Tag: classics

Epidemics and Public Health in Boston (episode 176)

I had planned an episode on a different topic for this week, but in light of our current COVID-19 state of emergency, I decided to share some classic clips about Boston’s experiences with epidemics and public health. Speaking of public health, I hope you’re already practicing social distancing, staying at home as much as you can, limiting contact with strangers, and staying six feet away from other people whenever you can. During the 1918 “Spanish” flu, cities that practiced social distancing fared much better than those that didn’t, and in that case Boston was slow to close schools, churches, theaters, and other gathering places. I hope we’ll do better this time around. Along with the 1918 flu pandemic, we’ll be discussing an 1849 cholera epidemic that Boston fought with improved sanitation, and the 1721 smallpox season, when Cotton Mather controversially used traditional African inoculation techniques that he learned from Oneismus, who was enslaved in the Mather household.


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Classic Tales from Early Boston (episode 164)

In lieu of a brand new story, this week we are sharing two classic tales from the earliest years of Puritan Boston.  One of them might be considered comedy, while the other is high drama. First, we’ll visit the diaries of Boston founder John Winthrop and find two accounts of unexplained lights in the sky and other phenomena that might have been the first UFO sightings in Boston.  After that, we’ll fast forward to the era of the English Civil Wars, when two men who had signed the death warrant for a king decided that Boston was the only safe refuge from his heir’s assassins.


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Women’s Groups Remaking Boston (episode 150)

This week’s show dusts off two classic stories about times in Boston history when women’s volunteer organizations had a big impact on Boston.  First, we’ll talk about the Massachusetts Emergency and Hygiene Association, whose members introduced the concept of a playground to the American public in late 19th century Boston.  Then, we’ll fast forward a few decades to the 19 – teens, when the Women’ Municipal League sponsored Boston’s first (and so far only ) Rat Day. Both of these projects made valuable contributions to Boston’s quality of life, and they happened at a time when society didn’t generally approve of women’s work outside the home.


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Boston’s Dark Days and Eclipses (episode 145)

The brilliant sunsets and dramatic weather reports inspired by smoke drifting into our area from Canadian wildfires last month got me thinking about two past HUB History shows.  There have been at least three smoke events in Boston history that caused darkness in the middle of the day and made people wonder if the end of the world was coming.  Our first clip will be about the dark days in 1780, 1881, and in 1950. Of course, people who witnessed dark days compared them to solar eclipses.  Our second classic segment is from the summer of 2017, exploring the solar eclipses that early Boston witnessed, from soon after European colonization to the turn of the 19th century. 


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Annexation and Perambulation (episode 141)

This week’s show revisits two classic HUB History episodes that are all about the boundaries of the city of Boston.  First, we’ll go back to a show that originally aired last January to learn why independent towns like Roxbury, Dorchester, and Charlestown were eager to be annexed into the city of Boston in the mid- to late-19th century, and we’ll examine why Boston hasn’t annexed any other municipalities since Hyde Park in 1912.  Of course, once you make the boundaries of the city bigger by annexing your neighbors, you have to keep track of those new boundaries. So our second clip will be from a show that aired way back in September of 2017, about the ancient practice of perambulating the bounds. Since the 1650s, Massachusetts law has required towns to clearly mark their boundaries with other towns, and to send somebody out to walk the line and examine the markers every five years.


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Worst Case Scenarios (episode 118)

This week’s show revisits three classic episodes about disasters in Boston history. We’ll start with episode 21, which spotlighted the 1897 subway explosion on Tremont Street. Episode 39 discusses the tragedy at the Cocoanut Grove, followed by episode 91 on the collapse of the Pickwick nightclub. They key takeaway this week?  We should all be thankful for modern building codes, safety measures, and government oversight.


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Trailblazers (episode 110)

This week we’re digging into our archives to bring you discussions of three Bostonian ladies who forged new paths for women. Katherine Nanny Naylor was granted the first divorce in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, allowing her to ditch an abusive husband and make her way as an entrepreneur.  Annette Kellerman was a professional swimmer who popularized the one-piece swimming suit and made a (sometimes literal) splash in vaudeville and silent films.  And Amelia Earhart took to the skies after humble beginnings as a social worker in a Boston settlement house.


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Harvard’s Thanksgiving Day Riot (episode 107)

When it comes to Boston history, it seems like there’s a riot for every possible season.  It’s Thanksgiving season now, so this week we’re going to discuss a riot that took place at Harvard University… not during the tumultuous anti-war protests of the 1960s or 1970s, but on Thanksgiving day in 1787.  There’s tantalizingly little in the historical record about what happened or how it started, but we know that some very famous historical figures were right in the middle of the action.


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Riot Classics (episode 101)

For this week’s show, we’re revisiting three highlights from Boston’s long and storied history of rioting. We’ll include stories from past episodes covering the 1919 Boston police strike, 1747 impressment riots, and the 1837 Broad Street riot.


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Love that Dirty Water (episode 90)

For many people, summertime in Boston means canoeing, kayaking, paddle boarding, fishing, and even swimming in the rivers that run through and around our city.  To celebrate the season this week we’re coming three classic episodes about industry, adventure, and romance on the water.  We’ll hear about the nearly 400 year history of corn, cotton, and condos on the Mother Brook; some late-nineteenth century fake news about Vikings on the Charles; and the early 20th century canoe craze that drove the state police to ban kissing in canoes on the Charles River.  Listen now!


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