Pick a day: December 15. The Boston Tea Party was an American political and mercantile protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 16, 1773. This resulted in the passage of the punitive Coercive Acts in 1774 and pushed the two sides closer to war. [38] Realizing that the payment of the Townshend duty was politically sensitive, the company hoped to conceal the tax by making arrangements to have it paid either in London once the tea was landed in the colonies, or have the consignees quietly pay the duties after the tea was sold. It was organised by the British colonists as a protest against the tea tax the British king imposed upon them. It is one of the key incidents that led to the American revolution. After receiving a report that Governor Hutchinson had again refused to let the ships leave, Adams announced that "This meeting can do nothing further to save the country." What Happened On This Day – December 16. WHAT HAPPENED ON JULY 16. When Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi led a mass burning of Indian registration cards in South Africa in 1908, a British newspaper compared the event to the Boston Tea Party. On This Day In History - December 16: anniversaries, birthdays, major events, and time capsules. On December 16—the last day of the Dartmouth's deadline—about 7,000 people had gathered around the Old South Meeting House. While the official end date for the talk show was December 16, an episode on cancer was aired two days later on December 18. 16. Waiting, they were eager to seize the ships after unsuccessfully sending the tea back. The Boston Tea Party eventually proved to be one of the many reactions that led to the American Revolutionary War. ", "Benjamin Franklin's Views on The Boston Tea Party", "The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain, 1209 to Present (New Series)", "Boston Tea Party - United States History", http://www.masshist.org/publications/apde/portia.php?id=DJA02d100, "Ron Paul's "tea party" breaks fund-raising record", Tea Party Finds Inspiration In Boston History, BBC Radio program about the 'forgotten truth' behind the Boston Tea Party, Eyewitness to History: The Boston Tea Party, 1773, Conscientious objection to military taxation, List of historical acts of tax resistance, National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, The Cold War and the Income Tax: A Protest, Clerk of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, 1766—1774, Probable author, 1768–1769 "Journal of Occurrences", Arranged Christopher Seider funeral, 1770, Co-inspired and publicized, Boston Tea Party, Co-author, 1775 "Letter to the inhabitants of Canada", Signed, United States Declaration of Independence, Samuel Adams and Paul Revere time capsule, 1st and 3rd Governor of Massachusetts, 1780–1785, 1787–1793, President, Massachusetts Provincial Congress, Chairman, Massachusetts Committee of Safety, Presided over, signed, United States Declaration of Independence, Co-founder, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, United States presidential election, 1788–89, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Boston_Tea_Party&oldid=1004701337, Political repression in the United States, Short description is different from Wikidata, Wikipedia indefinitely semi-protected pages, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Articles lacking reliable references from August 2018, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, To protest British Parliament's tax on tea. On December 16—the last day of the Dartmouth's deadline—about 7,000 people had gathered around the Old South Meeting House. They broke into 342 chests and threw all the tea overboard. 1846 Lithograph of Tea Party, Sarony & Major, National Archives. Famous historical events, birthdays and deaths. December 16, 1773: The Boston Tea Party. Today, December 16th, is the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, a response to a series of tyrannical actions taken by the distant King George III. This allowed the company to sell its goods to the colonies without paying taxes. Not gonna happen, so we arrive at the evening of December 16, 1773, where 342 containers, totaling 90,000 pounds of tea (at today’s prices would have a value of about $1.5 million) met its fate in the salt water of Boston Harbor as British soldiers looked on. The Sons of Liberty on the night of December 16, 1773… Two more tea ships, Eleanor and Beaver, arrived in Boston Harbor. The Boston Tea Party was a protest by the American Colonists against the British government. It showed that the Sons of Liberty identified with America, over their official status as subjects of Great Britain. The day of the week was Thursday.. In Boston Harbor, a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians board three British tea ships and dump 342 chests of tea into the harbour. [93], 1773 American protest against British taxation. Home » History by Year » 1773 » December » 19th. [35] According to historian Benjamin Labaree, "A stubborn Lord North had unwittingly hammered a nail in the coffin of the old British Empire.