Boston

After a day at sea, our first port on the cruise is Boston.

Now named after Boston, England where many of the original settling families came from, an early name of the area was Trimountaine, or 3 mountains. The area at the time resembled a large hill with three peaks. Two of the peaks were destroyed in the project to fill the back bay. The remaining hill is today's Beacon Hill neighborhood.

If you are a Big Bang Theory fan (or maybe just because you are smart) you know that Fig Newtons were named after a Boston suburb.

Happy Hours have been illegal in Boston since 1984. Two years after Cheers went on the air. Don't show your displeasure at that by spitting on the sidewalk, because that is illegal too. It is also against the law to keep a mule on the second story UNLESS there is more than one exit available.

Many have heard about the Great Boston Fire of 1872. Actually, I'm not one of the many but I have since learned that this "Great" Fire occurred one year after the Great Fire of Chicago in ...wait for it... 1871. But what intrigues me more than the fire is the Great Molasses Flood of 1919. How often do you think of the word Molasses and Flood in the same sentence let along the same title. An aging storage tank, newly filled with molasses, burst sending a 15 foot wall of molasses down the street at 35 miles per hour. 35!! The owners of the tank, when sued for allowing the tank to decay to that point, claimed that 'the tank had been intentionally blown up by “evilly disposed persons.”'

I am left wondering about the possible (?) overuse of the word great to describe natural and man-made disasters.

Keep smiling and keep moving
-Paula