Lots of talk these days about Tea Parties. It was on this day in 1773 when the original Tea Party took place, on the waterfront in Boston.
From Politico,
On this day in 1773, in Boston Harbor, a group of Massachusetts colonists — some thinly disguised as Mohawk Indians — boarded three British merchant vessels and, over the course of the next three hours, dumped 342 chests of tea into the water.
The midnight raid, which has gone down in history as the “Boston Tea Party,†was mounted to protest the Tea Act of 1773. The bill had been enacted by the British Parliament with the aim of saving the faltering East India Co. by lowering tea taxes and granting the firm a virtual monopoly on the American tea trade. Many colonists viewed the Tea Act as another example of tax tyranny imposed from London. The raid proved to be a key event in the unfolding of the American Revolution.
The Boston Tea Party Historical Society has a really cool website which covers all aspects of the event from the causes to participants to the aftermath. It also features 8 different eyewitness accounts of what happened. Like almost every event in the history of history, people who were there had differing accounts of what happened.