Ben Franklin's World

Before the English settled in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607 or the Dutch settled near Albany, New York in 1615, a group of French-speaking, Catholic settlers established a settlement in Nova Scotia in 1...

2 Apr 20191h 2min

Historians use archives to create the histories we love to read, watch, and listen to. So we’re going into one archive to investigate how historians use them and to discover more about the religious l...

26 Mar 20191h 2min

Samuel Gray, James Caldwell, Samuel Maverick, Patrick Carr, and Crispus Attucks. These are the five men who died as a result of the shootings on Boston’s King Street on the night of March 5, 1770. Of ...

19 Mar 201959min

Within days of the Boston Massacre, Bostonians politicized the event. They circulated a pamphlet about “the Horrid Massacre” and published images portraying soldiers firing into a well-assembled and p...

12 Mar 20191h 1min

On the evening of March 5, 1770, a crowd gathered in Boston’s King Street and confronted a a sentry and his fellow soldiers in front of the custom house. The confrontation led the soldiers to fire the...

5 Mar 20191h 3min

In the 21st century, we are all creators and users of content. We take original photos with our smartphones, generate blog posts, digital videos, and podcasts. Some of us write books and articles. And...

26 Feb 20191h 16min

What do we mean by “the state?” How is a “state” produced? Is “the state” something everyone can participate in producing? Ryan Quintana, an Associate Professor of History at Wellesley College and the...

19 Feb 20191h 1min

In 1738, a cooper named Benedict Arnold petitioned the Rhode Island General Assembly for a divorce from his wife Mary Ward Arnold. Benedict claimed that Mary had taken a lover and together they had at...

12 Feb 201951min