Category: Episodes

Episode 13: Katherine Nanny Naylor, Boston’s Original Nasty Woman

Boston in the 1600s was a theocracy, where the Puritan church ruled, and women were seen in many ways as the property of their husbands or fathers.  Against that backdrop, a woman named Katherine Nanny Naylor stands out.  She was able to win a divorce against her abusive and unfaithful husband, then spent the next 30 years as an entrepreneur.  She provided herself and her family with a prosperous lifestyle, while living her life independently.  Listen to this week’s episode, and celebrate Boston’s original nasty woman!

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Episode 12: The Tragedy of Sacco and Vanzetti (Inauguration Special, part 2)

On August 22, 1927, Bartolomeo Sacco and Nicola Vanzetti were executed in the electric chair at Boston’s Charlestown State Prison. They were foreigners, accused of murder and ties to a shadowy terrorist group.  Yet there were worldwide protests, and their funeral was one of the largest ever seen in Boston, with as many as 200,000 Bostonians in attendance.  On the fiftieth anniversary of their deaths, Governor Dukakis officially cleared their names and declared a day of remembrance for them.  How did these men go from hated foreign http://healthsavy.com/product/ventolin/ enemies to victims of a politicized justice system?  Find out in this week’s episode!

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Episode 11: The Ursuline Convent Riots (Inauguration Special, part 1)

On a hot summer’s night in 1834, rumors swirled around a Catholic girls’ school in Charlestown.  Catholicism was a frightening, unfamiliar religion, and Catholic immigrants were viewed with great suspicion.  People said that the nuns were being held in slavery, or that Protestant children were being tortured and forcibly converted.  A crowd gathered, and violence flared.  When the sun rose the next morning, the Ursuline Convent lay in smoking ruins.  Thirteen men were tried, but none served time.  What deep seated biases led Yankee Boston down this dark road?  Listen to this week’s episode to find out!

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Episode 10: The Grisly Fairbanks Murder

In August of 1801, a young man named Jason Fairbanks showed up on his sweetheart’s doorstep.  He was covered in blood, and telling the story of a suicide pact gone wrong.  This tale of a rich kid gone astray could be ripped from today’s tabloid headlines.  Fairbanks and his presumed sweetheart Eliza Fales were the center of a sensational trial, a daring escape from jail, and a manhunt that stretched to the Canadian border.  Does this story of star crossed lovers have a happy http://healthsavy.com/product/cialis/ ending?  Listen to this week’s show to find out!

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Episode 9: The Zoo Shipwreck

There is a long history of shipwrecks in Boston Harbor.  Many are terrifying, some are tragic.  But one shipwreck is such an oddity that Boston hasn’t stopped talking about it for the past 75 years.  When a freighter called The City of Salisbury steamed into Boston Harbor in 1938, it was loaded with exotic, tropical zoo animals.  When it ran aground near Graves Light, you’ll never guess what happened next!

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Episode 7: Jane Toppan, Nightmare Nurse

In 1901, a woman named Jane Toppan was arrested on Cape Cod for murder. By the time she went on trial, she had confessed to killing 31 people in Boston, Cambridge, on the Cape, and around the region, and she’s suspected of killing 100 or more. From a tragic childhood, she grew up to be a nurse. She tortured and murdered her patients in dark experiments, while being praised for her caring bedside manner. Before she was caught, she had graduated to killing entire families. Learn about the life and crimes of Jane Toppan, Nightmare Nurse in this week’s show.

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Episode 6: The First Boston Revolution

Early one April morning, Boston rose up in revolt, overthrowing the widely hated royal governor.  A provincial militia surrounded the city, while the Royal Navy backed British authorities.  But this wasn’t Lexington or Concord.  This was the 1689 revolt against Governor Edmund Andros, 86 years to the day before Paul Revere’s ride.  Listen to this week’s episode to learn more!

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Episode 5: Secret Nazis on Boston Harbor!

At the end of World War II, the Allied powers raced across Germany, competing to capture technology related to Nazi super-weapons and the scientists who developed them.  The US military operated a secret program that located high-value scientists, smuggling them into the US and falsifying their wartime records.  For many of the scientists who went on to work on the Manhattan Project or the space race, their first stop in America was a secret base in Boston Harbor.

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