What date marks the Boston Tea Party, when protestors dumped tea into Boston Harbor?

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

Members of the Sons of Liberty boarded tea ships and threw East India Company tea chests into the water. They opposed the Tea Act, which allowed the company to sell tea in the colonies under favorable conditions while retaining a tax that many colonists viewed as unconstitutional.

The protest followed a large meeting at Boston's Old South Meeting House. Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused to let the ships leave without paying the duty, and the crowd then carried out the harbor action. Participants often disguised themselves as Native Americans, although the event involved colonial protestors rather than members of an Indigenous nation.

The British government responded with the Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by many colonists. Those measures punished Massachusetts and helped encourage colonial cooperation, leading toward the First Continental Congress and, later, armed conflict.