Boston 1775 begins the saga of Revolutionary War skirmishes over Boston Light, the lighthouse that basically controlled nighttime navigation into Boston Harbor.

Like sci-fi fans who delight in finding continuity errors in Star Trek episodes, history buffs are enjoying themselves tremendously picking apart HBO's John Adams mini-series, including a sequence involving smallpox, which forced J.L. Bell to admit:

I must confess that I don't know my pus that well.

J.L. Bell reports on British preparations on March 15, 1776 to evacuate Boston:

... The General told us the Troops would embark this day and was told by General [James] Robertson it would be by three oclock. The Regiments all mustered, some of them marched down the wharf. Guards and Chevaux De Freze, were placed in the main streets and wharves in order to secure the retreat of Out Centinels. Several of the principle streets through which they were to pass were filled with Hhds. [hogsheads] filled with Horse-dung, large limbs of trees from the Mall [a tree-lined walk on Boston Common] to prevent a pursuit of the Continental Army. They manifestly appeared to be fearful of an attack. ...

J.L. Bell reports that while the upcoming HBO mini-series on our own John Adams might be riveting, possibly the most riveting scene of all never happened: A royal customs agent was not tarred and feathered here by a mob acting on the orders of John Hancock (although there was an actual tarring and feathering a year later; Adams represented a defendant in that case, which involved a ship that had been seized from Hancock).

J.L. Bell reprints part of a flier Revolutionaries set into the wind in the hopes they would flutter down on Redcoats encamped in Boston in 1775 - and on deserters from the American side:

J.L. Bell reprints a report by Henry Greenleaf, whose father, William, was the first person to ever recite the Declaration of Independence at what is now the Old State House, back in 1776:

... As his voice was rather weak, he requested Colonel [Thomas] Crafts to act as his herald; they stood together at the front of the balcony, and my father read a sentence, which was immediately repeated by Crafts, and so continued to the end, when was the huzza. ...

J.L. Bell shows that conspiracy theories are hardly a modern phenomenon.