In Boston Harbor on this day in 1773, a group of Massachusetts
colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians board three British tea
ships and dump 342 chests of tea into the harbor.

The midnight raid, popularly known as the “Boston Tea Party,”
was in protest of the British Parliament’s Tea Act of 1773, a bill
designed to save the faltering East India Company by greatly
lowering its tea tax and granting it a virtual monopoly on the
American tea trade. The low tax allowed the East India Company
to undercut even tea smuggled into America by Dutch traders, a
nd many colonists viewed the act as another example of taxation
tyranny.