The Boston Tea Party occurred on December 16, 1773.
That night, colonists associated with the Sons of Liberty boarded tea ships in Boston Harbor and threw large quantities of tea into the water. Their protest opposed the Tea Act, which granted the British East India Company a favorable position in the colonial tea trade while maintaining a tax that many colonists rejected.
The protest followed a packed meeting at the Old South Meeting House. Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused to allow the ships to leave without paying the duty, and the confrontation escalated after the meeting ended. The destruction of the tea was dramatic but organized, and no one was killed during the action.
The British government responded with the Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by many colonists. These measures intensified resistance and helped create the political conditions that led to the Revolutionary War. The event is often mistakenly described as a spontaneous attack unrelated to taxation.