The Boston Tea Party took place on December 16, 1773, an important protest in the revolutionary timeline associated with America250.
That night, colonists boarded three ships in Boston Harbor and threw 342 chests of East India Company tea into the water. The protest opposed the Tea Act and the broader principle that Parliament could tax colonists without their representation in Parliament.
The event was not the start of the Revolutionary War; armed fighting began at Lexington and Concord in April 1775. Britain responded to the tea protest with the Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by many colonists. Those measures helped intensify resistance and contributed to the First Continental Congress in 1774.