Programs
Campus Tours at the Museums (May-Oct)
May 24th – October 18th, 2024
Monday, Tuesday, Friday, Saturday
We also host historical walking tours year round. Click here for the current schedule of historical walking tours.
For special events, see below.
2019 Lecture Series
“Hockey: A Global History” with Andrew Holman
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesHockey: the coolest game ever. Lace ‘em up tight because we’re going back to the beginning, and we have centuries to go. This fast-paced sport shot out of the shinny ponds of Saskatchewan, sped south to the United States and raced through Europe and Asia to become the worldwide phenomenon it is today. Meet hockey’s […]
Whodunnit? The Lizzie Borden Myster Continues with Christopher Daley
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesLizzie Borden took an axe And gave her mother forty whacks. And when she saw what she had done, She gave her father forty-one. We all know the ditty, but few know the facts behind the infamous, unsolved double-murders that rocked the Fall River community in August 1892. Historian Christopher Daley takes us back to […]
“Making Music American: 1917 and the Transformation of Culture” with Douglas Bomberger
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United States1917. It was unlike any other year in American history. Or American music. As the United States entered World War I, a new musical genre that suited the world’s frantic mood burst onto the national scene. JAZZ. German musicians who had dominated classical music were forced from the stage and New Orleans natives Nick LaRocca […]
“Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919” with Stephen Puleo
First Congregational Church 68 Main Street, Falmouth, MA, United StatesCommemorate the 100th anniversary of an historic Boston tragedy. Molasses flood. If those two-words don’t have you consumed with curiosity already, read on! Shortly after noon on January 15, 1919, a 50-foot-tall steel tank collapsed, disgorging its contents—2.3 million gallons of molasses--on Boston’s waterfront. Incredibly, this 15-foot-high wave of dark syrupy substance, travelling 35 miles […]
“Adrift: A True Story of Tragedy on the Icy Atlantic and the One Who Lived To Tell About It” with Brian Murphy
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesIt’s 1856. One hundred passengers—mostly Irish immigrants--have boarded a small ship sailing from Liverpool to New York. Only one will survive: Crewman Thomas W. Nye of Fairhaven. This is his story. It’s also the story of the thirteen other souls who made it into the lifeboat with him when an iceberg tore the ship asunder […]
“When the Irish Invaded Canada: The Incredible True Story of the Civil War Veterans Who Fought for Ireland’s Freedom” with Christopher Klein
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesWe’re reaching deep into the “History Vault” for this one. About one year after the American Civil War ended, a group of veterans dusted off their guns to fight for their homeland: Ireland, the Emerald Isle. A one-armed war hero, an English spy who had infiltrated rebel forces, and a radical who had staged his […]
IT’S BACK! Rum Running on Cape Cod with Don Wilding
First Congregational Church 68 Main Street, Falmouth, MA, United StatesForget cranberries or cod. During Prohibition (1920-1933), rum was the cash crop on Cape Cod. Cape Cod historian Don Wilding will tell us how the country’s "Noble Experiment" turned into a profitable and potentially dangerous undertaking for the locals about a century ago. The story takes place under the cover of darkness, as farmers and […]
The FIRST First Lady: Anne Barrett as Martha Washington
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesAnne Barrett HISTORICAL PERFORMANCE In 1759, the beautiful and wealthy widow Martha Dandridge Custis married the handsome and successful soldier George Washington. This decision would lead her from the battlefields of the American Revolution to the highest echelons of the infant republic. Later eulogized as “the worthy partner of the worthiest of men,” she used […]
“The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team that Helped Win World War II” with Anne R. Keene
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesWhile the New York Yankees and St. Louis Cardinals were winning pennants and facing off in the World Series, another group of players was fighting it out on a skinned-out college field in North Carolina in 1943. They wore the Cloudbuster Nine baseball jersey. They were fighter-pilots-in-training at an elite naval academy that shaped American […]
“K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches” with Tyler Kepner
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesSplitters, spitters, sinkers, sliders. It’s time to play ball. Baseball. And for Tyler Kepner, the New York Times’ national baseball writer, it’s all about the pitch. Ten of 'em. He got 18 of the 25 pitchers with the most strikeouts in the history of the sport to spill their priceless secrets--players like Nolan Ryan, Steve […]
My Memoir: “A Local Boy” with David Gouveia
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesHis story begins in Taunton and spans over 60 years, through the Civil Rights Movement, The Cuban Missile Crisis and many other important events in American history. He is the son of Portuguese immigrants, part of a hard-working, close-knit family that values its culture and customs like “The Pig Stabbing.” He attended medical school and […]
“Young Washington: How Wilderness and War Forged America’s Founding Father” with Peter Stark
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesOur modern-day story starts with the author, Peter Stark. While researching the most unpopulated, still-wild places of the United States for a project, he obtained a NASA satellite photo of the country at night. The abundant clusters of lights were cities. To his surprise, one of the darkest, blankest spots was Western Pennsylvania. There, among […]
“Damnable Heresy: William Pynchon, the Indians, and the First Book Banned (and Burned) in Boston” with David Powers
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesWilliam Pynchon was charged with speaking the unspeakable and publishing the unprintable. He wrote the first book banned in Boston—which was also the first book burned in Boston. His unorthodox theological musings certainly stirred things up for the Puritan pioneer, entrepreneur and founder of Springfield, Massachusetts. So did his extraordinary relationships with the Native people […]
“A Nation Forged by Crisis: A New American History” with Jay Sexton
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesBefore every earthquake, there’s the inevitable rumble. In his latest book, historian Jay Sexton focuses on the rumblings--foreign threats, economics, slavery, immigration and other global concerns--that brought “violent earthquakes,” periods of crisis, to our shores. He believes that centuries of disruptions have forged our nation more than anything we could have done by design. What […]
“Death March Escape: The Remarkable Story of a Man Who Twice Escaped the Nazi Holocaust” with Jack Hersch
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesIn June 1944, the Nazis locked eighteen-year-old Dave Hersch into a railroad boxcar and shipped him from his hometown of Dej, Hungary, to Mauthausen Concentration Camp, the harshest, cruelest camp in the Reich. After ten months in the granite mines of Gusen, the nearby sub-camp, Dave weighed less than 80 pounds and was more dead […]
“Code Name Lise: The True Story of the Woman Who Became World War II’s Most Highly Decorated Spy” with Larry Loftis: Special Time: 1:00 pm
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesThe most decorated spy of WWII wasn’t Dusko Popov, the guy who inspired the James Bond series. The spy wasn’t even a guy. In 1942, while the war was in full swing, Odette Sansom decided to follow in her war-hero father’s footsteps and become an SOE Agent. Britain’s super-secret organization aided the resistance movements and […]
“New World, Inc.: The Making of America by England’s Merchant Adventurers” with John Butman
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesThe venture was daunting. The motive was profit. Only those with an extraordinary appetite for risk need apply. Long before the Mayflower sailed (some seventy years prior, to be more exact), a small group of English merchants formed the world’s first joint-stock company. Its name--The Mysterie, Company, and Fellowship of Merchant Adventurers for the Discovery […]
“King Philip’s War: the History and Legacy of America’s Forgotten Conflict” with Michael Tougias
First Congregational Church 68 Main Street, Falmouth, MA, United StatesNOTE VENUE CHANGE: First Congregational Church, 68 Main Street, Falmouth This largely-forgotten war was one of America’s first and costliest. It started in 1675 when the leader of the Wampanoag tribe began an uprising to take back some of the land the colonial settlers controlled. His native name was Metacom; the English called him Philip. […]
“Countdown to Pearl Harbor: The Twelve Days to the Attack” with Steve Twomey
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesWarnings, clues, missteps, assumptions. In late November of 1941, Washington sent an ominous message to the commander of the Pacific Fleet, warning Hawaii of possible danger. But the intel was vague; the threat was unclear. Although the commander’s intelligence unit had lost track of Japan’s biggest aircraft carriers, he assumed they were far away. Meanwhile, […]
The D-Day Invasion and its Ties to Cape Cod, with Joe Yukna
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesD-Day was the start of the Great Crusade to free Europe from Nazi domination. It may surprise you to know that what many name consider to be the most important date in history, has many ties to good Olde Cape Cod. Join us for an hour-long, illustrated talk with Joe Yukna, co-founder of the […]
“The Heart of Everything that is Valley Forge” by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesDecember 1777. King George III’s army has pummeled the Continental Army into submission, the Continental Congress is in exile, and the American Revolution appears to be lost just 18 months after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The beleaguered troops stagger into a small Pennsylvania encampment 23 miles northwest of British-occupied Philadelphia. They’re physically […]
“American Crisis: George Washington after Yorktown” with William M. Fowler, Jr. (to be held at First Congregational Church of Falmouth)
First Congregational Church 68 Main Street, Falmouth, MA, United StatesSATURDAY, JUNE 8, 11:00 AM | NO CHARGE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, FALMOUTH "American Crisis: George Washington after Yorktown," presented by William M. Fowler Jr. View the George Washington Inaugural Bible Attend the First Presentation of the Katharine Lee Bates Historian Award The George Washington Inaugural Bible, that was used during the inauguration of our […]
“The Book that Changed America: How Darwin’s Theory of Evolution Ignited a Nation” with Randall Fuller
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesCharles Darwin’s book, On the Origin of Species, can still spark lively conversations at 21st century dinner parties. Imagine what people were talking about in 1860, shortly after it was published. On New Year’s Day, abolitionist and schoolmaster Franklin Sanborn hosted a dinner party. Henry David Thoreau, local superintendent Bronson Alcott (Louisa May Alcott’s father) […]
CANCELLED “Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide” by Tony Horwitz
First Congregational Church 68 Main Street, Falmouth, MA, United StatesCANCELLED. We were saddened to learn that Mr. Horwitz recently passed away. Our thoughts and sympathies go out to his family. READ The best-selling author of Confederates in the Attic returns to the South and the Civil War era for an epic adventure following the trail of America's first and foremost landscape architect: Frederick Law Olmsted. In […]
“The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War” with Benn Steil
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesWinner of the 2018 American Academy of Diplomacy Douglas Dillon Award It’s the wake of World War II, the dawn of the Cold War. Britain’s empire is collapsing; Stalin’s is on the rise; the United States is in the thick of it. Our mission: to reconstruct the economy in western Europe and, at the same […]
“When Montezuma Met Cortes: The True Story of the Meeting That Changed History” with Matthew Restall
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesHere’s what most can agree on. On November 8, 1519, the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortés first met Montezuma, the Aztec emperor, at the entrance to the capital city of Tenochtitlan. As the story goes, the bold and brilliant military genius and a few hundred plucky conquistadors overcame overwhelming odds to defeat the mighty Aztec empire […]
“War and Peace: FDR’s Final Odyssey, D-Day to Yalta, 1943-1945” with Nigel Hamilton
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesHe wrote the Mantle of Command: FDR at War, 1941-1942, which was long-listed for the National Book Award. He followed it with Commander in Chief: FDR’s Battle with Churchill, 1943. We were fortunate to talk to him here after each book was released. Now best-selling and award-winning biographer Nigel Hamilton has completed his three-part saga […]
“Indianapolis: The True Story of the Worst Sea Disaster in US Naval History” By Lynn Vincent and Sara Vladic
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesIn 1945, the USS Indianapolis completed a top-secret, high-speed trip from California to the Pacific Islands to deliver parts of Little Boy, the first nuclear weapon ever used in combat. It was the most highly classified naval mission of the war--but it was not their most dangerous. Just days later, two Japanese torpedoes struck the […]
The First Wave: The D-Day Warriors Who Led the Way to Victory, with Alex Kershaw
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesIt all started in the predawn darkness of June 6, 1944. They were the first to fight when the stakes were highest and the odds longest. Meet the remarkable men who carried out D-Day’s most perilous missions: the first American paratrooper to touch down on Normandy soil; the glider pilot who braved antiaircraft fire to […]
Grassroots Baseball with Jean Fruth along with Jeff Idelson
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesJeff Idelson, Retiring President of the NBA Hall of Fame and Museum Peter Gammons, Celebrated Sportswriter & Media Personality Jean Fruth, Award-Winning Photographer When Jeff Idelson, the retiring president of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, calls--you pick up the phone. Fast. When he pitches you an idea for a talk about […]
“The Age of Living Machines” with Susan Hockfield
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesThe former president of MIT talks about the next technology revolution and how it will change our lives. A century ago, discoveries in physics came together with engineering to produce an array of astonishing new technologies: radios, telephones, televisions, aircraft, radar, nuclear power, computers, the Internet, and a host of still-evolving digital tools. These technologies […]
The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal, with William Burns
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesWilliam J. Burns spent three decades as an American diplomat and played a central role in the most consequential diplomatic episodes of his time. Our time. The bloodless end of the Cold War. The collapse of post-Cold War relations with Putin’s Russia. The post-9/11 tumult in the Middle East. The secrete nuclear talks with Iran. […]
CANCELLED: “The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe” with Elaine Showalter
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesCANCELLED: To commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of the feminist pioneer and writer of Battle Hymn of the Republic Heiress. Poet. Author. Lecturer. Feminist. Pacifist. Abolitionist. Julia Ward Howe wrote a mildly shocking sexual novel that was published to good reviews. She also wrote the unforgettable words to the Civil War anthem, Battle […]
Sand and Soil: Creating Beautiful Gardens on Cape Cod with C.L. Fornari
First Congregational Church 68 Main Street, Falmouth, MA, United StatesTO BE HELD AT THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH 68 MAIN STREET, FALMOUTH While some aspects of Cape and Islands gardening have remained the same for decades, there are other facets of growing in this area that have changed. Warmer falls and newly introduced insects or diseases present challenges or prompt changes in some landscaping practices. […]
Paul Clerici, “A History of the Falmouth Road Race”
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesSPECIAL FREE TALK How many stories start like this? "It all began in a bar a long, long time ago..." Well, this 7-mile road race--which hits especially close to home--started just like that. Since then participation has swelled from 100 runners to 13,000 annually, bringing legendary Olympians and champions to Falmouth for the chance to […]
“Underground: A Human History of the Worlds Beneath Our Feet” with Will Hunt
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesHold onto your seat because you’ll never believe what’s under your feet. That’s right, we’re going underground. Our tour guide is Will Hunt, a man obsessed with anything below ground. It all started when he was sixteen years old. After discovering an abandoned tunnel that ran beneath his house in Providence, Rhode Island, he was […]
Falmouth’s Forgotten Natives, with Connor Cobb
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesWho lived in what we now call Falmouth before the town was settled by British colonists? What happened to those natives after colonists became neighbors? With the help of evidence from town and state archives we can begin to piece together Falmouth's Native American past, from the settlement of the town up until the […]
George Marshall: Defender of the Republic, with David Roll
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesWinston Churchill called him World War II's "organizer of victory." Harry Truman said he was "the greatest military man that this country ever produced." Even as a young officer, George Marshall was heralded as a genius. During WWI, his reputation grew when he planned and executed a nighttime movement of more than a half million […]
Anxiety Warrior with Brian Beneduce
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesBrian Beneduce had just gotten married and was boarding the plane for his honeymoon trip. Although his bride, Robbie, knew he had a fear of flying, she had no idea what was going through his mind as the plane rumbled down the runway and lifted into the sky. The Thing—the three-headed beast inside him—began to […]
NEW LOCATION: Massachusetts in the Women’s Suffrage Movement with Barbara Berenson
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesNEW LOCATION: First Congregational Church 68 Main Street, Falmouth Long before the Civil War, Lucy Stone and other Massachusetts abolitionists opposed women's exclusion from political life. They launched the organized movement at the first National Woman's Rights Convention, held in Worcester. After the war, state activists founded the Boston-based American Woman Suffrage Association and Woman's […]
Intrigues, Lies and Deceptions: Allied Strategic Deception During the Second World War with Michael McNaught
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesIt took an untold number of weapons to win World War II: tanks, submachine guns, flame throwers, rifles, and grenades. But one of the Allies’ most powerful weapons was the art of deception. Elaborate plots, phantom armies, fictious radio transmissions, controlled leaks, double agents and other clever ruses spun a deadly web of deception for […]
“Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait?: Alice Paul, Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the Right to Vote” with Tina Cassidy
First Congregational Church 68 Main Street, Falmouth, MA, United StatesThe day before Woodrow Wilson took the presidential oath of office in 1913, he expected a throng of onlookers when he arrived in Washington. He was upstaged by one woman--twenty-five-year old Alice Paul—and 8,000 suffragists, who marched with banners and floats down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House. A half million spectators, supporters and detractors […]
Preserving Old Ironsides Across Three Centuries with Margherita Desy
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesThe USS Constitution is the world's oldest commissioned naval vessel still afloat. President George Washington named the wooden-hulled, three-masted heavy frigate of the United States Navy after the United States Constitution. She was launched in 1797, one of six original frigates authorized for construction by the Naval Act of 1794. The vessel is most noted […]
1620: The First Year with Christopher Daley
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesThey came seeking religious freedom. They found an untamed, inhospitable and dangerous wilderness. They struggled with deprivation, disease and death. Through the grace of God and with the help of the "People of the Dawn," they survived. As the 400th Anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims approaches, travel back to 1620 and relive their […]
Special Movie Presentation: “They Shall Not Grow Old”
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesIn 2018, the Imperial War Museum commissioned Academy Award-winning producer Peter Jackson to use original footage from their archives to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War One. This special presentation will show the movie on Veterans Day.
The Game: Harvard, Yale and America in 1968, with George Howe Colt
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesOn November 23, 1968, there was a turbulent and memorable football game: the season-ending clash between Harvard and Yale. The final score was 29-29. To some of the players, it was a triumph; to others a tragedy. And to many, the reasons had as much to do with one side’s miraculous comeback in the game’s […]
“Short Skirts, Oh My! A History of Women’s Rights” with Anne Barrett
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesWhen Abigail Adams begged her husband to "remember the ladies" in drafting a new code of laws, John wrote back that he "could not but laugh" at her extraordinary suggestion. While it took almost 150 years, in the early part of the 20th century, women were working, voting, and experiencing the first taste of freedoms […]
This Land is Their Land, with David Silverman
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesIn March 1621, when Plymouth's survival was hanging in the balance, the Wampanoag sachem (or chief), Ousamequin (Massasoit), and Plymouth's governor, John Carver, declared their people's friendship for each other and a commitment to mutual defense. Later that autumn, the English gathered their first successful harvest and lifted the specter of starvation. Ousamequin and 90 […]
Christmas Traditions in Boston, with Anthony Sammarco
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesIn 1659, the General Court of Massachusetts Bay Colony banned the celebration of Christmas because of its seasonal excess. (Bah humbug!) It wasn't until the mid 19th century when a German immigrant introduced the Christmas tree and Louis Prang brought his colorful Christmas cards to the city, that Bostonians began to show some holiday spirit. This festive book […]
“Ahab’s Rolling Sea: A Natural History of Moby-Dick,” with Richard J. King
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesAuthor and SEA professor Richard J. King talks about his new book, “Ahab’s Rolling Sea: A Natural History of Moby-Dick” and its connections to Falmouth whaling captain Lewis Lawrence. Captain Lawrence sailed the Pacific in the same era as Melville. His unique, data-heavy logbook and chart reveal how 19th-century whalemen understood their impact on whales […]
“The Lobsters’ Night Before Christmas,” a reading for children & families with Christina Laurie
Cultural Center 55 Palmer Avenue, Falmouth, MA, United StatesIn this undersea retelling of the holiday classic, Sea Santa makes his annual Christmas journey, pulled in his clamshell sleigh by his eight faithful minnows. Sweet and clever rhyme by Christina Laurie and beautiful watercolor paintings by Elizabeth Moisan illustrate his visit to a family of lobsters on the night before Christmas.
