On what date did the Boston Tea Party take place, helping lead toward the American Revolution?

The Boston Tea Party took place on December 16, 1773, when protestors threw tea into Boston Harbor.

The protest grew from opposition to the Tea Act, passed by the British Parliament on May 10, 1773. The act allowed the East India Company to sell tea in the American colonies under favorable conditions, but colonists objected to the continuing tax and to Parliament’s authority to impose it without colonial representation.

Members of the Sons of Liberty boarded tea ships and dumped hundreds of chests into the harbor. The protest was not the beginning of the Revolutionary War, which began with the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775, but it sharply increased tensions.

Britain responded with the Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by many colonists. Those measures helped prompt the First Continental Congress, which met in Philadelphia in 1774. The Boston Tea Party is thus an important prelude to the events commemorated by America250.