Lizzie 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 that fateful summer day when Andrew and Abby Borden were brutally killed in their home.  He’ll recount the day’s events and the police investigation that…

1917. 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 and Freddie Keppard popularized the new sound taking its place. Patriotism was at an all-time high. African-American bandleader James Reese Europe turned the Fifteenth New…

Commemorate 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 per hour, killed 21 people, injured 150 more and destroyed just about everything in its path. The unusual story of the Great Boston Molasses Flood…

It’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 and set them adrift in the icy Atlantic four hundred miles off the coast of Newfoundland. They had no supplies, just a few blankets, some…

We’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 own funeral were among the Irish American Revolutionaries, now banded together for a cause. Their mission was to take the British province of Canada and…

Forget 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 fisherman headed off shore and took to the seas to “Rum Row.”  There, they met ships laden with the criminal, yet coveted, alcohol and brought…

Anne 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 her acute social sense to meet the expectations of her country and define the role of First Lady.  We’ll catch up with “Lady Washington” in…

While 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 heroes like George H. W. Bush, Gerald Ford, John Glenn and Paul “Bear” Bryant. This unlikely wartime team trained on and off the baseball diamond…

Splitters, 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 Carlton, Bob Gibson, Randy Johnson, and Pedro Martinez. Twenty-two Hall of Famers—guys like Bob Gibson, Steve Carlton, Nolan Ryan, Greg Maddux, Mariano Rivera, and Clayton…

His 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 served in the military. In 1964, he returned home to begin a surgical career that would place him at the center of life in the…

Our 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 the vast wilderness, he found young George Washington…and the subject of his next story. Two decades before Washington led America to independence, the naïve, temperamental,…

William 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 he lived among during a time of great hostilities between cultures.  This talk takes us back to early New England to find out what all…

Before 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 is the nation’s narrative?   What will our unpredictable future bring? The answers might be found by revisiting our turbulent past. SPONSOR   Eight Cousins Books,…

In 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 than alive. As Allied forces drew close, the Nazis put him on a death march to Gunskirchen Concentration Camp, over thirty miles away. Soon after,…

The 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 conducted espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance against the Axis powers in occupied Europe.  After five failed attempts and one plane crash, Odette landed in occupied France,…

The 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 of Regions, Dominions, Islands, and Places Unknown--was as formidable as its purpose: to seek new markets and trading partners for England, a small and relatively…

NOTE 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. Ironically, he was the son of Massasoit, the sachem who helped the pilgrims get established. Soon the Nipmucks and tribes along the Connecticut River joined…

Warnings, 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, a Japanese spy was counting the warships in the harbor and reporting to Tokyo. While we know what happened next, we may not know exactly…

  D-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 Cape Cod Military Museum, as we explore the June 6th 1944 landings on the Beaches of Normandy.  The photo on the left is of the…

December 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 and morally defeated, barely equipped or expected to survive the frigid winter ahead. Their commander in chief, George Washington, is decidedly at the lowest point…

  SATURDAY, 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 first president on April 30, 1789, will be the centerpiece for a special presentation in concert with the Masons’ Marine Lodge A.F. & A.M. in…

Charles 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) and Asa Gray, a professor of natural history at Harvard, were present. Child welfare reformer Charles Loring Brace was the guest of honor. He arrived,…

Winner 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 time, discourage its countries from embracing communism. The Marshall Plan is a massive, costly and ambitious undertaking with heavy opposition. Stalin is determined to crush…

He 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 of FDR at war…and we’ll get to meet him once again at the Museums on the Green for the stunning conclusion. This is a story…

In 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 ship when she was sailing alone in the center of the Philippine Sea. The Indianapolis immediately turned into a fiery cauldron and sunk within minutes--300…

It 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 crash-land mere yards from the vital Pegasus Bridge; the brothers who led their troops onto Juno Beach under withering fire; and the French commando, returning…

Jeff 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 a new baseball book at the Museums on the Green, you don't hesitate. You say, "Absolutely, what date works for you?" When he asks if…

The 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 reshaped our world so radically that we can no longer conceive of life without them. Now, world-renowned neuroscientist Susan Hockfield says new discoveries in biology…

William 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.  With compelling detail, incisive analysis and newly declassified cables and memos, he recounts some of the seminal moments of his career and delivers a rare…

CANCELLED: 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 Hymn of the Republic, after visiting the Union troops in Washington, DC the previous day.  She helped to establish Mother’s Day and became a groundbreaking…

TO 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.  Data from the latest research and adjustments in how we choose to support wildlife or protect our waterways mean altering old ways of maintaining yards…

SPECIAL 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 compete. The history of this fascinating race spans 47 years, and Clerici, an award-winning journalist and freelance writer, will share the behind-the-scenes tales and tidbits…

Hold 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 hopelessly hooked on exploring underground worlds: from the derelict subway stations and sewers of New York City to sacred caves, catacombs, tombs, bunkers and ancient…

  Who 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 late 18th century. In this talk Connor Cobb, a Falmouth resident and lover of local history, will shed light on a forgotten and overlooked chapter…

Winston 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 troops from one battlefield to another that led to the armistice. Between wars, he helped modernize combat training and re-staffed the U.S. Army's officer corps…

NEW 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 Journal to lead campaigns across the country. Their activities laid the foundation for the next generation of suffragists to triumph over tradition. Author Barbara Berenson…

It 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 the enemy. Local historian Michael McNaught will unravel some of the greatest military secrets and strategies taking place off the battlefield at this fascinating talk.

The 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 watched.  The New York Times called it “one of the most impressively beautiful spectacles ever staged in this country.”  The new president called the spectacle’s…

The 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 for her actions during the War of 1812 against the United Kingdom, when she captured numerous merchant ships and defeated five British warships, one of…

They 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 first year: the difficult voyage over the Atlantic, the landing on Cape Cod shores, the “first encounter” with the Wampanoag Nation, the move onward to…

In 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.

On 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 final forty-two seconds as it did with the months that preceded it, months that witnessed the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy,…

In 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 of his men then visited Plymouth for the “First Thanksgiving.” The treaty remained operative until King Philip's War in 1675, when 50 years of uneasy…

In 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 recalls it all: caroling and hand bell ringing on Beacon Hill, the Nativity scene and display on Boston Common, hot fudge sundaes at Baileys and…

Author 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 and the rest of the global ocean. “Ahab’s Rolling Sea” tells the story of Melville’s relationship with the watery world: what he witnessed and read,…