Shortly before 2:30 a.m. on Nov. 15, 1942 - a fire broke out in the ceiling above the first-floor kitchen of Luongo's Tap on Henry Street in East Boston - just 2 1/2 hours after some 200 couples had gathered for some dancing in the place's second-floor dance hall. Boston firefighters responded to what grew into a three-alarm blaze in the five-story brick building. Read more.
Boston College's Burns Library posted this photo of US Rep. Tip O'Neill voting in Cambridge in 1955.
The Dorchester Reporter reports several hundred people gathered Sunday at the Old Dorchester North Burial Ground in Uphams Corner to learn more about the historic cemetery, one of the oldest in Boston, but rarely open to the public.
Aline Boucher Kaplan photographed the flowers, photo and condolences book the JFK Library and Museum put out to honor Ethel Kennedy, Robert Kennedy's wife and a human-rights activist, who died today at 96.
The Boston Public Improvement Commission today approved renaming the road that bisects the Arnold Arboretum as Flora Way, to honor a Black woman enslaved by a nearby landowner in the 1700s, the Rename Bussey Street group of Roslindale and Jamaica Plain residents reports. Read more.
Two of the many sights you can get to on the El.
Before the MBTA, before even Charlie got stuck on the MTA, there was the Boston Elevated Railway Co., the El, a private company formed out of streetcar, bus and, yes, underground subways in the Boston area. Read more.
In 1989, The Unbearable Lightness of Being was playing at the Village Cinema in the Hancock Village Shopping Center on VFW Parkway in West Roxbury - and next door Stan Salter was serving up pastrami on rye and challah French Toast next door at his eponymous deli. Read more.
Earlier this month, the operator of the Orpheum Theatre, which opened in 1852, sued the foundation now building a Holocaust museum at the corner of Tremont Street and Hamilton Place - the alley that leads to the Orpheum's main entrance - for the right to continue blocking the ally on performance nights for use by entertainers' equipment trucks and patrons waiting to go inside. Read more.
In 1984, Lou Jones took an aerial photo of the two Boston Gas tanks on Commercial Point off the Expressway and Morrissey Boulevard in Dorchester. Read more.
The Boston Parks and Recreation Department, which owns the Arnold Arboretum, and Harvard University, which has 858 years left on its lease of the land, have petitioned the city Public Improvement Commission to change the name of Bussey Street to Flora Way. Read more.
On June 21, 1974, US District Court Judge W. Arthur Garrity issued his ruling in the case of Morgan v. Hennigan, which changed the city forever, concluding the Boston School Committee had created a segregated school system and that it was past time for a change: Read more.
Boston College's Burns Library posted this illustration for the Shooting the Chutes ride somebody would set up along Huntington Avenue at Parker Street back in the late 1890s - you get up to the top of a tower and then zoom, you shoot down the chute in a gondola and splash in the man-made pond at the bottom. Read more.
J.L. Bell begins to tell us the story of one of the Massachusetts Historical Society's more unusual mementos from the Battle of Bunker (yes, really Breed's) Hill: A large plaque with crossed swords, one used during the battle by Col. William Prescott from the provincial troops and the other used by Capt. John Linzee of the Royal Navy.
The YouTube channel NASS just posted a pretty cool restored/colorized video of our own fair city. Worth subscribing for some fun historical video from all over the world, but this one hits particularly close to home. Enjoy!
The Daily Free Press reports BU's dorm at 610 Beacon St. is now officially known as just 610 Beacon St.
The caption for this photo from the May 24, 1946 Boston Traveler reads: Read more.
Paul Nutting Jr. watched today as a crew from the Crosby Yacht Yard in Osterville unpacked the Victura at the JFK Presidential Library and Museum today for its annual summer stay there. Read more.
1893 MDC photo of the pumping station, including the smokestack. Source.
The Boston Landmarks Commission agreed yesterday with the owners of one of the 19th-century pumping stations across from the Chestnut Hill Reservoir that its crumbling 150-foot smokestack needs to be taken down before it collapses, either spontaneously or in even a mild earthquake. Read more.
Lee Toma got some photos of the USS Constitution - and some of its officers and crew - on one of its periodic turnaround cruises on Boston Harbor this morning.
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