Tag: John Winthrop

John Winthrop and the First Sinful Fork in America (episode 328)

Instead of the 250th anniversary of an event from the American Revolution in Boston, we’re rewinding the clock 392 years to the spring of 1633, when the first Governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony was given the first fork in America.  We’re going to explore why forks were unknown in Boston at that time, and indeed why they were unfamiliar in England until just a few years before.  We’ll talk about why it took Boston over 100 years to fully embrace the idea of eating food with a fork, including changes to 17th century table manners and the belief that the fork was an inherently sinful utensil.


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Episode 64: Harvard Indian College, Promises Broken… and Kept

There’s an oft forgotten clause written into Harvard’s 1650 charter promising to educate the Native American youth of Massachusetts.  This week’s episode looks at the early, mostly unsuccessful efforts to create an Indian College on the Harvard campus, the abandonment of that plan after King Philip’s War soured the English settlers on their earlier plans for Christianizing local Native American tribes, and how modern scholarship is helping to rediscover this legacy and rededicate Harvard to embracing Native Americans.  

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Episode 63: Puritan UFOs

What did TV character Fox Mulder have in common with John Winthrop, the Puritan founder of Boston? They both recorded strange lights in the sky and other unexplained phenomena in extensive detail. This week, we’re going to explore the close encounters Winthrop described in 1639 and 1644. There were unexplained lights darting around the sky in formation at impossible speeds, ghostly sounds, and witnesses who claimed to have lost time. It’s a scene straight out of the X-Files, except these are considered the first recorded UFO sightings in North America.

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