Boston Tea Party Day

Today is the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party! On a cold winter night in 1773, a group of Massachusetts colonists (known as the Sons of Liberty) disguised themselves as Mohawk Native Americans and dumped 342 crates of tea into Boston Harbor. They did this in protest of the Tea Act, which the British Parliament had put in place to protect the struggling East India Company. The result was a virtual monopoly on the American tea trade.

In response to the midnight raid, Parliament passed the Coercive Acts, which became known as the Intolerable Acts. This solidified the revolutionary movement in Boston and led the colonists to organize the first Continental Congress. The rest, as they say, is history!