All posts tagged "Waltham Mass."

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  32.3K

  4

  Business and Labor

  Percy Spencer Melts a Chocolate Bar, Invents the Microwave Oven

  Percy Spencer had only a fifth-grade education, but that didn’t stop him from earning patents crucial to winning World War II –...

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  6.8K

  3

  Massachusetts

  Hannah Ropes Spends 6 Months in Kansas With Loaded Pistols and Bowie Knife

  On Sept. 11, 1855, Hannah Ropes, a 46-year-old single parent, stepped onto a train in Boston and headed to the ‘Far-Off Land’...

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  31.5K

  5

  Arts and Leisure

  George Francis Train, One of the Few Sane Men in a Mad, Mad World

  George Francis Train, a nutty, attention-seeking businessman, in 1871 traveled around the world in 80 days. The feat caused a sensation, but...

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  1.6K

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  members only

  Celia Thaxter Is Vexed at Her Ignorance, May 1, 1890

  The 19th-century writer Celia Thaxter was so outraged by the slaughter of birds for ladies’ hats that in 1886 she became the...