HUB History - Our Favorite Stories from Boston History

Dec 15 2024 334 ep. 47 mins 735

HUB History - Our Favorite Stories from Boston History Podcast artwork

Where two history buffs go far beyond the Freedom Trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston, the hub of the universe.

Society & Culture History

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The First American Christmas Cards

Dec 15 2024 42 mins

Have you ever wondered where the tradition of sending Christmas cards every year came from? While the first Christmas cards appeared in Britain back in the 1840s, it was a German immigrant named Louis Prang who made them popular in the United States and around the world. Using a revolutionary new color printing technique that he called chromolithography, Prang’s Roxbury factory m

Boston Airs America’s First Television Commercial

Dec 01 2024 38 mins

94 years ago this week, Boston’s second television station aired the first commercial in American history, and they did it almost two decades before Boston’s first television station went on the air. In this episode, we use this blunder and a confusing technological landscape to examine Boston’s pivotal role in the early development of American television. This will be a stor

Thanksgiving Day 7: Fannie Farmer's Cookbook

Nov 30 2024 14 mins

This is the last of seven past episodes for Thanksgiving week. 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 Julia launched her career, Fannie Farmer published a cookbook t

Thanksgiving Day 6: Annie Burton's Restaurant

Nov 29 2024 36 mins

This is the sixth of seven past episodes for Thanksgiving week. Annie L. Burton was an entrepreneur and restaurateur, who moved to Boston as a young woman after spending her childhood enslaved on an Alabama plantation. Annie spent decades as a domestic servant, first in the south, and then in the north, in Newton, the South End, Wellesley, Jamaica Plain, and other neighborhoods in

Thanksgiving Day 5: The Thanksgiving Riot

Nov 28 2024 13 mins

This is the fifth of seven past episodes for Thanksgiving week. Annie L. Burton was an entrepreneur and restaurateur, who moved to Boston as a young woman after spending her childhood enslaved on an Alabama plantation. Annie spent decades as a domestic servant, first in the south, and then in the north, in Newton, the South End, Wellesley, Jamaica Plain, and other neighborhoods in

Thanksgiving Day 4: Turkey Drives

Nov 27 2024 13 mins

This is the fourth of seven past episodes for Thanksgiving week. Brighton is one of our westernmost neighborhoods, and it’s often associated with Boston’s large and sometimes unruly student population, but in the mid 19th century, Brighton was home to all the elements of a western movie. There were cattle drives, stockyards, saloons, and stampedes through the streets. Before i

Thanksgiving Day 3: Joseph Lee's Bread Machines

Nov 26 2024 53 mins

This is the third of seven past episodes for Thanksgiving week. Joseph Lee was a hotelier, caterer, and one of the richest men in his adopted hometown of Newton. By the time of his death in 1908, Lee had worked as a servant, a baker, and for the National Coast Survey; he had worked on ships, in hotels, and at amusement parks. He had earned a vast fortune in hotels, lost most of it

Thanksgiving Day 2: Julia Child

Nov 25 2024 40 mins

This is the second of seven past episodes for Thanksgiving week. At the outbreak of World War II, president Roosevelt decided to create a single centralized agency to organize the nation’s many competing intelligence services. Not the CIA, which would come a few years later, but the Office of Strategic Services. Before the CIA, the OSS was America’s chief spy service. And befo

Thanksgiving Day 1: Lydia Maria Child

Nov 24 2024 18 mins

This is the first of seven past episodes for Thanksgiving week. 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 wrote it was anything but traditional. Medford native Lydia

Remembering Rita

Nov 17 2024 34 mins

The annual Transgender Day of Remembrance calls attention to an epidemic of violence against trans people, and Black trans women in particular, but did you know that this solemn event was inspired by a brutal 1998 Allston murder? In this episode, we hear from the friends of Rita Hester about a vibrant life that was inspired by music and cut short by violence. We’ll see how her mu