate program.
(SFC, 4/21/99, p.A2)
1999 May 29, The new $31.4
million Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art opened at the
abandoned Sprague Electric Company factory complex.
(WSJ, 6/1/99, p.A20)
1999 Jun 6, The new book "Home
Town" by Tracy Kidder, was reviewed. The work focused on the city of
Northampton.
(SFEC, 6/6/99, BR p.3)
1999 Jul 4, A 2,000 pound
tombstone for "Unknown Civilians Killed in Wars" departed from
Sherborn on a 450-mile trek to Arlington National Cemetery. It was
impounded by police on August 6 for safekeeping pending approval by
Congress.
(SFC, 8/7/99, p.A2)
1999 Jul 14, In Boston the
school board voted to end busing after 25 years. The system held 85%
minority students.
(SFC, 7/15/99, p.A3)
1999 Jul 16, John F. Kennedy
Jr. (38), his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy and sister, Lauren
Bessette, were killed when the Piper Saratoga, which he piloted
crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near Martha's Vineyard, Mass.
(SFEC, 7/18/99, p.A1)(AP, 7/16/07)
1999 Dec 3, In Worcester,
Mass., 6 firefighters died after 4 tried to rescue 2 who were in
trouble in a burning warehouse. A homeless couple who allegedly
knocked over a candle were later charged with involuntary
manslaughter.
(SFEC, 12/5/99, p.A2)(SFC, 12/8/99, p.A13)
1999 Dec 31, It was reported
that some residents in the Boston suburb of Belmont protested the
construction of a $30 million Mormon Temple and cited the Dover
Amendment zoning law as unconstitutional. The amendment prohibited
zoning restrictions on property used for religious purposes.
(SFC, 12/31/99, p.D3)
1999 Leonard P. Zakim, civil
rights activist, died of cancer at age 46. The new cable-stayed
bridge over Boston’s Charles River Basin, scheduled for completion
in 2002, was named in his honor.
(SFC, 8/18/00, p.A9)
1999 The infant son of Jacques
and Karen Robidoux died 3 days shy of his 1st birthday after being
fed just breast milk from his mother pregnant, who was on a diet
water and almonds. Jacques Robidoux, head of the Body fundamentalist
sect, was convicted of 1st degree murder in 2002.
(SFC, 6/15/02, p.A14)
2000 Jan 15, In Boston
investigators found the bodies of 2 men and a woman believed to be
the victims of mobsters Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi and James
"Whitey" Bulger. One of the bodies was said to be Arthur "Bucky"
Barrett, one of 6 men who stole $1.5 million in a 1980 bank robbery.
(SFC, 1/15/00, p.A8)
2000 Feb 1, Big Dig officials
disclosed that the huge highway project was $1.4 billion over
budget. The project which included a tunnel under Boston Harbor was
conceived in the 1980s as a $2.5 billion job called the Central
Artery/Tunnel. The total cost was later estimated to reach
$13.5 billion.
(WSJ, 4/10/00, p.A4)
2000 Feb 28, In Massachusetts
computer-industry publisher Patrick J. McGovern and his wife, Lore
Harp McGovern, pledged a $350 million donation over 20 years to MIT
to finance brain research.
(SFC, 2/29/00, p.A2)(WSJ, 2/29/00, p.A1)
2000 Apr 3, In Massachusetts
the nation’s most comprehensive gun safety laws went into effect.
(SFC, 4/3/00, p.A11)
2000 Apr 11, James Kerasiotes,
the state’s top road officials, resigned as head of the Big Dig
following federal criticism of cost overruns.
(WSJ, 4/12/00, p.A1)
2000 Apr 15, Wellesley Women’s
College received a $25 million gift from Lulu Wang and her husband
Anthony.
(SFEC, 4/16/00, p.A17)
2000 Jul 5, Thomas Junta, a
hockey father, killed coach Michael Costin (40) following a practice
hockey match in Reading, Mass. Junta went on trial in 2001. In 2001
Junta was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. In 2002 Junta
was sentenced 6 to 10 years in prison.
(SFC, 1/3/02, p.A3)(SFC, 1/11/02, p.A3)(SFC,
1/12/02, p.A1)(SFC, 1/26/02, p.A3)
2000 Sep, In Boston the world’s
longest offshore sewage tunnel began transporting waste water deep
into the ocean.
(SFC, 9/6/00, p.A13)
2000 Nov 2, Robert Cromier,
author, died at age 75. His young-adult novels included "The
Chocolate War" (1974).
(SFC, 11/4/00, p.A23)
2000 Nov 20, The trial of nurse
Kristen Gilbert (33) began. She was charged with murdering 4
patients at a veterans hospital.
(SFC, 11/21/00, p.A7)
2000 Dec 26, Michael McDermott,
a software tester at Edgewater Tech. In Wakefield, Mass., shot and
killed 7 co-workers. He wielded a semiautomatic rifle and a shotgun.
He was beset by both financial and personal problems. McDermott,
convicted in 2002, was sent to prison for life.
(SFC, 12/27/00, p.A1)(AP, 12/26/01)(SFC, 4/25/02,
p.A7)
2000 Dec 27, Software engineer
Michael McDermott pleaded innocent to 7 counts of murder in the
shooting deaths of seven co-workers the day before at an Internet
consulting company in Wakefield, Mass. McDermott was later convicted
and sentenced to life without parole.
(AP, 12/27/05)
2000 The 100th Mormon temple
was dedicated in Belmont, Mass.
(NW, 9/10/01, p.48)
2000 The US government sued
Andrei Shleifer, a top Harvard Univ. economist, for seeking profit
from his management of a foreign-aid program in Russia.
(WSJ, 10/12/04, p.A1)
2000 Bradford College of
Massachusetts closed its doors and left debts of almost $20 million.
(Econ, 5/20/06, p.79)
2001 Feb 13, Pres. Bush
nominated Gov. Paul Cellucci as ambassador to Canada and cleared the
way for Jane Swift to become the state’s 1st female governor.
(SFC, 2/14/01, p.A7)
2001 Mar 2, The Harvard School
of Education announced that Jane Fonda had pledged $12.5 million for
the creation of a center on gender and education to be named after
psychologist Carol Gilligan.
(SFC, 3/3/01, p.A2)
2001 Mar 11, Lawrence Summers,
former Clinton Treasury Secretary, was named as the 27th president
of Harvard. Neil Rudenstine planned to step down in June.
(WSJ, 3/12/00, p.A1)
2001 Apr 1, Massachusetts began
offering full health insurance to poor people with HIV.
(SFC, 4/5/01, p.A4)
2001 Apr 10, Jane Swift became
acting governor following the resignation of Gov. Paul Celluci, who
was chosen as ambassador to Canada.
(SFC, 5/16/01, p.A5)
2001 Apr 16, Lee Bong Ju of
South Korea won the men’s Boston Marathon in 2:09:43. Catherine
Ndereba of Kenya won among the women in 2:23:53.
(WSJ, 4/17/01, p.A1)
2001 Apr 27, Four students from
Newton, Mass., were killed near Sussex, New Brunswick, when their
bus crashed while enroute to a music festival in Halifax. At least
37 others were injured.
(SFC, 4/28/01, p.A10)
2001 May 15, Acting Gov. Jane
Swift gave birth to twin girls.
(SFC, 5/16/01, p.A5)
2001 May 28, U.S. Rep. Joseph
Moakley, D-Mass., died at age 74.
(AP, 5/28/02)
2001 Jul 9, In Salem
Christopher Reardon (29), a former church leader and YMCA swim
coach, pleaded guilty to 75 charges of sex abuse of young boys. He
faced 130 counts involving 29 children.
(SFC, 7/10/01, p.A4)
2001 Sep 3, Pauline Kael (82),
film critic, died in Great Barrington, Mass. Her first 1953 movie
review was published in City Lights, a small SF magazine. In 2011
Brian Kellow authored “Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark.”
(SFC, 9/4/01, p.A16)(SFC, 12/30/01, p.D5)(AP,
9/3/02)(SSFC, 10/30/11, p.F1)
2001 Oct 31, The governor of
Massachusetts signed legislation exonerating 5 women executed in the
Salem witch trials of 1692, whose names had not yet been cleared.
(WSJ, 9/15/06, p.A10)
2001 Nov 4, Edward Boland (90),
state congressman from 1953-1988, died.
(WSJ, 11/6/01, p.A1)
2001 Donna Halper, Boston-based
historian and radio consultant, authored “Invisible Stars: A Social
History of Women in American Broadcasting.”
(www.amazon.com/Invisible-Stars-American-Broadcasting-Communication/dp/0765605813)
2001 Thomas H. O’Connor
authored "The Hub: Boston Past and Present."
(WSJ, 5/7/01, p.A20)
2001 Nathan Marsh Pusey
(b.1907), former president of Harvard Univ. (1953-1971), died.
(SFC, 11/22/01, p.A29)
2002 Jan 3, Acting Gov. Jane
Swift picked Patrick C. Guerriero (33), a gay former mayor and
legislator, as her candidate for lieutenant governor.
(SFC, 1/4/02, p.A3)
2002 Jan 6, Christa Worthington
(46), fashion writer, was found dead at her home in Truro on Cape
Cod, Mass. Her 2-year-old daughter was next to her, covered in blood
but unharmed. In 2005 DNA evidence identified Christopher McCowen, a
local trash collector, as the murderer. In 2006 McCowen was
convicted and sentenced to life without parole.
(SFC, 4/16/05, p.A5)(SFC, 11/17/06, p.A4)
2002 Feb, The Archdiocese of
Boston identified 80 priests as having abused children over the last
40 years.
(SFC, 2/16/02, p.A8)
2002 Mar 1, Under pressure from
prosecutors, the Archdiocese of Boston agreed to turn over the names
of people allegedly molested by priests.
(AP, 3/1/07)
2002 Mar 12, Attorneys for the
Boston archdiocese agreed to pay $15-30 million to 86 additional
victims of defrocked priest John J. Geoghan.
(SFC, 3/13/02, p.A3)
2002 Apr 12, Cornel West,
author of "Race Matters," announced that he would leave Harvard for
Princeton due to a clash with Pres. Summers.
(SFC, 4/13/02, p.A3)
2002 Apr 15, The Boston
Marathon was won by Rodgers Rop of Kenya for the men, 2:09:02, and
Margaret Okayo of Kenya for the women, 2:20:43.
(WSJ, 4/16/02, p.A1)
2002 May 2, The Rev. Paul
Shanley, a priest at the epicenter of the clergy sex abuse scandal,
turned himself in to authorities in San Diego to face charges in
Massachusetts of raping boys during the 1980s. Shanley pleaded
innocent but was later convicted of repeatedly raping one boy, and
was sentenced to 12 to 15 years in prison.
(AP, 5/2/07)
2002 May 5, In Boston Cardinal
Law supported the Archdiocese decision to scuttle a multimillion
settlement with 86 people for some 15-30 million over sexual abuse
because the number of new cases had grown to over 150.
(SFC, 5/6/02, p.A1)
2002 May 13, In Baltimore
Dontee Stokes (26), a former altar boy, shot and seriously wounded
Rev. Maurice Blackwell (56), who had sexually abused him from age 9
to 13. Stokes was acquitted of murder, but was sentenced to 18
months of home detention on gun charges. In 2005 Blackwell was
convicted of molesting Stokes.
(SFC, 5/15/02, p.A3)(AP, 5/13/03)(SFC, 2/18/05,
p.A7)
2002 May 19, Boston Cardinal
Bernard Law said in a letter distributed to parishes that he did not
become aware until 1993 of sexual abuse allegations against the Rev.
Paul Shanley.
(AP, 5/19/03)
2002 Jun 20, Paul Shanley (71),
a retired priest, was indicted in Cambridge, Mass., on charges of
raping 4 children from 1979-1989. Shanley was convicted on 4 charges
in 2005 and sentenced 12-15 years in prison.
(SFC, 6/21/02, p.A3)(SFC, 6/8/04, p.A3)(SFC,
2/16/05, p.A4)
2002 Jul 30, At Cape Cod, Mass.
46 pilot whales beached themselves a 2nd time one day after rescuers
managed to return most of a pod back to sea. All the animals died.
(SFC, 7/31/02, p.A3)
2002 Sep 20, William Rosenberg
(86), founder of the Dunkin' Donuts chain, died in Mashpee, Mass.
(AP, 9/20/03)
2002 Nov 5, Mitt Romney, a
Mormon and Harvard graduate (business and law), was elected
Republican governor of Massachusetts. He had made a fortune as a
venture capitalist with investments in Domino’s and Staples.
(Econ, 9/30/06,
p.44)(www.rga.org/governors/state.aspx?St=MA)
2002 Nov 24, John Rawls (81),
philosopher, died in Boston. His work included "A Theory of Justice"
(1971), which advanced the concept of a social compact. The Rawls
test: would the best off accept the arrangements if they believed at
any moment they might find themselves in the place of the worst
off."
(WSJ, 11/26/02, p.A1)(SFC, 11/29/02, p.A27)
2002 Dec 1, Sen. Kerry of
Massachusetts announced that he would seek the Democratic nomination
for president.
(WSJ, 11/3/04, p.A6)
2002 Dec 3, Thousands of
personnel files released under a court order showed that the
Archdiocese of Boston went to great lengths to hide priests accused
of abuse, including clergy who allegedly snorted cocaine and had sex
with girls aspiring to be nuns.
(AP, 12/3/03)
2002 Dec 13, Pope John Paul II
accepted the resignation, due to sex abuse, of Boston's Cardinal
Bernard Law (71).
(SFC, 12/14/02, p.A1)(AP, 12/13/07)
2002 In Massachusetts a US
marshal knocked on the door of Lithuanian immigrant Vladas
Zajanckauskas (b.1915) to serve him with papers alleging he was a
high-ranking noncommissioned officer in a Nazi training camp who
took part in one of the most heinous massacres of World War II, the
1943 liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto. Zajanckauskas denied having
been in Warsaw.
(www.evri.com/person/vladas-zajanckauskas-0xad165)(SSFC, 4/4/10,
Par. p.5)
2003 Apr 7, Pulitzer Prize
winners included Jeffrey Eugenides for fiction (Middlesex); Rick
Atkinson for history (An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa
(1942-1943); and Samantha Power for general nonfiction (A Problem
from Hell: American and the Age of Genocide”). The Boston Globe won
the Pulitzer Prize for public service for its coverage of the priest
sex abuse scandal.
(SFC, 4/8/03, p.A2)(AP, 4/7/08)
2003 May 8, Elizabeth Neuffer
(46), an award-winning reporter for The Boston Globe, died in a car
accident in Iraq.
(AP, 5/10/03)
2003 Jul 1, Bishop Sean
O'Malley was named by Pope John Paul II the new archbishop of
Boston, succeeding Cardinal Bernard Law, who'd resigned in the wake
of a clerical sex abuse scandal.
(AP, 7/1/04)
2003 Aug 23, Former priest John
Geoghan (67), a convicted child molester, died after being attacked
by Joseph L. Druce (37), a fellow inmate, at the Souza-Baranowski
state prison in Shirley, Mass. Druce was convicted of murder in
2006.
(SSFC, 8/24/03, p.A1)(SFC, 1/26/06, p.A3)
2003 Aug 8, The Boston Roman
Catholic archdiocese offered $55 million to settle lawsuits stemming
from sex abuse by priests. The archdiocese later settled for $85
million.
(AP, 8/8/04)
2003 Sep 9, The Catholic
archdiocese of Boston agreed to pay $85 million to settle claims by
more than 550 people who said they were sexually abused by priests.
(SFC, 9/10/03, p.A3)
2003 Oct 27, A new US stamp
dedicated to Theodore Geisel (d.1991), creator of Dr. Seuss, was
introduced at the Dr. Seuss National Memorial Sculpture Garden in
Springfield, Mass.
(SFC, 10/16/03, p.E13)
2003 Nov 18, The Massachusetts
Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that a ban on same sex marriage is illegal.
Lawmakers were given 180 days to allow gay marriages.
(SFC, 11/19/03, p.A1)(WSJ, 11/19/03, p.A1)
2003 Nov 23, Adolfo “Big Al”
Bruno (57), a regional Mafia boss, was killed in Springfield, Mass.
In 2008 Frankie Roche (35), a low level Mafia member, admitted to
the murder.
(SFC, 4/18/08, p.A4)
2003 Dec 25, Nicholas Mavroules
(74), former 7 term Mass. Congressman, died in Peabody, Mass.
(SFC, 12/27/03, p.A18)
2003 MIT introduced the Int’l.
Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition.
(Econ, 9/5/09, TQ p.30)
2003 The population of
Massachusetts this year was about 6.4 million.
(Econ, 6/28/03, p.32)
2004 Feb 4, A Massachusetts
advisory opinion of the state Supreme Court said gay couples had the
right to marry.
(WSJ, 2/5/04, p.A4)
2004 Mar 29, Massachusetts
lawmakers approved a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay
marriage and legalize civil unions, sending the issue to the next
legislative session.
(AP, 3/29/05)
2004 Apr 19, In the Boston
Marathon Timothy Cherigat of Kenya won for the men at 2:10:37;
Catherine Ndereba of Kenya won for the women at 2:24:27.
(WSJ, 4/20/04, p.A1)
2004 May 25, Catholic church
officials said the Archdiocese of Boston would close 65 of 357
parishes due to declining attendance and increased financial
problems.
(SFC, 5/26/04, p.A5)(AP, 5/25/05)
2004 Jul 9, Geraldine Williams
(67) of Lowell, Mass., accepted a lump sum payment of $168 million
for her July 3 win in the $294 million lotto.
(SFC, 7/10/04, p.A2)
2004 Jul 26, The Democratic
National Convention opened in Boston with an estimated 35,000
visitors. Speakers included Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, Hillary and Bill
Clinton.
(SFC, 7/27/04, p.A1)
2004 Jul 27, Barack Obama,
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate from Illinois, delivered a speech
at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Other speakers
included Ted Kennedy, Howard Dean, Ron Reagan, and Teresa Heinz
Kerry.
(AP, 7/27/04)
2004 Jul 28, Democrats in
Boston made John Kerry their nominee for president as John Edwards,
the vice-presidential nominee, promised the country “hope is on the
way.”
(SFC, 7/29/04, p.A1)
2004 Jul 29, John Kerry gave
his acceptance speech as the Democratic presidential nominee before
15,000 supporters in Boston’s FleetCenter: “I’m John Kerry, and I’m
reporting for duty.”
(SFC, 7/30/04, p.A1)
2004 Jul, Yuri Levintoff was
recruited by Boris Barshevsky, a Boston-area taxi driver, to help
organize paid protesters for rallies in NYC against Chechen
separatists. The rallies were then filmed by Russian state
television.
(WSJ, 6/24/06, p.A1)
2004 Aug 26, MIT named Yale
neuroscientist Susan Hockfield as its new president, the 1st woman
to ever hold that job.
(WSJ, 8/27/04, p.A1)
2004 Sep 30, The 14th annual Ig
Nobel prizes were handed out at Harvard. Winners included the late
Frank Smith and his son Donald for their 1977 combover patent;
Steven Stack of Wayne State University and James Gundlach of Auburn
University won for their 1992 report on "The Effect of Country Music
on Suicide."
(AP, 10/1/04)
2004 Oct 20, Boston Red Sox
fans poured into the streets outside Fenway Park to celebrate their
team's victory over the New York Yankees. Victoria Snellgrove (21)
died the next day after a crowd control pellet hit her in the eye.
(AP, 10/21/04)(WSJ, 10/22/04, p.A1)(SFC,
10/23/04, p.A2)
2004 Oct 24, The Boston Red Sox
beat the St. Louis Cardinals 6-2 for a 2-0 World Series lead.
(AP, 10/24/05)
2004 Oct 27, The Boston Red Sox
won the World Series over the St. Louis Cardinals 3-0 in game 4. It
was Boston's sixth championship, but the first after 86 years of
frustration.
(AP, 10/28/04)
2004 Oct 28, Boston Red Sox
fans turned out by the tens of thousands near historic Fenway Park
to celebrate their World Series champion team, the city's first
since 1918.
(AP, 10/28/05)
2004 Massachusetts changed its
law regarding a Senate vacancy and required a special election to
fill empty Senate seats within 145-160 days of a vacancy. The
Democratic legislature did not want Republican Gov. Mitt Romney to
appoint a fellow Republican to the fill John Kerry’s seat, if Kerry
were to win the presidential election.
(Econ, 9/5/09, p.34)
2005 Feb 6, The New England
Patriots became a full-fledged dynasty with their third Super Bowl
victory in four years, beating the Philadelphia Eagles 24-21.
(AP, 2/7/05)
2005 Feb 15, Defrocked priest
Paul Shanley was sentenced in Boston to 12 to 15 years in prison on
child rape charges.
(AP, 2/15/06)
2005 Apr 18, The Boston
Marathon was won by Hailu Negusie of Ethiopia, 2:11:45; Catherine
Ndereba of Kenya led the women, 2:25:13.
(WSJ, 4/19/05, p.A1)
2005 May 7, MIT students held
their 1st convention for time travelers.
(Econ, 5/7/05, p.75)
2005 May 9, In Hingham, Mass.,
the bodies of two homeless men were found. They had likely been
killed the previous April. In 2007 Eric Snow (25) and James Winquist
(23) were accused of beating the 2 men to death with baseball bats.
(SFC, 9/5/07, p.A3)
2005 May 31, The Massachusetts
Legislature voted to override Gov. Romney’s veto of a bill easing
stem-cell research curbs.
(WSJ, 6/1/05, p.A1)
2005 Jun 4, It was reported
that Larry Ellison, head of Oracle Corp., planned to create a
database and journal to track improvements in world health through a
joint venture with Harvard that would be accompanied by as much as
$115 million. In 2006 Ellison decided against the donation due to
the resignation of Pres. Lawrence Summers.
(SFC, 6/4/05, p.C1)(SFC, 6/28/06, p.C1)
2005 Jun 9, The governor of
Massachusetts requested federal aid due to an unusually big red tide
of toxic algae that has crippled the state’s shellfish industry.
(WSJ, 6/10/05, p.A1)
2005 Jun, The board of
MassMutual Financial Group voted to fire CEO Robert O’Connell
following an investigation that revealed padding in his supplemental
retirement account and other allegations that involved a romantic
affair with a top female executive.
(WSJ, 8/19/05, p.A1)
2005 Aug 21, Harvard scientists
said they have fused an adult skin cell with an embryonic stem cell
in a potentially dramatic development that could lead to the
creation of useful stem cells without first having to create and
destroy human embryos.
(AP, 8/22/05)(SFC, 8/22/05, p.A2)
2005 Sep 15, The Massachusetts
state Legislature voted to override Gov. Mitt Romney's veto of a
measure that will expand access to emergency contraception.
(AP, 9/15/05)
2005 Sep 22, In Massachusetts
Holli Strickland (33) died of gunshot wounds, along with her
grandmother Constance F. Young (71) in what police said was either a
double suicide or murder-suicide in Young's West Springfield
apartment. They had been released from jail 2 days earlier following
charges of severe abuse of Haleigh Poutre (11), who was hospitalized
in a vegetative state after her brain stem was partly sheared.
(SFC, 12/6/05, p.A4)(http://tinyurl.com/7jeol)
2005 Nov 22, Massachusetts
signed an agreement with Venezuela to obtain discounted home heating
oil. Democrat Rep. William Delahunt helped broker the deal.
(WSJ, 11/23/05, p.A14)
2005 Nov 25, Massachusetts’
attorney general said it is opening an investigation into several
supermarkets that opened on Thanksgiving in defiance of the state’s
Puritan-era blue laws.
(SFC, 11/26/05, p.C2)
2005 Dec 14, In Boston 4 men
were shot and killed in the basement of a home on Bourneside Street
that was set up as a music studio. The killings pushed Boston
homicides for the year to 71, the highest in a decade.
(SFC, 12/15/05, p.A6)
2005 Harvard Univ. and
economics Prof. Shleifer paid nearly $30 million to settle a civil
suit brought by the US government for violation of federal conflict
of interest rules for investments a decade earlier in Russia.
(WSJ, 3/8/06, p.A6)
2005 Pierre Omidyar, the
founder of eBay, and his wife, Pam, donated $100 million in stock to
Tufts Univ.
(WSJ, 5/12/06, p.W2)
2006 Jan 19, Lifeline Systems
Inc. announced that it has signed a definitive merger agreement with
Royal Philips Electronics under which Philips will acquire Lifeline,
a leader in personal emergency response services. Royal Philips
Electronics NV paid $750 million for Massachusetts based Lifeline.
(WSJ, 1/11/07, p.A1)(http://tinyurl.com/334w4c)
2006 Jan 22, In Massachusetts
the bodies of Rachel (27) and 9-month-old daughter Lillian Entwistle
were found in their home in Hopkinton. Rachel was shot in the head
and the young baby in the body. They had been killed as much as 3
days earlier. On Jan 27 Neil Entwistle (27) was seen leaving his
parents home in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, accompanied by two
plain-clothes detectives. He was soon extradited back to
Massachusetts. In 2008 Entwistle was convicted of murder.
(AP, 1/27/06)(SFC, 6/26/08, p.A2)
2006 Feb 2, In New Bedford,
Mass., Jacob D. Robida (18) used a hatchet and a gun to attack 3
patrons at a gay bar. On Feb 4 in Arkansas Robida shot himself after
he killed a Gassville police officer and a woman in his car. He died
the next day.
(AP, 2/3/06)(AP, 2/5/06)(SFC, 2/8/06, p.A3)
2006 Feb 9, Neil Entwistle
(27), a British man, whose wife and daughter were found shot dead in
their Massachusetts home, was arrested in Britain and charged with
murder.
(AFP, 2/9/06)
2006 Feb 21, Lawrence Summers,
president of Harvard Univ., announced his resignation effective at
the end of the academic year.
(SFC, 2/22/06, p.A2)
2006 Feb 25, Portugal and the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) signed an accord that
could lead to technology partnerships in the Iberian nation.
(AP, 2/25/06)
2006 Mar 30, The Massachusetts
top court said gay couples can’t marry in Massachusetts if they are
from US states where same-sex unions are prohibited.
(WSJ, 3/31/06, p.A1)
2006 Apr 3, In Boston a 10-ton
construction platform collapsed and fell 13 stories killing 3 people
on Boylston St.
(SFC, 4/4/06, p.A3)
2006 Apr 4, In Massachusetts
legislators passed a bill requiring all citizens to have health
insurance. Gov. Romney signed it on April 12. The cost of the plan
was estimated at $1 billion, about as much as the state spends on
the uninsured. A dearth of primary-care physicians threatened to
undermine the program.
(WSJ, 4/5/06, p.A1)(Econ, 4/8/06, p.35)(SFC,
4/12/06, p.A4)(WSJ, 1/25/07, p.B1)
2006 Apr 17, Robert Cheruiyot
and Rita Jeptoo pulled off a Kenyan sweep of the Boston Marathon.
(AP, 4/17/07)
2006 Apr 23, It was
reported that Massachusetts has decided to begin requiring doctors
to state the names of anyone testing positive for HIV.
(SSFC, 4/23/06, p.A3)
2006 May 12, Jonathan Tisch
(52), co-chairman of Loews Corp., announced a donation of $40
million to Tufts Univ., his alma mater.
(WSJ, 5/12/06,
p.W2)(www.tufts.edu/main.php?p=flash)
2006 May 13, In Boston, Mass.,
unbeaten Ricky Hatton of England dethroned World Boxing Association
welterweight champion Luis Collazo, lifting the title with a
12-round unanimous decision in his welterweight debut.
(AFP, 5/14/06)
2006 May 14, Maine's governor
declared a state of emergency in the southern most county, and the
governors of Massachusetts and New Hampshire also declared states of
emergency as a 3-day deluge turned streets into rivers across
New England, flooding homes up to their door knobs, forcing dozens
of schools to close because the buses couldn't get through, and
threatening dams and communities as rivers rise.
(AP, 5/15/06)
2006 Jul 10, Falling concrete
slabs crushed a car inside one of Boston's troubled Big Dig tunnels,
killing Milena Delvalle (38) and tying up traffic with another
shutdown in the massive building project that has become a central
route through the city. In 2007 the family of Delvalle reached a $6
million settlement with the epoxy supplier blamed for the accident.
In 2008 the family settled a wrongful death suit for over $28
million.
(AP, 7/11/06)(SFC, 7/12/06, p.A5)(SFC, 12/26/07,
p.A4)(SFC, 10/1/08, p.C5)
2006 Jul 13, The Massachusetts
Turnpike authority said it found as many as 240 potential defects in
ceiling bolts on Boston’s Big Dig tunnel. Gov. Mitt Romney filed
emergency legislation and called for the resignation of the head of
the Turnpike Authority in the wake of falling concrete slabs that
killed a woman on July 10.
(SFC, 7/14/06, p.A4)
2006 Jul 27, Matthew Amorello,
chairman of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, resigned in the
wake of problems with Boston’s Big Dig tunnels.
(SFC, 7/28/06, p.A10)
2006 Oct 14, Former US Rep.
Gerry Studds (69) died at Boston Medical Center, several days after
he collapsed while walking his dog. He was the first openly gay
person elected to Congress (1972-1997).
(AP, 10/14/06)
2006 Oct 29, In the northeast
US thousands of homes and businesses had no electricity as a storm
system blasted the region with winds gusting to more than 50 mph,
knocking over trees and a construction crane. The storm was blamed
for at least two deaths.
(AP, 10/29/06)
2006 Oct 30, Mass. Sen. John
Kerry told a California college audience that young people who
didn't study hard might "get stuck in Iraq," prompting harsh
Republican criticism; Kerry later said it was a botched joke against
President Bush's handling of the war.
(AP, 10/30/07)
2006 Nov 1, Senator John Kerry,
D-Mass., apologized to "any service member, family member or
American" offended by his "botched joke" about how young people
might get "stuck in Iraq" if they did not study hard and do their
homework.
(AP, 11/1/07)
2006 Nov 8, US Democrats took
over Republican–held mansions in 6 states to boast 28 of the
nation’s 50 governors. In Massachusetts Deval Patrick succeeded Mit
Romney; in Ohio Ted Strickland won over Kenneth Blackwell by 24
percent; Bill Ritter won in Colorado.
(Econ, 11/11/06, p.39)(Econ, 8/2/08, p.31)
2006 Nov 22, Two explosions at
a chemical plant in Danvers, Mass., wrecked 25 homes and left nearly
400 people homeless. 10 people suffered minor injuries.
(SFC, 11/23/06, p.A4)
2006 Dec 10, Boston opened its
new $41 million Institute of Contemporary Art, designed by Diller
Scofidio + Renfro architects.
(SFC, 12/5/06, p.F3)
2007 Feb 11, Harvard Univ.
appointed Drew Gilpin Faust as its 28th and first female president.
(SFC, 2/12/07, p.A5)
2007 Feb 13, Mitt Romney,
former one-term Republican governor of Massachusetts, officially
entered the 2008 presidential race. In what amounted to a
made-for-TV coming-out tour, Romney announced his candidacy in
Michigan, the place of his birth. His father George Romney, a
Michigan governor in the 1960s and an AMC chief executive, made a
short-lived attempt at the presidency four decades ago.
(AP, 2/13/07)
2007 Feb 15, The Mashpee
Wampanoag Indians on Cape Cod, Mass., were recognized as a sovereign
Indian nation. They first submitted their petition for recognition
in 1990. This was the group that befriended the Pilgrims in 1620.
(Econ, 3/3/07, p.37)
2007 Mar 13, In Boston Raymond
Echavarria (23) dragged his ex-girlfriend, Xiomara Rhodes (21) into
an elevator in the office building where she worked and ignited a
can of gasoline. Investigators treated the slaying as a
murder-suicide.
(SFC, 3/16/07, p.A8)
2007 Apr 16, Robert Cheruiyot
of Kenya won his 3rd Boston Marathon in 2:14:13. Russia’s Lidiya
Grigoryeva won in 2:29:18.
(WSJ, 4/17/07, p.A1)
2007 May 9, Alfred D. Chandler
Jr., American historian, died in Massachusetts. He helped establish
the field of business history. His books included “Strategy and
Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Revolution”
(1962).
(WSJ, 5/12/07, p.A8)(Econ, 5/19/07, p.91)
2007 Jul 1, Former Gov. Mitt
Romney’s compulsory health plan for Massachusetts went into force.
(Econ, 7/7/07, p.30)
2007 Jul 26, A federal judge in
Boston ordered the government to pay a record nearly $102 million
for the FBI's role in the 1968 wrongful murder convictions of four
men. Judge Nancy Gertner powerfully condemned misconduct that she
said ran "all the way up to the FBI director."
(www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/27/AR2007072700282.html)
2007 Sep 1, Clay Buchholz
threw a no-hitter in his second major league start, just hours after
being called up by the Boston Red Sox. Buchholz struck out nine,
walked three and hit one batter to give the Red Sox a 10-0 victory
over Baltimore.
(AP, 9/1/08)
2007 Sep 6, Alex (31), a gifted
African Grey parrot that could count to six, identify colors and
even express frustration with repetitive scientific trials, died at
Brandeis Univ., Mass., after 30 years of helping researchers better
understand the avian brain.
(AP, 9/12/07)(Econ, 9/22/07, p.103)
2007 Oct 2, Nasdaq agreed to
acquire the Boston stock Exchange for about $61 million.
(WSJ, 10/3/07, p.C3)
2007 Oct 21, The Boston Red Sox
won the American League championship in Game 7 of their series with
the Cleveland Indians, 11-2.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2007 Oct 28,
In Denver the Boston Red Sox swept to their second World
Series title in four years with a 4-3 win over the Colorado Rockies
in Game 4.
(AP, 10/29/07)
2007 Oct 29, Police in riot
gear cleared several large crowds gathered around Fenway Park in the
early morning after the Red Sox won their second World Series title
in four years.
(AP, 10/29/07)
2008 Jan 23, Bechtel Corp. and
its partner Parsons Brinckerhoff in Boston’s Big Dig announced an
agreement to pay $407 million to settle a government lawsuit and
avoid criminal charges over the 2006 collapse that left one woman
dead.
(SFC, 1/24/08, p.C1)
2008 Jan, In Massachusetts Ly
Van Aggadipo (b.1917), a Cambodia-born Buddhist monk, died. He had
fled Cambodia in 1979 and later settled in the US. In 2010 friends
and followers released a book of his poetry titled “Oh! Maha Mount
Dangrek,” which contained an autobiographical poem on the horrors of
the Khmer Rouge and a friend’s story of love in the time of
genocide.
(SFC, 3/23/10, p.E3)
2008 May 20, Massachusetts Sen.
Edward Kennedy (76) was diagnosed with a malignant bran tumor.
(WSJ, 5/21/08, p.A1)
2008 May 28, In Newton,
Massachusetts, a collision between two commuter trains killed driver
Terrese Edmonds (24). Passengers reported seeing Ms. Edmonds using a
cell phone moments before the collision.
(WSJ, 5/30/08, p.A2)
2008 Jun 12, The University of
Massachusetts rescinded an honorary law degree awarded 22 years ago
to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, calling his politics
"egregious" and his leadership an "assault on human rights."
(AP, 6/13/08)
2008 Oct 7, Harvard Univ. said
medical device billionaire Hansjorg Wyss, chairman of Swiss-based
Synthes Inc., had donated $125 million, the largest one-time gift in
the history of the school. In 2004 Wyss had donated $25 million to
support doctoral programs at Harvard.
(WSJ, 10/8/08, p.A6)
2008 Oct 17, Harvard Univ.
announced a gift of $45 million and 31 major works of art from 1936
alumna Emily Rauh Pulitzer for the Harvard Art Museum. It was the
largest gift in the history of the museum.
(SFC, 10/18/08, p.E3)
2008 Oct 26, In Massachusetts
Christopher Bizilj died after accidentally shooting himself in the
head with an Uzi submachine gun. In 2011 gun fair organizer Edward
Fleury was cleared of charges of furnishing machine guns to minors
during the gun fair in Westfield.
(www.mahalo.com/christopher-bizilj)(SFC, 1/15/11,
p.A4)
2008 Nov 4, Massachusetts
voters passed Question 2, a measure to decriminalize the possession
of less than an ounce of marijuana, with 65% in support. Under the
state constitution the measure becomes law after 30 days.
(SFC, 11/7/08, p.A7)(Econ, 11/8/08, p.48)
2008 Dec 13, In New Hampshire
370,000 customers still had no electricity following a huge ice
storm. Utility crews worked through a night of hand-numbing cold in
the Northeast but they still had a long way to go before restoring
power to all of the more than 1 million homes and businesses blacked
out by the storm. Most of the outages were in New Hampshire,
Massachusetts, Maine and New York.
(AP, 12/13/08)
2008 In Boston a biohacker
movement began when Jason Bobe co-founded a 2-member group called
DIYbio (do-it-yourself biology).
(SSFC, 12/20/09, p.A18)
2009 Jan 5, Former US
Representative Joseph P. Kennedy said Citgo Petroleum, the US
refiner owned by the Venezuelan government, planned to stop
deliveries to his Boston-based nonprofit, Citizens’ Energy, due to
falling oil prices. The stop order was removed 2 days later.
(WSJ, 1/6/08, p.A7)(AP, 1/8/09)
2009 Feb 11, Massachusetts' top
securities regulator said the wife of accused Wall Street swindler
Bernard Madoff pulled $15 million out of a brokerage account only
days before her husband was arrested.
(Reuters, 2/12/09)
2009 Mar 28, In Milton,
Massachusetts, Samantha Revelus (17) was stabbed and killed by her
brother. Kerby Revelus (23) then decapitated his 5-year-old sister
as her birthday cake from the day before sat on the kitchen table.
He then turned on his 9-year-old sister, who called police.
Responding officers broke down the door and shot him dead. Sarafina
was hospitalized with defensive wounds to her hands and stab wounds
in her abdomen and one of her legs.
(AP, 3/30/09)
2009 Apr 14, In Massachusetts
Julissa Brisman (26) was found dead at the Boston Marriott Copley
Place. On April 20 police arrested medical student Philip Markoff
(22) of Quincy, in the woman's death. Police believed Markoff may
have been involved in other crimes against women who also posted ads
on Craigslist. On Aug 15, 2010, Markoff was found dead in his cell
in Boston.
(AP, 4/21/09)(SFC, 8/16/10, p.A7)
2009 Apr 21, The 114th Boston
Marathon was won by Ethiopia’s Deriba Merga for the men and Salina
Kosgei of Kenya for the women.
(WSJ, 4/21/09, p.A1)
2009 Apr 27, Five members of
the US Congress were arrested while protesting the expulsion of aid
groups from Darfur in front of the Sudanese Embassy in Washington,
DC. The included Democratic Reps. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, Jim
McGovern of Massachusetts, John Lewis of Georgia, Donna Edwards of
Maryland and Lynn Woolsey of California.
(AP, 4/27/09)
2009 May 13, Massachusetts
transportation officials banned nearly all mass-transit drivers from
carrying cell phones or other digitals assistants in response to a
trolley driver’s recent text message that cause a crash injuring
nearly 50 people.
(SFC, 5/14/09, p.A4)
2009 May 23, It was reported
that millions of bats in at least 7 US states (Connecticut, New
York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia and West
Virginia) have died from white-nose syndrome, a fungal diseases. In
2011 the fungus Geomyces destructans was identified as the cause.
(Econ, 5/23/09, p.36)(SFC, 10/28/11, p.A18)
2009 May 31, Phil Bolger (81),
Gloucester, Mass., boat designer, committed suicide. His 600-700
boat designs included the famed Gloucester Gull (1961).
(SFC, 6/3/09,
p.B5)(www.smallboatforumtwo.com/forum7/30.html)
2009 Jun 30, Boston disbanded
its mounted police unit due to budget cuts. Founded in 1873 it was
the first mounted unit in the country.
(SFC, 6/29/09, p.A4)
2009 Jul 22, In Lynn,
Massachusetts, 6 boys, aged 7-15, used bricks to severely beat
Damien Merida (30), a Guatemalan immigrant, as he slept near
railroad tracks.
(http://tinyurl.com/l6cuf3)(SFC, 9/17/09, p.A7)
2009 Jul 24, President Barack
Obama conceded his words, that a white police officer "acted
stupidly" when he arrested a black university scholar in his own
home, were ill-chosen. He invited both men to visit him at the White
House, but stopped short of publicly apologizing for his remark.
Obama said he had personally telephoned the two men, Harvard
professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt.
James Crowley, in an effort to end the rancorous back-and-forth over
the issue. The case began on July 20, when word broke that Gates
(58) had been arrested five days earlier at the 2-story home he
rents from Harvard.
(AP, 7/25/09)
2009 Jul 31, A jury ordered
Joel Tenenbaum (b.1983), a student at Boston Univ., to pay damages
of $675,000 for sharing 30 songs over the Internet. He was later
ordered to destroy his illegal music files — but a judge declined to
force him to stop promoting the activity.
(Econ, 9/5/09, TQ
p.4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Tenenbaum)(AP, 12/7/09)
2009 Aug 11, Eunice Kennedy
Shriver (88), the sister of President John F. Kennedy, died at a
Hyannis hospital. She carried on the family's public service
tradition by founding the Special Olympics and championing the
rights of the mentally disabled. Shriver organized the first Special
Olympics in 1968 in Chicago.
(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 25, Sen. Edward M.
Kennedy (b.1932) of Massachusetts, died at his home on Cape Cod
after a yearlong struggle with brain cancer. He was the last
surviving brother in an enduring political dynasty and one of the
most influential senators in history. His memoir “True Compass: A
Memoir” was published in September.
(AP, 8/26/09)(Econ, 9/19/09, p.97)
2009 Sep 22, The Massachusetts
state Senate approved a bill allowing the appointment of a temporary
replacement for the late Sen. Edward Kennedy. The measure had passed
the House last week.
(SFC, 9/23/09, p.A10)
2009 Sep 24, Massachusetts’
Gov. Deval Patrick named former Democratic Party chairman Paul G.
Kirk Jr. to temporarily fill the late Sen. Edward Kennedy's seat.
The appointment will let Kirk, who was close friends with the
senator, serve in the post until voters pick a permanent replacement
in a Jan. 19 special election.
(AP, 9/24/09)
2009 Oct 1, The 19th annual Ig
Nobel Prizes were awarded at Harvard. The physics prize went to a
study of why pregnant women don’t tip over. The chemistry prize was
awarded to scientists who turned tequila into diamonds. The
veterinary medicine prize was given for finding that cows that have
names make more milk than those who remain anonymous. The medicine
prize went to a physician who, for fifty years, cracked the knuckles
on only his left hand to test his mother’s contention that
knuckle-cracking causes arthritis.
(http://tinyurl.com/yc5pndy)
2009 Oct 21, US federal
prosecutors in Massachusetts arrested Tarek Mehanna (27) of Sudbury,
a suburb of Boston. Prosecutors said he had conspired to kill two
prominent US politicians and carry out a holy war by attacking
shoppers in US malls and American troops in Iraq. Mehanna, a US
citizen, had been arrested in November and charged with lying to the
FBI in December 2006 when asked about the whereabouts of Daniel
Maldonado, who is now serving a 10-year prison sentence for training
alongside al-Qaida members to overthrow the Somali government. On
Dec 20, 2011, Mehanna was convicted of conspiring to support
al-Qaida and other terrorism charges.
(AP, 10/21/09)(SFC, 10/22/09, p.A4)(SFC,
12/21/11, p.A8)
2009 Dec 2, Court documents
filed in Boston said Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has agreed to pay $40
million to 87,500 Massachusetts employees who claimed the retailer
denied them rest and meals breaks, manipulated time cards and
refused to pay overtime.
(AP, 12/2/09)
2009 Christian Carl
Gerhartsreiter, a German national who came to the United States in
the 1970s, was convicted in Boston in the kidnapping of his
7-year-old daughter. He had assumed many identities, including Clark
Rockefeller, was sentenced to 4-5 years in prison. In 2011 Los
Angeles prosecutors filed a murder charge against Gerhartsreiter in
the 1985 disappearance of 27-year-old John Sohus. In 2011 Mark Seal
authored “The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and
Spectacular Fall of a Serial Imposter.”
(AP, 3/16/11)(SSFC, 7/10/11, p.G6)
2010 Jan 14, In Massachusetts
Phoebe Prince (15), an Irish immigrant, hanged herself following
extensive bullying at South Hadley High School. 9 teenagers later
faced charges including statutory rape by 2 boys and criminal
harassment by 9 girls.
(SFC, 3/30/10, p.A10)
2010 Jan 19, In Massachusetts
Democrat Martha Coakley lost to Republican State Sen. Scott Brown
(50) in a special election slowing down President Barack Obama's
agenda and loosening the Democratic grip on the US Senate.
(AP, 1/19/10)(AP, 1/20/10)
2010 Jan 24, Daniel Kerrigan
(70), the father of figure skater Nancy Kerrigan, died after a
disturbance at the family's Massachusetts home. Brother Mark
Kerrigan (45) was charged with assaulting the 70-year-old father.
(AP, 1/25/10)
2010 Apr 1, Massachusetts
regulators issued their first batch of health care price controls,
rejecting the vast majority of small business health premium
increases sought this year by the state's major insurers. Insurers
said caps on their charges are justified only if there are similar
caps on the costs that health care providers, such as doctors and
hospital networks, charge them. That is the subject of pending
legislation.
(AP, 4/1/10)
2010 Apr 16, US banking
regulators shut down 8 banks, including 2 in northern California, 3
in Florida, one in Washington state, one in Massachusetts, and one
in Michigan, bringing the total this year to 50. In 2009 140 banks
failed in the US compared to 25 in 2008 and 3 in 2007.
(SFC, 4/19/10, p.D3)
2010 Apr 26,
Massachusetts-based Charles River Laboratories International Inc., a
medical research equipment and services company, announced plans to
buy WuXi PharmaTech, a Chinese pharmaceutical outsourcing company,
for $1.6 billion.
(AP, 4/26/10)
2010 Jun 3, Former
Massachusetts state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson pleaded guilty to 8 counts
of attempted extortion. The Boston Democrat had been captured on
video stuffing bribe money into her sweater and bra.
(SFC, 6/4/10, p.A6)
2010 Jul 8, The curator of the
Nieman Foundation at Harvard, which has offered mid-career Nieman
fellowships since 1938, said that a consular official at the US
Embassy in Bogota told him that Colombian journalist Hollman Morris
has been ruled permanently ineligible for a visa under the
"Terrorist activities" section of the USA Patriot Act. Hollman has
been highly critical of ties between illegal far-right militias and
allies of outgoing President Alvaro Uribe.
(AP, 7/8/10)
2010 Sep 4, Hurricane Earl
brushed past the Northeast US and dumped heavy, wind-driven rain on
Cape Cod cottages and fishing villages, but caused little damage. It
continued north and made landfall near Western Head, Nova Scotia.
Earl lost its tropical storm status over Canada, but the storm still
left one person dead and nearly one million people without power in
the northeastern.
(AP, 9/4/10)(AFP, 9/5/10)
2010 Nov 14, Delvonte Tisdale
(16) apparently fell from the sky after stowing away in an
airplane’s wheel well at the Charlotte-Douglas International Airport
in Charlotte, NC. His mutilated body was found in a Boston suburb.
(SFC, 12/11/10, p.A4)(http://tinyurl.com/2dmblgm)
2010 Nov 23, Alfred Gaynor
(43), a serial killer from western Massachusetts admitted to
strangling a woman in 1995, his first victim of eight.
(SFC, 11/24/10, p.A8)
2010 Dec 16, Lorillard Tobacco
Co. was ordered to pay $81 million in punitive damages to the estate
and son of a Boston woman who started smoking at age 13. A day
earlier jurors ordered Lorillard to pay $71 million in compensatory
damages to Willie Evans and the estate of his mother Marie, who died
of lung cancer in 2002.
(SFC, 12/17/10, p.A10)
2010 Dec 26, In Massachusetts
police officer John McGuire was shot dead while investigating a
robbery in Woburn. Scott Hanwright (19) was charged for murder and
Kevin Dingwell (51) was charged with being an accessory after the
fact. A 3rd suspect, Dominic Cinelli (57) was fatally shot by
responding officers.
(SFC, 12/28/10, p.A6)
2011 Jan 3, Boston scientists
and health care giant Johnson & Johnson announced that they are
joining forces to bring a blood test for cancer to market. Four big
cancer centers also will start studies using the experimental test
this year. The test is so sensitive that it can spot a single cancer
cell lurking among a billion healthy ones.
(AP, 1/3/11)
2011 Feb 27, Joule Unlimited, a
Massachusetts biotechnology company, said it has invented a
genetically-engineered organism that it says simply secretes diesel
fuel or ethanol wherever it finds sunlight, water and carbon
dioxide.
(AP, 2/28/11)
2011 Jun 1, In Massachusetts at
least two late-afternoon tornadoes shocked emergency officials with
their suddenness and violence. At least 3 people were killed in the
state's first tornado-related deaths in 16 years.
(AP, 6/2/11)
2011 Jun 9, Goldman Sachs Group
agreed to pay a $10 million fine and stop giving special treatment
to wealthy clients, in a consent order that settled an action
brought by Massachusetts’ securities regulators. Goldman Sachs was
accused of having a two-tiered approach to its Massachusetts
customers: giving preferential financial advice and tips to its
wealthiest clients, while not giving its other customers equal
access to that information.
(Reuters, 6/9/11)
2011 Jun 10, Officials from
NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) were trying
to find the person who has been shooting and killing gray seals. In
the past month, five adult seals, all with gunshot wounds to the
head, have been found dead on Cape Cod (MA) beaches.
(Boston Globe, 6/10/11)(New Bedford MA Standard-Times, 6/10/11)
2011 Jun 10, In a surgical
procedure that took more than twenty hours, Charla Nash (57), a
Connecticut woman disfigured in a Feb 16, 2009, attack by her
friend’s chimpanzee Travis, received a face transplant at Brigham
& Women’s Hospital in Boston. She is only the third person in
the United States to receive a full face transplant. At the same
time, surgeons also attempted to give Nash a hand transplant, but
this procedure was not successful.
(Boston Globe, 6/10/11)(AP, 6/10/11)
2011 Jun 15, A jury
convicted Salvatore (Sal) DiMasi, former speaker of the
Massachusetts House of Representatives, of corruption, finding that
he used his office help a software company to gain lucrative state
contracts in exchange for kickbacks. He was found guilty of
seven of the nine charges against him, including extortion and
conspiracy to defraud citizens of his honest services.
(Boston Globe, 6/15/11)
2011 Jun 18, Yelena Bonner
(b.1923), Russian rights activist and widow of Nobel Peace Prize
winner Andrei Sakharov, died in Boston.
(SFC, 6/20/11, p.C3)
2011 Jul 19, Harvard Univ.
fellow Aaron Schwartz, a student of ethics, was charged with hacking
into the MIT computer network to steal nearly 5 million academic
articles from JSTOR.
(SFC, 7/20/11, p.A7)
2011 Aug 18, US researchers
reported that the drug, SRT-1720, protects mice from the usual
diseases of obesity. The drug is one of a set designed by Sirtris, a
small pharmaceutical company in Cambridge, Mass.
(SFC, 8/19/11, p.A13)
2011 Sep 11, In Massachusetts
Adam Hall (34), a senior member of a local Hells Angels chapter, was
charged with the murders of three men, including a key witness
scheduled to testify against him. The charges were announced a day
after a two-week search for three Pittsfield men ended with the
recovery of their bodies in the western part of the state. The men
had disappeared on Aug 28 under suspicious circumstances.
(Reuters, 9/12/11)
2011 Sep 30, Massachusetts
police arrested Steven Bernard Hill, a singer known for his 1990
chart-topping love song, on charges of owing $420,000 in unpaid
child support. Hill, who performs as Stevie B, is best known
for the song "Because I Love You (The Postman Song)." It reached No.
1 on the Billboard charts in late 1990.
(AP, 10/3/11)
2011 Oct 11, In Boston more
than 50 protesters from the Occupy Boston movement were arrested
after they ignored warnings to move from a downtown greenway near
where they have been camped out for more than a week.
(AP, 10/11/11)
2011 Oct 29, A snowstorm socked
the Northeast US over the weekend, knocking out power to 2.7
million, snarling air and highway travel and dumping more than 2
feet of snow in a few spots as it slowly moved north out of New
England. States of emergency were declared in New Jersey,
Connecticut, Massachusetts and parts of New York.
(AP, 10/30/11)
2011 Dec 10, In Massachusetts
police swept through Dewey Square tearing down tents of the Occupy
Boston encampment and arrested dozens of protesters.
(SSFC, 12/11/11, p.A11)
2011 Donna L. Halper authored
“Boston Radio: 1920-2010.”
(http://tinyurl.com/6znfohh)
Go to
http://www.timelinesdb.com
Subject = Massachusetts
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