This week was a very busy week in history!
- Dec 16, 1773 – The Boston Tea Party
- Dec 17, 1903 – First airplane flies
- Dec 18, 1620 – Mayflower docks at Plymouth Harbor
- Dec 19, 1998 – President Clinton impeach
ed
- Dec 20, 1957 – Elvis Presley is drafted
- Dec 21, 1988 – Pan Am Flight 103 explodes over Scotland
- Dec 22, 1956 – First gorilla born in captivity
That is a lot of things to happen in one week. Even though the first airplane flew in the air for 12 seconds on December 17, 1903, and 14 years ago today President Clinton was impeached, this blog is going to be on what happened on yesterday's date in 1620.
On December 18, 1620, the the Mayflower landed at Plymouth in what is now the state of Massachusetts. The ship, called the Mayflower, had stopped at Provincetown Harbor, Cape Cod in early November, and the leaders had signed the Mayflower Contract that became their new government. Over the next month, groups of men went ashore to gather firewood and find a good place to set up camp. They found a place they liked on the western side of Cape Cod Bay, but bad weather kept them on the ship until December 18. So on December 18, after exploring the area, they found a cleared area that had been abandoned by the Wampanoag tribe a few years earlier. The tribe had left the village because of an European disease that was killing them. Fifty Pilgrims also died that winter, but more came from England so their colony grew stronger and celebrated a Thanksgiving feast that next November!
