the.com/boston tea party
Colonists discover the best tax protest is just really good litter.
means A 1773 protest in which American colonists dumped a shipload of British tea into Boston Harbor rather than pay a tax on it, and by extension any loud, symbolic act of defiance against an unfair authority.
from The name is plain description, not metaphor — colonists disguised (not very convincingly) as Mohawk warriors boarded three British ships in Boston Harbor and threw 342 chests of taxed tea into the water. The event wasn't actually called the 'Boston Tea Party' at the time; that catchy name only caught on decades later, in the 1820s, once the protest had been safely romanticized into American legend.
- actual cost
- dumped tea worth about one million dollars today
- disguise fail
- participants dressed as mohawks fooled absolutely no one
- term origin
- nobody called it that until decades later
- side effect
- made tea unpatriotic, coffee america's drink forever