Author: jake

Frank Hart: the First Black Ultrarunning Star, with Davy Crockett (episode 265)

Frank Hart was a transplant to Boston who became a famous star in a sport that no longer really exists.  Hart was a pedestrian, competing in grueling six-day races where the winner was the person who could run, walk, or even crawl the most miles by the time the clock ran out.  He made his debut in the Bean Pot Tramp here in Boston, but he followed the money to races in New York, London, San Francisco, and beyond, becoming one of America’s first famous Black athletes.  However, Frank Hart’s career declined along with the popularity of pedestrianism, while the rise of Jim Crow raised new hurdles for a Black competitor.  Joining us this week to discuss the rise and fall of Frank Hart is Davy Crockett, the host of the Ultrarunning History podcast and author of the new biography Frank Hart: The First Black Ultrarunning Star.


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Madam & Miss Will Shake Their Heels Abroad: In Search of America’s First Concert (episode 264)

How did Boston come to host the first concert ever performed in what’s now the United States?  Why was Boston resistant to the idea of a concert until almost 60 years after they became common in our ancestral city of London?  When did Puritan Boston relax its rules and customs enough to allow public performances of secular music?  Who brought the idea of charging for admission to a musical performance to colonial Boston, and what artistic legacy did he leave behind here?  Listen now to find out!


Continue reading Madam & Miss Will Shake Their Heels Abroad: In Search of America’s First Concert (episode 264)

A Christmas Eve Execution (episode 263)

Boston witnessed a grim Christmas in 1774, at the height of the British occupation.  There had been redcoats in Boston for six years at that point, but after the Tea Party the previous December, the number of occupying troops skyrocketed, until there was nearly one British soldier for every adult male Bostonian.  They were there to enforce the intolerable acts, and their presence only fanned the flames of rebellion in the colony.  An increased Army presence in Boston always led to an increase in desertions, and December 1774 was no exception.  On the 17th, while his unit was away on exercises, Private William Ferguson got really drunk, and then he either tried to desert and start a new life here in America, or he went to see about getting some laundry done.  Either way, he was convicted, and Boston was shocked to bear witness to an execution by firing squad in the middle of Boston Common, bright and early on Christmas Eve.  


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Thanksgiving Classics (episode 262)

For Thanksgiving, we are revisiting three classic episodes of HUB History.  First, learn how the carol “Over the River and Through the Wood” started out as a Thanksgiving song, and why the songwriter’s extreme beliefs almost cost her livelihood.  Then, hear how 19th century Boston got the vast flocks of turkeys needed for a traditional Thanksgiving to market, and then to the dining room table.  And finally, prepare to be surprised when you hear that college students, even Harvard students and even John Adams’ kids, have been known to drink and cause trouble, such as the 1787 Thanksgiving day riot.


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The Trolley of Death (episode 261)

106 years ago this week, a terrible accident took place within sight of South Station.  November 7, 1916 was election day in Boston, but it was an otherwise completely ordinary autumn afternoon for the passengers who packed themselves into streetcar number 393 of the Boston Elevated Railway for their evening commute through South Boston to South Station and Downtown Crossing.  The everyday monotony of the trip home was shattered in an instant, when the streetcar crashed through the closed gates of the Summer Street bridge and plunged through the open drawbridge and into the dark and frigid water below.  How many could be saved, and how many would have to perish for this evening to be remembered as Boston’s greatest moment of tragedy for a generation?


Continue reading The Trolley of Death (episode 261)

The Gentlemen’s Mob (episode 260)

19th Century Boston was a riotous town, and in past episodes, we’ve examined everything from anti-draft riots to anti-catholic riots to anti-immigrant riots that took place in this city in the 19th century.  The incident on Washington Street on October 21, 1835 was different, however.  Where most of Boston’s 19th century riots erupted from street violence among and directed by the working classes, the mob’s attack on the Female Anti Slavery Society and abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison was led by a group characterized as “gentlemen of property and influence.”  Enraged by the audacity of radical calls for immediate abolition, this mob of respectable gentlemen broke down the doors, scattered members of the Female Anti Slavery Society, nearly lynched William Lloyd Garrison, and inspired abolitionist leader Maria Chapman to exclaim, “If this is the last bulwark of freedom, we may as well die here as anywhere!”


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The Nazi Spy Ship (episode 259)

When it came steaming into Boston Harbor 81 years ago this week, the fishing trawler Buskø was escorted by a Coast Guard cutter, with armed guards watching over her crew.  The next day’s headlines declared that the US had captured a Nazi spy ship manned by Gestapo agents who were setting up secret bases in Greenland, but the truth turned out to be more complicated.  The Busko was sailing under the Norwegian flag and manned by a Norwegian crew, yet their peaceful voyage to deliver supplies to isolated Norwegian hunters in the arctic was used to cover up Nazi intelligence gathering, so what would the fate of the ship be?  And while war was raging in Europe, the United States was technically at peace, so on what charges were the Norwegian crew held at the East Boston immigration station?


Continue reading The Nazi Spy Ship (episode 259)

The Nazis of Copley Square, with Professor Charles R Gallagher (episode 258)

Professor Charles R Gallagher’s recent book The Nazis of Copley Square: The Forgotten Story of the Christian Front is an in depth accounting of an organization that was wildly popular in Boston and beyond in the years before the US entered World War II.  The Christian Front was deeply rooted in Catholic doctrines, but the value at its core was a form of anticommunism that members treated as interchangeable with antisemitism.  Professor Gallagher will tell us how the group was founded and how the doctrine of Catholic Action and the Mystical Body of Christ theory enabled their hateful ideology.  He’ll also introduce the intellectual leaders of the group, the streetfighters who led it down the primrose path to paramilitarism, and the Nazi spymaster who turned the group toward treason.  


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Vilna Shul: Last Synagogue Standing (episode 257)

The West End and the North Slope of Beacon Hill have gone through extreme transformations over time. At the turn of the 20th century, these neighboring communities welcomed Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, though very few signs of those vibrant communities remain today. As the last of the purpose-built immigrant synagogues still standing in downtown Boston, the Vilna Shul is a unique building with a rich history of immigration, community, and the evolving American identity. Vilna Shul Executive Director Dalit Horn joins us this week to talk about the history and future of this unique synagogue.


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Mutiny at Prospect Hill (episode 256)

During the summer of 1775, when the siege of Boston was at its peak, about 1500 Pennsylvania Riflemen answered a call for volunteers.  By the time they reached the American lines in Cambridge, expectations for these troops were through the roof.  Thanks in no small part to a publicity campaign engineered by John Adams, the New England officers commanding the troops around Boston believed that these fresh troops were capable of nearly everything.  Their reputation was based in part upon the riflemen’s origins on the frontier, and in part on the advanced weaponry they carried.  While they’re the status quo today, rifles were new to both armies that were facing off in Boston and nearly unheard of here in New England.  However, fame went to these soldiers’ heads, and after only a couple of months on the front line, they were nearly ungovernable.  They refused to take part in the regular duties of an American soldier, they staged jailbreaks when their comrades were locked up for infractions against military discipline, and on September 10th, they staged the first mutiny in the new Continental Army.  


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