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Dateline
1614 Captain John Smith maps the New England coast, names the Charles River after King Charles I of England, and calls the area "a paradise."
1621 A party of 11 led by Myles Standish explores Boston Harbor, visits with the Massachuset Indians, and returns to Plymouth.
ca. 1624 William Blackstone settles on the Shawmut peninsula (on Beacon Hill) with 200 books and a Brahma bull.
1630 John Winthrop leads settlers to present-day Charlestown. Seeking better water, they push on to Shawmut, which they call Trimountain. On September 7, they name it Boston in honor of the English hometown of many Puritans. On October 19, 108 voters attend the first town meeting.
1632 Boston becomes the capital of Massachusetts.
1635 Boston Latin School, America's first public school, opens.
1636 Harvard College is founded.
1638 America's first printing press is established in Cambridge.
1639 The country's first post office opens in Richard Fairbank's home.
1660 Unrepentant Quaker Mary Dyer is hanged on the Common.
1704 America's first regularly published newspaper, the Boston News Letter, is founded.
1721 Smallpox inoculations are first administered, over the violent objections of many residents.
1764 "Taxation without representation" is denounced in reaction to the Sugar Act.
1770 On March 5, five colonists are killed outside what is now the Old State House, an incident soon known as the Boston Massacre.
1773 On December 16, during the Boston Tea Party, colonists dump 342 chests of tea into the harbor from three British ships.
1774 The "Intolerable Acts," which include the closure of the port of Boston and the quartering of British troops in colonists' homes, go into effect.
1775 On April 18, Paul Revere and William Dawes spread the word that the British are marching toward Lexington and Concord. The next day, "the shot heard round the world" is fired. On June 17, the British win the Battle of Bunker Hill but suffer heavy casualties.
1776 On March 17, royal troops evacuate by ship. On July 18, the Declaration of Independence is read from the balcony of the Old State House.
1790s The China trade helps bring great prosperity to Boston.
1825 The first city census lists 58,277 people.
1831 William Lloyd Garrison publishes the first issue of the Liberator, a newspaper dedicated to emancipation.
1839 Boston University is founded.
1846 Doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital perform the first operation under general anesthesia (the removal of a jaw tumor).
1861 Massachusetts Institute of Technology is founded.
1863 Boston College is founded. In Charleston, S.C., the 54th Massachusetts Colored Regiment of the Union Army suffers heavy casualties in an unsuccessful attempt to capture Fort Wagner.
1870 Museum of Fine Arts is founded.
1872 The Great Fire burns 65 acres, consumes 800 buildings, and kills 33 people.
1876 Boston University professor Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone.
1878 Girls Latin School opens.
1881 Boston Symphony Orchestra is founded.
1895 Boston Public Library opens on Copley Square.
1897 The first Boston Marathon is run. The first subway in America -- a 1 3/4-mile stretch beneath Boylston Street -- opens.
1910 John F. "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald is elected mayor.
1913 James Michael Curley is elected mayor for the first time.
1918 The Red Sox celebrate their World Series victory; a championship drought begins.
1919 A storage tank at the corner of Foster and Commercial streets ruptures. Two million gallons of raw molasses spill into the streets of the North End, killing 21 people and injuring 150.
1930s The Great Depression devastates what remains of New England's industrial base.
1938 Guest conductor Nadia Boulanger becomes the first woman to lead the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
1940s World War II and the accompanying industrial frenzy restore some vitality to the economy, particularly the shipyards.
1942 A fire at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub kills 491 people.
1946 Boston's 1st Congressional District sends John F. Kennedy to Congress.
1954 Doctors at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital perform the first successful human-to-human organ transplant (of a kidney).
1957 The Boston Celtics win the first of their 16 NBA championships.
1958 The Freedom Trail is mapped out and painted.
1959 Construction of the Prudential Center begins -- and with it, the transformation of the skyline.
1962 Scollay Square is razed to make room for Government Center. Doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital carry out the first successful reattachment of a human limb, a 12-year-old boy's right arm.
1966 Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke, a Republican, becomes the first black elected to the U.S. Senate in the 20th century.
1969 Students protesting the Vietnam War occupy University Hall at Harvard.
1974 Twenty years after the U.S. Supreme Court made school segregation illegal, school busing begins citywide, sparking unrest in Roxbury and Charlestown.
1976 The restored Faneuil Hall Marketplace opens.
1988 The Central Artery/Third Harbor Tunnel Project, better known as the Big Dig, is approved.
1990s The murder rate plummets, the economy booms, and Boston again becomes a "hot" city.
1993 Thomas Menino is elected mayor, becoming the first Italian-American to hold the office.
1995 The New England Holocaust Memorial is dedicated. The first complete piece of the Big Dig, the Ted Williams Tunnel, opens.
1999 Busing quietly ends, not with a riot but with a court order.
2001 The 2000 Census shows Boston with a population of 589,141 -- 49.5% of which is white. On September 11, both planes that hit the World Trade Center originate in Boston.
2002 The New England Patriots win the Super Bowl.
2003 Boston bans smoking in all workplaces. The state supreme court rules that forbidding same-sex civil marriage violates the state constitution. The Leonard P. Zakim-Bunker Hill Bridge, the signature of the Big Dig and 21st-century Boston, opens to traffic. Demolition of the elevated Central Artery begins.
2004 The Red Sox win the World Series for the first time in 86 years. The Patriots win another Super Bowl. Massachusetts bans workplace smoking. Same-sex marriage becomes law.
2005 The Patriots win yet another Super Bowl. Boston-based Gillette is acquired by Procter & Gamble.
2006 The final piece of the elevated expressway comes down. Massachusetts elects its first African-American governor, Deval Patrick. The Institute of Contemporary Art, the first new art museum to open in Boston in almost a century, opens on the South Boston waterfront.
Note: This information was accurate when it was published, but can change without
notice. Please be sure to confirm all rates and details directly with the companies in question before
planning your trip.
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