Noah Webster was an odd duck, a famously fussy lexicographer who not only Americanized the English language but created the idea of American patriotism. He wrote the first real American dictionary, called, appropriately, An American Dictionary of the English Language, ...

The Phi Beta Kappa Society, established at the College of William and Mary in 1776, is America's oldest and most prestigious honor society. Its goal is promoting excellence in the liberal arts and sciences. Almost 100 years after its founding, ...

Mabel Loomis Todd is best known for editing and publishing the poems of Emily Dickinson, but she also knew a lot about astronomy. In 1894, the same year she released Emily Dickinson’s letters, she published Total Eclipses of the Sun, ...

It should be no surprise that New England’s stony soil should produce a goodly number of strange rocks. They’ve been given such nicknames as the Devil’s Footprint, the Narragansett Runestone and the Man-eating Stone of Glastonbery. Folktales grew up around ...

New England is dotted with famous writers houses, a testament to the Puritan ideal of literacy and the region’s many publishing houses. Some writers, like Rudyard Kipling, were born elsewhere, but wrote prolifically while living in New England. Some, like ...

Family-owned businesses are becoming a thing of the past as Amazon and Walmart gobble up the consumer’s dollar. But there are exceptions in New England. They include family farms that survived real estate development, catastrophes and competition from agribusiness. A ...

In February 1788, George Washington was staying close to home at Mount Vernon, anxiously awaiting news from New Hampshire. The state’s constitutional convention was to be held on February 13, and his friend John Langdon and his former general John ...

Mabel Loomis Todd often visited Emily Dickinson’s home, but never laid eyes on the poet except in her coffin. After her first visit, Mabel plunged into a passionate love affair with Emily’s married brother Austin Dickinson, who lived next door ...

Revolutionary War Gen. John Stark displayed his fighting spirit well before his heroics at the Battle of Bunker Hill or the Battle of Bennington. As a young man, Stark was captured by Abenaki Indians and forced to run the gauntlet. ...

The year 1816 was known as ‘The Year Without a Summer’ in New England because six inches of snow fell in June and every month of the year had a hard frost.  Temperatures dropped to as low as 40 degrees ...