Tag: bizarre boston
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BIZARRE BOSTON: Nix’s Mate: Pirates, ghosts and erosion
Dozens of islands dot Boston Harbor and like the city itself they are full of strange legends and unusual histories. The smallest of the Harbor Islands is Nix’s Mate (sometimes also spelled Nixes Mate). It’s so small you might sail right by without noticing it. It consists mainly of a black and white beacon (about…
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BIZARRE BOSTON: Ann Hibbins, Boston’s wealthy witch
While the Salem witch trials of 1692 are the most famous witch trials to have occurred in colonial New England, people were tried and executed for witchcraft in other cities and at other times as well. Several women were unfortunately executed right here in Boston. Usually people accused of witchcraft were poor and socially marginal,…
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BIZARRE BOSTON: Phantom airships over Boston
People have been seeing strange things in the skies for thousands of years. The Biblical prophets saw angels and mysterious wheels. In the Middle Ages, Europeans saw phantom armies and demons, and since the 1940s, people around the world have seen flying saucers and other strange machines. Strange phenomena have been seen hovering over Boston…
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BIZARRE BOSTON: Shocking death of James Otis, Jr.
Here’s a morbid question. Do you want to choose the way you die? Personally, I don’t think I want to. James Otis, Jr. (1725–1783), an important figure in the American Revolution, definitely did. And he exited this mortal life in his preferred way, even though it was a rare and dramatic one. Otis was born…
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BIZARRE BOSTON: Thomas Morton and the Maypole
For a moment in the seventeenth century, Massachusetts had the potential to become a fun-loving (and free-loving) utopia, rather than the grim, hard-working Puritan domain it became. Granted, it was a very brief moment, but it’s important to remember the possibility existed. The man behind the utopian dream was Thomas Morton, who arrived in Plymouth…