What event on December 16, 1773 saw protestors dump East India Company tea into Boston Harbor?

The Boston Tea Party was the December 16, 1773 protest in which participants dumped East India Company tea into Boston Harbor.

The protest opposed the Tea Act and the broader principle of taxation without representation. The act allowed the East India Company to sell tea in the colonies under conditions that angered many colonists, even though the legislation could make some tea cheaper.

Members of the Sons of Liberty boarded tea ships and destroyed the cargo rather than allowing it to be unloaded and taxed. Accounts commonly report that about 340 chests of tea went into the harbor. The protest was organized in Boston, then the capital of the Province of Massachusetts Bay.

Britain responded with the Coercive Acts, called the Intolerable Acts by many colonists. Those punitive measures helped unite colonial opposition and contributed to the creation of the First Continental Congress in 1774.