HUB History - Our Favorite Stories from Boston History

By HUB History

Society & Culture History Places & Travel

What's HUB History - Our Favorite Stories from Boston History about?

Where two history buffs go far beyond the Freedom Trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston, the hub of the universe.

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HUB History - Our Favorite Stories from Boston History episodes:

06.30.2024
What’s In a (Nick)Name
For this week’s show, I spent some time asking visitors and locals what nicknames they know for Boston. From the Hub to Titletown to Beantown and beyond, people know a lot of nicknames for Boston, but it turns out...
06.16.2024
The Lincoln of Ireland at Fenway Park
105 years ago this month, Irish President Eamon De Valera embarked on an 18-month tour of the United States, starting with a visit to Boston. His goals were to raise funds for the Irish Republic, gain international recognition, and...
06.02.2024
General Patton Invades Boston
On the first anniversary of D-Day, Boston was feeling festive. Yes, there was a somber editorial cartoon in the Globe picturing an allied cemetery in Normandy to remind people of the sacrifices that the nation had made, but Germany had...
05.19.2024
Around the World With a Less Famous Revere
Joseph Warren Revere was a Boston boy, but a military career kept him from spending much of his adult life here. He was the grandson of the famous Paul Revere and named after the secular saint Joseph Warren. ...
05.05.2024
Seismic Boston
Did you feel an earthquake in Boston on April 5, 2024? Depending on where you were at the time, you might have felt nothing or you might have noticed a mild tremor. While we think of Boston earthquakes...
04.21.2024
Starlit Old North
During the bicentennial celebrations in 1976, Boston bustled with fireworks, concerts, and historical reenactments, while a unique spectacle quietly unfolded at the Old North Church. The iconic lanterns, forever linked to Paul Revere’s midnight ride, were illuminated not by candlelight,...
04.07.2024
Eclipse Fever
Eclipses happen when the moon passes between the sun and the earth during the daytime, briefly blocking the light of the sun from the face of the earth. Over the past few years, observers in the US have been treated...
03.24.2024
Recent Archaeological Discoveries at Shirley Place, with Joseph Bagley
This week I’m pleased to be able to share a recent talk from the Shirley-Eustis House in Roxbury about recent archaeological discoveries at Shirley Place that help shed light on the lives of enslaved residents at the 18th century governor’s...
03.10.2024
Cotton Mather and the Women He Loved, with Helen Gelinas
I’m pleased to share a recent talk called “Cotton Mather and the Women He Loved” that was part of the Congregational Library and Archive’s Valentines Day celebration. Helen Gelinas spoke about Cotton Mather and the women he was closest to:...
02.25.2024
A Constitutional Culture: New England and the Struggle Against Arbitrary Rule in the Restoration Empire, with Professor Adrian Chastain Weimer (episode 295)
In this episode, I'm joined by Professor Adrian Chastain Weimer, author of the recent book A Constitutional Culture: New England and the Struggle Against Arbitrary Rule in the Restoration Empire. The book focuses on the period just after King...
02.11.2024
The Rise and Fall of Black Boston’s First Hospital
Despite the name, Plymouth Hospital was a South End institution. As the first training school for Black nurses in segregated Boston, Plymouth provided a needed service to an underserved community, led by a medical pioneer. Dr. Cornelius Nathanial...
01.28.2024
Water for Boston, Part 2
In the last episode, we talked about Boston’s first water sources, from rainfall and natural springs to a simple wooden aqueduct connecting Jamaica Pond to downtown Boston. This time, we’re picking up where episode 292 left off. As...
01.14.2024
Water for Boston, Part 1
This is the first of a three-part history of Boston’s water supply. First up is the early history of water in Boston, from its reliance on natural springs to the construction of the first aqueduct. We’ll compare today’s pure,...
12.31.2023
History in Bricks and Bones: Recent discoveries in the Crypts at Old North Church
Jane Lyden Rousseau led the team of archaeologists who studied the crypts at Old North Church during a 2023 restoration. While none of the burials were disturbed, her team was able to carefully study the contents of each crypt, learning...
12.17.2023
More Than Just Tea
I had originally planned to release an interview with an expert this week where we debunked some of the most common myths about the destruction of the tea. Events conspired against me, however. Luckily, the rest of Boston...
12.03.2023
The Mather Borealis
Was Cotton Mather a victim of 18th century cancel culture? In December 1719, Bostonians were astounded at the spectacle of the northern lights dancing in the sky, a sight that nobody alive could remember seeing before. One of the Bostonians...
11.19.2023
A History of Boston, with Daniel Dain
Daniel Dain is the author of an ambitious new history of Boston, called A History of Boston. A few years ago, a listener got in touch with the show to say that he was a lawyer by trade, but working...
11.05.2023
A Blizzard of Falling Stars
190 years ago, Bostonians awoke to an unexpected light in the sky before dawn on November 13, 1833. Some began their morning routines, thinking the sun had risen, a few dashed outside to douse the fire they expected to see...
10.22.2023
King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father, with Brooke Barbier
In King Hancock, the Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father, Brooke Barbier paints the portrait of a walking contradiction: one of the wealthiest men in the colonies, but a man of the people; a merchant who made his fortune...
10.08.2023
“This Perilous Hour of Trial, Horror & Distress”: Loyalist Exile and Return in Revolutionary Massachusetts, with Dr. Patrick O'Brien
In this episode, professor Patrick O’Brien of the University of Tampa will be examining the loyalist experience of our Revolutionary War, mostly from the perspectives of women and enslaved African Americans. From our vantage point 250 years later, it’s easy...
10.01.2023
Isabella Stewart Gardner: The Lioness of Boston, with Emily Franklin (reupload)
Isabella Stewart Gardner was a consummate collector, generous philanthropist, and rabid Red Sox fan. Today, she’s best known as the namesake of an art museum in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood (and if we’re being honest, the museum is probably best known...
10.01.2023
The Lioness of Boston, with Emily Franklin (reupload)
Isabella Stewart Gardner was a consummate collector, generous philanthropist, and rabid Red Sox fan. Today, she’s best known as the namesake of an art museum in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood (and if we’re being honest, the museum is probably best known...
10.01.2023
The Lioness of Boston, with Emily Franklin (reupload)
Isabella Stewart Gardner was a consummate collector, generous philanthropist, and rabid Red Sox fan. Today, she’s best known as the namesake of an art museum in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood (and if we’re being honest, the museum is probably best known...
09.24.2023
Disrupting Time: Industrial Combat, Espionage, and the Downfall of a Great American Company, with Aaron Stark
This week, Aaron Stark joins the show to discuss his new book Disrupting Time: Industrial Combat, Espionage, and the Downfall of a Great American Company, which chronicles an attempt by a foreign power to infiltrate, emulate, and eventually annihilate a...
09.10.2023
The Lioness of Boston, with Emily Franklin
Isabella Stewart Gardner was a consummate collector, generous philanthropist, and rabid Red Sox fan. Today, she’s best known as the namesake of an art museum in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood (and if we’re being honest, the museum is probably best...
08.27.2023
Disasters and Disaster Relief (episode 282)
Enjoy two classic stories this week. First up is the story of the Cocoanut Grove fire. In November 1942, Boston was on a wartime footing, business was booming, and the streets were packed with soldiers and sailors on their way...
08.13.2023
JFK and PT-109, 80 years later
80 years ago this month, on a tiny Pacific island, a legend was born. In the darkness before dawn on August 2, 1943, a Japanese destroyer rammed and sank a small, plywood boat commanded by a 26 year old Lieutenant...
07.30.2023
Bostonians on the Pacific
This week, enjoy three classic stories about Bostonians and their adventures on the Pacific Ocean. First, we’ll hear about the voyages of the Columbia to the Pacific Northwest starting in 1787, then we’ll move on to the Congregational missionaries...
07.16.2023
Granite, Glass, and the Construction of King’s Chapel
This week’s story ties one of modern Boston’s iconic Freedom Trail sites to the earliest days of English settlement in the Shawmut Peninsula. It’s a story that ties the first Puritan to die in Boston to the hated Royal...
07.02.2023
The Adamses Declare Independence
Between the John Adams miniseries on HBO and the musical 1776, everyone knows that John Adams was one of the leading voices for independence in the Continental Congress. And along with negotiating the treaty of Paris and keeping the...
06.18.2023
Thomas Jefferson in Boston
Thomas Jefferson visited Boston in 1784, arriving in town on June 18th. That also happened to be the same day when Abigail Adams left her home in Quincy to start making her way to France to join John at...
06.04.2023
Revolution's Edge, with Patrick Gabridge and Nikki Stewart
The new play “Revolution’s Edge” will debut at Old North Church in June 2023. It tells the story of three Bostonians and their families on the eve of the Revolution. Mather Byles is the Loyalist rector of Old...
05.21.2023
The Lost Viking City on the Charles
If you walk down Mount Auburn Street in Cambridge, you might notice a small stone marker that states, “on this spot in the year 1000, Leif Erikson built his house in Vineland.” You might be surprised to learn that...
05.07.2023
The Schuyler Sisters in Boston
Thanks to the Hamilton musical, it’s almost impossible to hear the names Angelica, Eliza, and Peggy without bursting into song. The play made the three eldest daughters of Philip Schuyler famous, and in this episode we’re talking about the...
04.23.2023
When Boston Brought Baseball to Britain
Spring in Boston means baseball, and this week we’re talking about the time in 1874 when the Boston Red Stockings tried to bring America’s national pastime to Britain. 120 years before the World Baseball Classic, Boston’s biggest baseball promoter...
04.09.2023
The Persuasive Powers of John Adams
John Adams later described the prosecution of William Corbet as a case “of an extraordinary Character, in which I was engaged and which cost me no small Portion of Anxiety.” In 1769, four common sailors were brought into Boston...
03.26.2023
The Court Street Mutiny
On April 9, 1863, a shooting was carried out in a basement just off of Court Street, behind Boston’s Old City Hall. The gunman was a Union cavalry officer, who belonged to one of Brahmin Boston’s most wealthy families....
03.17.2023
Bonus: My Personal Evacuation Day
Just a quick bonus episode, so I can tell you about a change to my personal life and what it means for the show. Duke in 2011 Duke in 2023
03.12.2023
The Gettysburg Cyclorama: Mystery of the South End
Starting in 1884, audiences of veterans, schoolchildren, and everyday Bostonians streamed into a cavernous, castle-like building on Tremont Street in the South End to witness the closest thing to virtual reality that existed at the time. The building still...
02.28.2023
BHM Bonus: Reading David Walker
For Black History Month, we're dropping a classic episode into the feed as a bonus every few days... Last winter, the Old North Church historic site hosted a series of conversations about radical Black abolitionist David Walker, and his book An...
02.26.2023
Annie Burton’s Restaurant
Annie L. Burton was an entrepreneur and restaurateur, who moved to Boston as a young woman after spending her childhood enslaved on an Alabama plantation. Annie spent decades as a domestic servant, first in the south, and then in...
02.25.2023
BHM Bonus: Doctor Crumpler
For Black History Month, we're dropping a classic episode into the feed as a bonus every few days... Dr. Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler was the first Black woman to earn a medical degree in the US in 1864, and she spent...
02.23.2023
BHM Bonus: Birth of a Nation in Boston
For Black History Month, we're dropping a classic episode into the feed as a bonus every few days... “The Birth of a Nation” was one of the most controversial movies ever made, and when it premiered on February 8, 1915 it...
02.21.2023
BHM Bonus: Lewis Latimer
For Black History Month, we're dropping a classic episode into the feed as a bonus every few days... African American inventor and draftsman Lewis Latimer’s parents self-emancipated to give their children the opportunities afforded to those born into freedom. A Chelsea...
02.18.2023
BHM Bonus: Race over Party
For Black History Month, we're dropping a classic episode into the feed as a bonus every few days... Historian Millington Bergeson-Lockwood, author of Race Over Party: Black Politics and Partisanship in Late Nineteenth-Century Boston, joins us this week to talk about...
02.16.2023
BHM Bonus: Boston's Black Pedestrian Star
For Black History Month, we're dropping a classic episode into the feed as a bonus every few days... Frank Hart was a transplant to Boston who became a famous star in a sport that no longer really exists. Hart was...
02.14.2023
BHM Bonus: Separate but Equal in Boston
For Black History Month, we're dropping a classic episode into the feed as a bonus every few days... The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled on Roberts v Boston 170 years ago this month. When five year old Sarah Roberts...
02.12.2023
Joseph Lee and his Bread Machines (episode 268)
Joseph Lee was a hotelier, caterer, and one of the richest men in his adopted hometown of Newton. By the time of his death in 1908, Lee had worked as a servant, a baker, and for the National Coast...
02.11.2023
BHM Bonus: Richard Greener's White Problem
For Black History Month, we're dropping a classic episode into the feed as a bonus every few days... Professor Richard T Greener grew up in Boston in the shadow of the abolition movement, graduated from Harvard, and became one of the...
02.09.2023
BHM Bonus: Black Radical
For Black History Month, we're dropping a classic episode into the feed as a bonus every few days... From his Harvard graduation in 1895 to his death in 1934, William Monroe Trotter was one of the most influential and uncompromising advocates...

What's HUB History - Our Favorite Stories from Boston History about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

HUB History - Our Favorite Stories from Boston History episodes:

What’s In a (Nick)Name

The Lincoln of Ireland at Fenway Park

General Patton Invades Boston

Around the World With a Less Famous Revere

Seismic Boston

Starlit Old North

Eclipse Fever

Recent Archaeological Discoveries at Shirley Place, with Joseph Bagley

Cotton Mather and the Women He Loved, with Helen Gelinas

A Constitutional Culture: New England and the Struggle Against Arbitrary Rule in the Restoration Empire, with Professor Adrian Chastain Weimer (episode 295)

The Rise and Fall of Black Boston’s First Hospital

Water for Boston, Part 2

Water for Boston, Part 1

History in Bricks and Bones: Recent discoveries in the Crypts at Old North Church

More Than Just Tea

The Mather Borealis

A History of Boston, with Daniel Dain

A Blizzard of Falling Stars

King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father, with Brooke Barbier

“This Perilous Hour of Trial, Horror & Distress”: Loyalist Exile and Return in Revolutionary Massachusetts, with Dr. Patrick O'Brien

Isabella Stewart Gardner: The Lioness of Boston, with Emily Franklin (reupload)

The Lioness of Boston, with Emily Franklin (reupload)

The Lioness of Boston, with Emily Franklin (reupload)

Disrupting Time: Industrial Combat, Espionage, and the Downfall of a Great American Company, with Aaron Stark

The Lioness of Boston, with Emily Franklin

Disasters and Disaster Relief (episode 282)

JFK and PT-109, 80 years later

Bostonians on the Pacific

Granite, Glass, and the Construction of King’s Chapel

The Adamses Declare Independence

Thomas Jefferson in Boston

Revolution's Edge, with Patrick Gabridge and Nikki Stewart

The Lost Viking City on the Charles

The Schuyler Sisters in Boston

When Boston Brought Baseball to Britain

The Persuasive Powers of John Adams

The Court Street Mutiny

Bonus: My Personal Evacuation Day

The Gettysburg Cyclorama: Mystery of the South End

BHM Bonus: Reading David Walker

Annie Burton’s Restaurant

BHM Bonus: Doctor Crumpler

BHM Bonus: Birth of a Nation in Boston

BHM Bonus: Lewis Latimer

BHM Bonus: Race over Party

BHM Bonus: Boston's Black Pedestrian Star

BHM Bonus: Separate but Equal in Boston

Joseph Lee and his Bread Machines (episode 268)

BHM Bonus: Richard Greener's White Problem

BHM Bonus: Black Radical

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