| Important Dates in Massachusetts
1602 English explorer Bartholomew
Gosnold landed on Cuttyhunk Island and gave Cape Cod its
name.
1605 and 1606 French explorer Samuel de
Champlain mapped the shoreline.
1614 Captain John
Smith sailed up the Massachusetts coast.
1620 The Pilgrims landed at Plymouth.
1630 The Puritans founded Boston.
1635 The first public school still in
existence, the Boston Public Latin School, was
established.
1636 Harvard became the first college in
the colonies.
1641 Massachusetts adopted its first
code of law, the Body of Liberties.
1647 A law establishing tax-supported
schools was passed.
1675-1678 Massachusetts colonists fought
King Philip's War against the Indians.
1689-1763 Massachusetts colonists helped
the British win the French
and Indian Wars.
1691 Plymouth and the Massachusetts Bay colonies were
combined into one colony.
1764 The colonists began to resist
enforcement of British tax laws.
1770 British soldiers killed several
colonists in the Boston
Massacre.
1773 Patriots dumped 340 chests of
British tea into Boston Harbor.
1775 American Revolutionary
War began at Lexington and Concord.
1780 Massachusetts adopted its
constitution.
1788 Massachusetts became the sixth
state in the Union on February 6.
1807 The Embargo Act ruined
Massachusetts shipping, and led to the rise of
manufacturing.
1831 William Lloyd Garrison began
publishing his antislavery newspaper The Liberator
in Boston.
1839 The first teachers college in the
United States was opened.
1876 Alexander
Graham Bell invented the telephone in Boston.
1912 A strike of textile workers at
Lawrence led to improved conditions in the textile
industry.
1914 The Cape Cod Canal opened.
1919 Settlement of the Boston Police
Strike brought national prominence to Governor Calvin
Coolidge.
1959 The U.S. Navy launched its first
nuclear-powered surface ship, the cruiser Long Beach,
at Quincy.
See Also
Samuel
de Champlain
John
Smith
French
and Indian Wars
Massachusetts Bay Colony
Boston
Massacre
Revolutionary
War
Alexander
Graham Bell
Calvin
Coolidge
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