HUB History - Our Favorite Stories from Boston History

Sky Jockeys, Knights of the Air, and Man-Birds were just a few of the terms that newspapers around the country used to describe the early aviators who converged on Boston in September 1910. The first Harvard-Boston Aero Meet was the largest and most ...

If you’ve ever taken a walking tour of Boston’s North End, or if you’ve talked to the old timers in the neighborhood, you’ve probably heard stories about the network of so-called secret pirate tunnels or smugglers’ tunnels that connects the wharves t ...

This week, our show brings you the story of what might be the only example of someone “going postal” in the air. We’re discussing a bizarre 1989 incident involving a North Shore man, a veteran and postal worker. Alfred J Hunter III had always want ...

This week’s show revisits two classic HUB History episodes that are all about the boundaries of the city of Boston. First, we’ll go back to a show that originally aired last January to learn why independent towns like Roxbury, Dorchester, and Charle ...

For decades, a 1967 riot that rocked Roxbury’s Grove Hall neighborhood was generally referred to in the mainstream media as a "race riot" or as "the welfare riot," while a handful of articles and books by Black authors called it "the police riot."  A ...

Boston has long been known as the Hub of the Universe, but it’s also a hub of world class arts institutions. One of those institutions is the Boston Symphony Orchestra. This week, we’re looking at the founding of the BSO and the construction of its ...

Hooker Day was a one-time holiday celebrated in Boston in 1903. While it might sound like this is going to be an X-rated podcast, we’re not talking about that kind of hooker. Civil War General Joseph “Fighting Joe” Hooker was briefly the commander ...

For centuries before the Quabbin reservoir opened, Boston struggled to provide enough clean, fresh water for its growing population. One of the solutions to this problem was a new reservoir built at Chestnut Hill in the 1880s. The pumping station at ...

A new form of relationship arose between 19th century women, which had all the emotional trappings of romantic love, but was long considered to be merely an intense form of friendship. More recently, however, critics have wondered whether Victorian ...

In the 19th century, a network of abolitionists and sympathizers in Boston helped enslaved African Americans find their way to freedom in the Northern states or Canada. It’s a topic we’ve talked about before, but this time there’s a twist. We’re goi ...