Tag: 18th Century

Episode 66: Cotton Mather REALLY Hated Pirates

This week, we’re talking about the conflict between Puritans and pirates in the late 1600s and early 1700s. Cotton Mather is remembered for his role in the Salem Witch Trials, but he was the childhood minister to Ben Franklin, ultimate symbol of the American Enlightenment, and he died less than fifty years before our Declaration of Independence was signed. In a way, Mather was one of the last Puritans, and some of his most famous sermons are the ones he wrote for mass executions of pirates.  Times were changing, setting up a conflict between rigidly hierarchical Puritan societies and fledgling democracies that could be found on board pirate ships.

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Episode 54: The 1747 Impressment Riot

In 1747, a British Commodore began kidnapping sailors and working men in Boston, and the people of the city wouldn’t stand for it.  Three days of violence followed, in a draft riot that pitted the working class of Boston against the Colonial government and Royal Navy.

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Episode 46: Aeronauts, Ascents, and the Early History of Ballooning in Boston

Early Boston aeronauts used balloons to perform scientific experiments, cross the English channel, take the first aerial photographs, and provide public entertainment.  Whether by hot air or hydrogen, these pioneers made their way into the air, and into the history books.

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Episode 42: Total Eclipse of the Podcast

Your humble hosts are traveling this week, trying to see the first total eclipse of our lifetimes.  While we’re gone, listen to the story of the 1806 eclipse, the first total eclipse seen in Boston after European colonization.

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Episode 36 Boston in the Golden Age of Piracy, Part 2

In this episode, we continue our tale of Boston in the Golden Age of Piracy, picking up at the end of the War of The Spanish Succession.  We’ll learn about some of the most fearsome and notorious pirates in history, as well as one of the most ineffective.  We’ll see how one of these pirates gave a founding father his start in public life, which US president’s great grandfather bought a former pirate as a slave, and what other president’s great grandfather decapitated a pirate with an axe.  

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Episode 34: Boston in the Golden Age of Piracy, part 1

Shiver me timbers!  This is the first in a two-part series about Boston’s role in the Golden Age of Piracy, from 1650 to 1726.  A few pirates set sail from our city, some preyed on the shipping coming in and out of our port, and even more met their ends on the gallows in Boston.  We’ll hear stories of daring raids and buried treasures, of mutiny, jailbreak, and double crossing.

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Episode 33: The Four Burials of Joseph Warren

Dr. Joseph Warren was the greatest Patriot leader you’ve never heard of.  His many accomplishments led the royal governor of Massachusetts, General Thomas Gage, to remark that “The death of Joseph Warren is akin to the death of five hundred Patriots.”  He was so in demand that his body was moved three times after his death at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

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Episode 30: Resurrection Men, a brief history of grave robbing in Boston

Boston, today a city rich with world-class hospitals and medical schools, has a long history of medical innovation.  This week, we take a look at the characters who laid the foundation for these advancements – Resurrection Men. What founding father was a member of a secret grave robbing club?  What were the steps to pulling off the perfect heist?  Tune in this week to find out!

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Episode 27: Burned at the Stake!

Despite what a lot of people think, the victims of the Salem witch trials were hanged, not burned at the stake.  However, in the history of Massachusetts, two women were executed by burning them at the stake, one in 1681 and another in 1755.  If witchcraft was a crime against both the state and God, what crime could be worse in Puritan Boston?  A note about the content this week.  We frankly describe acts of brutal violence, and we at times use the racial language of our 17th and 18th century sources.  If you usually listen with children, you might want to listen to this episode alone first and decide if it’s appropriate for them.

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Episode 26: Isaiah Thomas and the American Oracle of Liberty

This week, we’re going to talk about Isaiah Thomas.  Not the NBA star, but the colonial printer and founder of the Massachusetts Spy, whose office became known by the British as the Sedition Foundry.  He snuck his presses out of Boston on the eve of war, helped Paul Revere spread the news of the British march, and shared first-hand accounts of the battles at Concord and Lexington.  Later, he would spread his business empire across multiple states, and become a historian, founding the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts.  Listen to his story!

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