The Boston Tea Party took place on December 16, 1773, an event remembered in America's 250th-anniversary history.
The protest occurred in Boston Harbor after Parliament passed the Tea Act earlier that year. The law allowed the British East India Company to sell tea directly in the American colonies, while retaining a tax that many colonists viewed as unconstitutional. Protesters opposed taxation without representation and the broader authority claimed by Parliament.
That night, members of the Sons of Liberty boarded tea ships and threw hundreds of chests of tea into the harbor. The protest was not a general attack on all tea: it specifically targeted the tea cargo and the political system behind it. The action helped provoke Britain's Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by many colonists.
The Boston Tea Party happened more than two years before the Battles of Lexington and Concord began the Revolutionary War. It is also distinct from the 1774 Boston Port Act, which closed the harbor as punishment.