In Boston Harbor, a group of Massachusetts colonists
disguised as Mohawk Indians board three 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, and
many colonists viewed the act as another example of
taxation tyranny.

The term ‘Tea Party’ was not actually used at the time
and was coined in the 1830s when the Revolutionary
generation looked back with nostalgia fifty years later.

Following ratification by the state of Virginia, the first 10
amendments to the U.S. Constitution, known collectively
as the Bill of Rights, became the law of the land.

George Washington, the American revolutionary leader and
first president of the United States, died at his estate in
Mount Vernon, Virginia. He was 67 years old.

Modern medical authors largely have concluded that the
former president likely died from extensive bloodletting
which may have caused hypovolemic shock.  

 

George Washington’s Death Mask.

President Abraham Lincoln announced a grant of amnesty for
Emilie Todd Helm, his wife Mary Lincoln’s half sister and the
widow of a Confederate general.

The pardon was one of the first under Lincoln’s Proclamation
of Amnesty and Reconstruction, which he had announced less
than a week before.

Emilie Todd Helm (1836 – 1930)

White House National Security Communications Advisor
John Kirby speaks during the daily briefing at the White
House on Dec. 12, 2024. 

New Jersey State Assemblyman Paul Kanitra described
the government’s handling of the weekslong drone
sightings across the northeast as "infuriating."
(Doug Hood/Asbury Park Press)