Tag: 20th Century

The Mysterious Murder (Maybe) of Starr Faithful (episode 223)

When Starr Faithfull’s body washed up on a Long Island beach 90 years ago, the case became a national obsession.  At the center of the story was a beautiful young flapper, with a diary full of covert sexual conquests, a sordid history with a prominent politician, and a drug and booze fueled nightlife in the speakeasies of two major cities.  Was her death a suicide, driven by her dark past?  A tragic accident after one too many?  Or was it something darker, a murder for hire on behalf of a former Boston mayor… or his underworld adversaries?


Continue reading The Mysterious Murder (Maybe) of Starr Faithful (episode 223)

Expo 76: Future Vision or Fever Dream? (episode 219)

During the Kennedy administration, a group of Boston businessmen led by a millionaire dairy farmer hatched an audacious plan.  They proposed building an experimental city of the future on made land, piers, and floating platforms connecting Columbia Point in Dorchester with Thompson Island in Boston Harbor.  This new city would be the site of a World’s Fair timed to celebrate America’s Bicentennial, and the site would then be reused to solve all of Boston’s problems with housing, race relations, environmental damage, and economic decline.  Spoiler alert: We don’t have a futuristic city connecting Columbia Point with the Harbor Islands.  But the story of how a plan ripped straight out of science fiction almost came to be built in Boston reveals a lot about an optimistic city torn apart by the busing crisis.


Continue reading Expo 76: Future Vision or Fever Dream? (episode 219)

Literal Nazis (episode 215)

They stockpiled guns and ammunition.  They built homemade bombs.  They had a hit list of a dozen members of Congress who were targeted for assassination.  They believed themselves to be patriots, with soldiers and police officers among their ranks.  They rallied under the motto of America First, but they planned to overthrow our Constitutional government and install a fascist dictatorship.  Believe it or not, I’m not talking about the insurrection on January 6, 2021, but instead a plot that the FBI uncovered in January 1940.  The subsequent investigation threw a spotlight on a group called the Christian Front that made its headquarters at Boston’s Copley Plaza hotel, promoting violent attacks on Jewish Bostonians while accepting covert funding and support from a Nazi spymaster who flew the swastika proudly from his home on Beacon Hill.


Continue reading Literal Nazis (episode 215)

Ghost Stories (episode 208)

In honor of Halloween, I’m going to be sharing eight of my favorite Boston ghost stories this week.  From haunted houses and inexplicable premonitions recorded by Cotton and Increase Mather in the years leading up to the Salem Witch hysteria, to Nathaniel Hawthorne encountering his friend in the reading room at the Athenaeum for weeks after the friend’s death, to the apparition that only seems to appear in Boston’s most venerable gay bar when only one person is there to see it, we’ll cover nearly four hundred years of paranormal claims. And if you’re wondering why parts of the recording aren’t up to our usual standards, it’s because I was recording this after midnight, and I fell asleep in the middle of recording multiple times.


Continue reading Ghost Stories (episode 208)

Peace in Boston After the Civil War (episode 204)

Since last week’s show was about Boston’s 1851 Railroad Jubilee, which was an enormous celebration at a time when the nation was in the midst of a rush toward civil war, it seemed appropriate to discuss the Grand Peace Jubilee this week.  Held in Boston in 1869, when the war was still a raw wound on the American psyche, the Peace Jubilee was a musical spectacular unlike anything the world had ever seen.  Composer Patrick Gilmore hoped to bind the country together and help it heal… and if he happened to get rich in the process, that would just be icing on the cake.  This week’s show also revisits another peacetime memory of the Civil War in Boston.  In 1903, after the pain of the Civil War had dulled, Boston gathered at what is now the “General Hooker Entrance” to the State House to dedicate a statue to the highest ranking general from Massachusetts during the war.

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The World Fliers in Boston (episode 201)

The early 20th century was a time of aviation firsts, and one of those firsts dropped into Boston for three long, exciting days in 1924.  Five months after they started their journey in California, the Army Air Service pilots who made the first flight around the world were expected to touch down on US soil for the first time 96 years ago this week.


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When the US Army Invaded South Boston (episode 198)

In the 1940s, Boston was still an industrial city, and when the US entered World War II, that industrial might would be turned to wartime production. With industry comes labor disputes, and a new government agency was given extraordinary powers to resolve them. In other early cases, the National War Labor Board used its authority and the might of the military to break strikes by organized labor. However, in August 1942, they would step in to force an employer to honor their union contract, using the US Army to enforce workers’ rights. That employer was the SA Woods Machine Company of South Boston, and this Wednesday marks the anniversary of the military takeover of their plant, setting up an epic battle of wills between the SA Woods corporation and the US government, and between the company’s cantankerous president and the young major sent to take over his company.


Continue reading When the US Army Invaded South Boston (episode 198)

The Gold Gilded Grasshopper (episode 196)

Faneuil Hall’s grasshopper weathervane is 4 feet long, weighs about 80 pounds, and is made out of copper that’s been covered with 23 carat gold. It’s found at the top of an 8 foot spire above Faneuil Hall’s cupola, which is in turn seven stories above ground level. So imagine the surprise that swept Boston on a January day in 1974 when people looked up and realized that the grasshopper was gone.  


Continue reading The Gold Gilded Grasshopper (episode 196)

Prescott Townsend, From the First World War to the First Pride Parade, with Theo Linger (episode 193)

Prescott Townsend was one of the most interesting figures in Boston’s LGBTQ history.  He was the ultimate Boston Brahmin, coming of age at Harvard in the shadow of Teddy Roosevelt and enlisting in the Navy during World War I. He served time in prison after getting caught in a Beacon Hill tryst back when homosexuality was a crime in Boston, and spent decades as an activist, helping to found the gay liberation movement, and marched at the head of the nation’s first pride parade on the first anniversary of Stonewall.  We’re also going to meet a researcher who has uncovered new information about Prescott Townsend as part of an effort to improve how the National Park Service interprets the LGBTQ history of Boston.


Continue reading Prescott Townsend, From the First World War to the First Pride Parade, with Theo Linger (episode 193)

A People’s Guide to Greater Boston, with Joseph Nevins and Suren Moodliar (episode 192)

A People’s Guide to Greater Boston is a new kind of guidebook to Boston and surrounding towns.  Instead of giving an overview of the Freedom Trail and introducing readers to the hot restaurants and hotels of Boston, this guide uncovers the forgotten stories of radicals and activists hidden in every neighborhood and suburb.  It has sections covering Boston’s urban core, the neighborhoods, adjoining towns, and suburbs from Brockton to Haverhill.  In each section, the authors unearth a wide range of sites, and in some cases former sites, that are tied to Black, indigenous, labor, or other radical historic events and figures.  For listeners who complain that our normal episodes are too political, or our point of view is too liberal… well, sorry in advance.  This guide definitely doesn’t keep politics out of history, and its point of view is well to the left of our usual editorial voice.


Continue reading A People’s Guide to Greater Boston, with Joseph Nevins and Suren Moodliar (episode 192)