HUB History - Our Favorite Stories from Boston History

Ice seems like such a simple thing today, when I can just go to my freezer and grab a few cubes to cool down my drink. But before artificial refrigeration, New Englanders would cut and store ice during the long winter to keep their food fresh and th ...

The show this week is all about Wonderland, the early 20th century amusement park at Revere Beach. Dr. Stephen Wilk has deeply researched the investors and entrepreneurs who bought 27 acres of land along Revere Beach Boulevard and opened the park; t ...

From our viewpoint in modern Massachusetts, with stringent gun licensing and background check laws, it’s hard to imagine how a young man with an extensive criminal record who had been involuntarily committed to multiple mental health institutions cou ...

In honor of Halloween, I’m going to be sharing eight of my favorite Boston ghost stories this week. From haunted houses and inexplicable premonitions recorded by Cotton and Increase Mather in the years leading up to the Salem Witch hysteria, to Nath ...

This week marks the fourth anniversary of HUB History.  Listen to this brief bonus track to learn how the show has changed in the past four years, what our most popular episodes have been, and where the show is going in the future.  Be sure to listen ...

The USS Constitution is the most famous ship in Boston history, and perhaps in the history of the US Navy. When the Navy was reborn in 1794, the Constitution was among the first fleet of frigates that made up its backbone. A decade later, the USS C ...

Your humble host really misses travel, so this week’s episode is inspired by travel, both historic travel and my own. In the early 19th century, a Boston shipwright’s apprentice went to sea with a whaling voyage, and ended up being recruited into a ...

This week, Jake sits down with Matthew Dickey, the Communications and Operations Manager at the Boston Preservation Alliance to discuss the organization’s important work in saving the historic nature of Boston’s many diverse neighborhoods. They figh ...

Since last week’s show was about Boston’s 1851 Railroad Jubilee, which was an enormous celebration at a time when the nation was in the midst of a rush toward civil war, it seemed appropriate to discuss the Grand Peace Jubilee this week. Held in Bos ...

In September 1851, Boston threw an enormous party, a party big enough to span three days. After 15 years of development, the railroad network centered on Boston stretched out in every direction, linking the port of Boston to the American Midwest and ...