Tag: Boston Harbor

Bathing Beauty Baffles Bashful Boston (episode 82)

We’re taking you to the beach for Memorial Day weekend.   111 years ago, champion swimmer Annette Kellerman was arrested on Revere Beach.  Her crime?  Appearing in public in a one piece bathing suit of her own design.  Along with being a record setting swimmer, Kellerman was a fitness and wellness guru, a vaudeville producer, movie actress, and a clothing designer.  Besides her athletic prowess, she was known for her physical beauty, appearing in Hollywood’s first nude scene. A Harvard professor would go so far as to claim that he had scientific proof that she was “the most beautifully formed woman of modern times.”   Puritanical Boston wasn’t prepared to see the exposed arms of such a specimen, so Kellerman was arrested for indecent exposure.


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The Sacred Cod (episode 81)

Meet the Sacred Cod, a five foot long wooden fish, carved and painted to resemble a cod. The mighty cod holds great prominence in Massachusetts history, as cod fishing was the first industry practiced by Europeans in the region. For perhaps 270 years or more, the Sacred Cod has served as a sort of mascot for the state House of Representatives, except for two days in 1933, when it went inexplicably missing.


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Pirate Classics (episode 80)

Arrrr, matey!  Nikki and I are running a pirate themed relay race on Cape Cod this weekend instead of recording a new episode, so of course we’re going to play three classic pirate stories this week.  The first two clips will highlight the role Boston played in the golden age of piracy, while the third discusses Puritan minister Cotton Mather’s complicated relationship with the pirates whose execution he oversaw.  Listen now!


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Episode 63: Puritan UFOs

What did TV character Fox Mulder have in common with John Winthrop, the Puritan founder of Boston? They both recorded strange lights in the sky and other unexplained phenomena in extensive detail. This week, we’re going to explore the close encounters Winthrop described in 1639 and 1644. There were unexplained lights darting around the sky in formation at impossible speeds, ghostly sounds, and witnesses who claimed to have lost time. It’s a scene straight out of the X-Files, except these are considered the first recorded UFO sightings in North America.

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Classics: Holidays on the Harbor (Episode 60)

If you’ve been listening to the show for a while, you’ll know that the Boston Harbor Islands are one of our favorite local destinations.  This week, we’re sharing three stories from the Harbor Islands, all of which originally aired within the first 20 episodes of the podcast.  We’ll hear about the zoo shipwreck, a hermit who made her home on the harbor, and the secret Harbor Island base where Nazis were smuggled into the country after World War II.

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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 51: The Confederates on Boston Harbor

During the Civil War, thousands of Confederate soldiers, diplomats, and politicians were imprisoned behind the walls of Fort Warren on Georges Island. Today, the fort is home to the only Confederate monument in Massachusetts, but not for much longer.

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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 19: A Tale of Two Hermits

This week’s episode examines two people who chose to live as hermits in and around Boston.  When you think of a hermit, your mental image is probably a monk or an aging eccentric in a cabin in the woods somewhere.  But our subjects this week sought out that kind of solitary existence among the hustle and bustle of the growing city of Boston in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  James Gately was known as the Hermit of Hyde Park, and Ann Winsor Sherwin was the Hermit of Boston Harbor.  Listen to the show to meet these unique characters!

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