HUB History - Our Favorite Stories from Boston History

At just 19 years old, Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette joined our American Revolution. Commissioned as a Major General in 1777, he served with distinction as an aggressive combat commander and trusted adviser to George Washington. Nearly ...

The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled on Roberts v Boston 170 years ago this month. When five year old Sarah Roberts was turned away from the schoolhouse door in Boston simply because of the color of her skin, her father sued the city in ...

Cholera is a truly horrifying disease, with severe diarrhea causing death through dehydration, while the patient remains awake and in agony.  The disease is carried by fecal bacteria, so it’s virtually unknown in highly developed countries today, bec ...

We know the song “Over the River and Through the Wood” as a Christmas carol, but it was originally titled “The New England Boy’s Song about Thanksgiving Day.” Despite the song’s quaint themes of traditional New England holiday cheer, the woman who wr ...

Just in time for your fantasies about the perfect Thanksgiving meal, we’re going to introduce you to Boston’s matriarch of modern cooking this week. You probably thought that Julia Child was Greater Boston’s original top chef, but a generation before ...

Since we “fell back” to Standard Time this past weekend, Boston has been forced to adjust to 4:30 sunsets. To help us understand why the sun sets so early in Boston in the winter and what we could do about it, we’re going to replay a classic episode ...

We’re joined this week by Dr. Jessie Morgan-Owens, who called from New Orleans to discuss her book Girl in Black and White: The Story of Mary Mildred Williams and the Abolition Movement. Mary was born into slavery in Virginia, the child of an enslave ...

We’re joined this week by Nancy Seasholes, editor of the new book The Atlas of Boston History, which just came out on Thursday. It’s a historic atlas of Boston that covers the period from the last ice age, right up to the present day. It contains e ...

We’re joined this week by Nancy Seasholes, editor of the new book The Atlas of Boston History, which just came out on Thursday. It’s a historic atlas of Boston that covers the period from the last ice age, right up to the present day. It contains e ...

We’re joined this week by Yale history professor Mark Peterson to talk about his new book The City State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630-1865. In the interview, Professor Peterson will tell us why he believes that, from its s ...