On what date did the Boston Tea Party take place, a key protest before the American Revolution?

The Boston Tea Party took place on December 16, 1773, when protesters in Boston destroyed tea shipped by the British East India Company.

The protest followed Parliament’s Tea Act of 1773. Although the act lowered the price of some tea, colonists objected that it preserved a tax imposed without colonial representation. Members of the Sons of Liberty and other Bostonians boarded ships and threw hundreds of tea chests into Boston Harbor.

The event intensified the dispute between Great Britain and its North American colonies. Britain responded with the Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by many colonists, including measures that restricted Massachusetts self-government and closed Boston Harbor. Those policies helped lead to the First Continental Congress in 1774 and, less than two years later, armed conflict at Lexington and Concord. The Boston Tea Party is sometimes confused with earlier resistance such as the 1770 Boston Massacre, but they were separate events with different dates and immediate causes.