Portal:Massachusetts/Selected anniversaries

Portal:Massachusetts/Selected anniversaries/January

• January 1, 1831 – The Liberator, a Boston based abolitionist newspaper known nationally for its uncompromising advocacy of emancipation, publishes its first issue.
• January 5, 1868 – Roxbury, one of the first towns founded as part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, is annexed into the city of Boston.
• January 17, 1950 – In what was at the time the largest robbery in the history of the United States, over $2.5 million in cash, checks, and money orders is stolen in the Great Brink's Robbery.
• January 24, 1791 – The Massachusetts Historical Society (pictured), a major archive of early American, Massachusetts, and New England history, is founded by Reverend Jeremy Belknap.

Portal:Massachusetts/Selected anniversaries/February

• February 3, 1794 – The Federal Street Theatre, the first purpose built theater in Boston, holds its opening performance.
• February 6, 1788 – Massachusetts becomes the sixth state to ratify the United States Constitution.
• February 9, 1895 – Volleyball, then called Mintonette, is created by William G. Morgan in Holyoke.
• February 17, 1968 – The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame (pictured) opens in Springfield, the city where Naismith invented the sport.

Portal:Massachusetts/Selected anniversaries/March

• March 4, 1776 – The fortification of Dorchester Heights with heavy cannons precipitates the end of the siege of Boston.
• March 4, 1872 – The first issue of The Boston Globe is published.
• March 5, 1770 – British Army soldiers kill five and wound six in an incident that would become known as the Boston Massacre.
• March 7, 1873 – Massachusetts Governor William Claflin signs a charter authorizing the establishment of Wellesley Female Seminary, which would later be renamed Wellesley College (pictured).

Portal:Massachusetts/Selected anniversaries/April

• April 10, 1861 – Governor of Massachusetts John Albion Andrew signs a charter incorporating the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (pictured).
• April 19, 1775 – The Battles of Lexington and Concord, first military engagements of the American Revolutionary War, are fought.
• April 23, 1635 – The Boston Latin School, America's first public school, is founded.
• April 26, 1901 – The first game in what would become the Yankees–Red Sox rivalry is played, with the teams then named the New York Highlanders and the Boston Americans.

Portal:Massachusetts/Selected anniversaries/May

• May 4, 1886 – The Lawrence Textile Strike (pictured), a protest over reduced wages that lasted for two months and had over 20,000 participants, begins.
• May 7, 1846 – The Cambridge Chronicle, the oldest surviving weekly newspaper in the United States, is first published.
• May 14, 1692 – The charter for the Province of Massachusetts Bay goes into effect, combining Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Plymouth Colony, Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, and what is now Maine and parts of Canada into a single crown colony.
• May 17, 2004 – Following a Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruling, Massachusetts issues its first same-sex marriage licenses and becomes the first state to allow legal same-sex marriage.

Portal:Massachusetts/Selected anniversaries/June

• June 10, 1692 – Two days after being convicted, Bridget Bishop becomes the first person to be executed as a result of the Salem witch trials (pictured).
• June 11, 1837 – The Broad Street Riot, a thousand person melee between Yankee English and Irish residents of Boston, breaks out.
• June 15, 1780 – The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the state's fundamental governing document, is ratified.
• June 17, 1775 – In the Battle of Bunker Hill, British forces capture the Charlestown peninsula, but suffer heavy casualties.

Portal:Massachusetts/Selected anniversaries/July

• July 4, 1776 – The Continental Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence, which announces that the Thirteen Colonies consider themselves independent of the Kingdom of Great Britain.
• July 14, 1959 – Guided missile cruiser USS Long Beach (CGN-9) (pictured), the first nuclear powered surface vessel, is launched from Fore River Shipyard in Quincy.
• July 17, 1867 – The Harvard School of Dental Medicine is established as the first university-based dental school in the United States.
• July 26, 2004 – The Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, an urban park created as part of the Big Dig tunnel project, is officially dedicated.

Portal:Massachusetts/Selected anniversaries/August

• August 8 or 9, 1775 – The Battle of Gloucester, a skirmish between a British warship and the Gloucester militia, is fought.
• August 12, 1676 – Wampanoag Indian war chief Metacomet is shot to death, largely ending King Philip's War.
• August 18, 1991 – Hurricane Bob strikes the Mid-Atlantic states, the Carolinas, and New England, causing $1 billion in damages to Massachusetts alone.
• August 22, 1989 – The Mighty Mighty Bosstones (pictured), a Boston based band credited with the creation of the ska-core genre, releases their first album, Devil's Night Out.

Portal:Massachusetts/Selected anniversaries/September

• September 3, 1919 – Roger Babson founds the Babson Institute, which would later be renamed Babson College (pictured), in Wellesley.
• September 5–12, 1778 – As part of the Revolutionary War, British Major General Charles Grey raids the towns of New Bedford, Fairhaven, and Martha's Vineyard, taking cattle, oxen, arms, and money.
• September 21, 1938 – The 1938 New England hurricane, a category 5 hurricane and the most powerful, costliest, and deadliest hurricane in recent New England history, strikes land, killing at least 99 people in Massachusetts.
• September 21, 1959 – Minute Man National Historical Park, which encompasses several important sites from the Revolutionary War, is established as a National Historical Park.

Portal:Massachusetts/Selected anniversaries/October

• October 1, 1974 – Boston National Historical Park, a collection of eight sites in Boston that were important to the American Revolution, is established.
• October 5, 1860 – The Boston Aquarial and Zoological Gardens, a short lived public aquarium and zoo that featured a live beluga whale, opens to the public.
• October 7, 1826 – The first commercial railroad in the United States, the Granite Railway (pictured), begins operations.
• October 9, 1804 – The Storm of October 1804, also known as the Snow Hurricane of 1804, dumps three feet of snow on The Berkshires, sets a record 7 inches of rainfall in Salem, and sinks several ships in Boston harbor.

Portal:Massachusetts/Selected anniversaries/November

• November 9, 1872 – The costliest fire in state history, the Great Boston Fire of 1872, consumes the headquarters of The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, and hundreds of other homes and businesses.
• November 11, 1620 – The Mayflower Compact, the first governing document of Plymouth Colony, is signed aboard the ship Mayflower.
• November 13, 1847 – The cornerstone of the Beacon Hill Reservoir (pictured), which once supplied Beacon Hill with water from Lake Cochituate, is laid.
• November 18, 1755 – The 1755 Cape Ann Earthquake, the strongest earthquake in Massachusetts' history, strikes off the coast of Cape Ann.

Portal:Massachusetts/Selected anniversaries/December

• December 1, 1924 – The Boston Bruins play their first NHL game, against the Montreal Maroons, at Boston Arena, with the original home of the Bruins still in use.
• December 13, 1648 – The Massachusetts Bay Colony reorganizes state's militias, an act now considered to be the founding of the National Guard of the United States.
• December 16, 1773 – The Boston Tea Party (pictured), in which American colonists threw three shiploads of tea into the Boston harbor in protest of the Tea Act, occurs.
• December 21, 1719 – The Boston Gazette, a weekly newspaper whose contributors included Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and Phyllis Wheatley, begins publication.