Database: Old Corner Book Store

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It's an apothecary shop at the moment, but in a few decades this building will be home to Ticknor and Fields, the leading American publisher of their day. That might sound a bit dull, but this building will be at the centre of American literature and thinking. Authors like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne Harriet Breecher Stowe, even Charles Dickers will all meet here.

Of course, given the state of American education, it's possible you don't know who any of those people are. I could have said Minty Clitheroe and Pippy BoomBoom and you'd still have looked impressed.

Old Meeting House

The bells in this church rang out in the hours leading up to the Boston Massacre, as crowds were gathering to taunt the soldiers in front of the State House. In Boston at the time, church bells were rung when there was a fire, so people ran into the streets to see what was happening. That swelled the crowd, making tensions between the people and the British soldiers that much worse. It ended, of course, with the soldiers firing into the crowd, killing 5 people.

And this concludes our lesson on how church bells could be used to incite riots in Colonial America.