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Balloonist Takes First Aerial Photograph
Balloonist Takes First Aerial Photograph
On this day in 1860, Boston newspapers carried an advertisement for an extraordinary event: photographer James Wallace Black would photograph Boston from a hot-air balloon hovering over the city. Black accomplished this well-publicized feat five...
Roger Williams Banished
Roger Williams Banished
On this day in 1635, Puritan minister Roger Williams was found guilty of spreading "newe & dangerous opinions" and banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Before leaving England in 1630, Williams had seen heretics whipped,...
"Snow Hurricane" Hits Massachusetts
"Snow Hurricane" Hits Massachusetts
On this day in 1804, a "snow hurricane" struck Massachusetts. The storm began with winds so powerful that whole forests were leveled. Houses, barns, chimneys, and church steeples came crashing down. Even when the wind...
Utopians Purchase Brook Farm
Utopians Purchase Brook Farm
On this day in 1841, a group of Boston-area utopians purchased Brook Farm in West Roxbury. The writer Nathaniel Hawthorne spent six months there and later wrote about his experiences in his satirical novel Blithedale...
Boston Doctors Use First Iron Lung
Boston Doctors Use First Iron Lung
On this day in 1928, Children's Hospital in Boston was the scene of the first use of an "iron lung." Developed by a young Harvard doctor, it was little more than a galvanized iron box,...
Framingham Disassembles Meetinghouse
Framingham Disassembles Meetinghouse
On this day in 1735, Framingham's town meeting voted to "give the old meeting house frame" to their minister, who would undoubtedly find another use for it. The town had erected its first meetinghouse in...
Margaret Marshall Appointed to Supreme Judicial Court
Margaret Marshall Appointed to Supreme Judicial Court
On this day in 1999, Margaret Marshall became the first woman appointed Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. The oldest court in the Western Hemisphere, the SJC was established in 1693 in the...
Indian Rights Activist Born in Amherst
Indian Rights Activist Born in Amherst
On this day in 1830, an Amherst College professor and his wife rejoiced at the safe delivery of their second child, Helen Maria Fiske. A lifelong friend of Emily Dickinson and a talented poet in...
Boston Dentist Demonstrates Ether
Boston Dentist Demonstrates Ether
On this day in 1846, a crowd gathered in the operating theater at Massachusetts General Hospital. A Boston printer with a tumor on his jaw lay on the table. Curious and skeptical physicians and...
Mashpee Indians Sue for Recognition
Mashpee Indians Sue for Recognition
On this day in 1978, a trial began on Cape Cod to determine whether the Mashpee Indians met the legal definition of a tribe. If they did, they could sue for the return of land...