The Keith Car Works was a huge factory that once stood on land that existed before the present-day Cape Cod Canal was dug out. But the name is a bit misleading, as the factory primarily made various types of wagons, and later, railroad cars. Jerry Ellis is a former Bourne selectman whose house sits about 50 yards from the canal.

The First Baptist Church in New Bedford is one of the city’s most important landmarks. The church was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 to commemorate an event that occurred there over 150 years ago.

With the approach of Patriot’s Day, seven Provincetown men will be honored nearly 240 years after they had served in the Revolutionary War. The seven men are interred at the Winthrop Street cemetery – the oldest in town - and their service was discovered almost by accident, as part of an effort to identify notable people buried there.

“America the Beautiful” has endured for more than a century as one of our country’s best-loved patriotic songs. It began as a poem written by Katharine Lee Bates, who was born in Falmouth and spent much of her life as a teacher at Wellesley College. Bates traveled to Colorado in 1893 to teach at Colorado College. On a day trip to Pike’s Peak, the grandeur and natural beauty of the surroundings inspired her to compose the first draft of the poem that would later become “America the Beautiful.”

In the early 1900’s, Acushnet Avenue in the North End of New Bedford was a hub of entertainment, with a number of theaters offering vaudeville, comedy acts, exotic dancing and other types of live shows. There was the Idle Hour. Allen’s Theater. The Comique. And the Cordelia Vien Theater, named for a local businesswoman, Cordelia Vien.

Just north of Route 6-A in West Barnstable, a narrow path runs through a nature preserve to the edge of what looks like a pond. It’s actually the flooded clay pit from the West Barnstable Brick Company, the ruins of which lie just out of view on the opposite side.

In May, 1915, a German U-boat sank the ocean liner Lusitania, killing almost 1,200 people and causing great alarm throughout the U-S shipping industry, where vessels were suddenly vulnerable up and down the Atlantic seaboard. The government responded by setting up a series of air stations along the east coast to defend against the growing threat. One of these facilities was built on a flat, 20-acre site in North Chatham. Construction began in August, 1917, just four months after the U-S entered

On the frigid first weekend in January, crowds gathered inside the large gallery at the New Bedford Whaling Museum for the 22 nd annual Moby Dick Marathon. Over a 24-hour period, more than 200 narrators took turns reading excerpts from the novel “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville.

During the recent Christmas Stroll on Nantucket, throngs of people milled around the intersection of Main and Federal Streets awaiting the arrival of Town Crier Eric Goddard to officially kick off the festivities. Goddard is the latest in a long line of town criers on the island. And he looks every bit the part, with a top hat, bell, and a scarf that was knitted by his mother for Christmas Stroll. “This scarf’s probably ten feet long. And I wear this once a year on Christmas Stroll Saturday,”