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Real events too strange to have made the textbook.
Chilmark, MA
A tall brick chimney and scattered machinery survive from a Martha's Vineyard brickmaking operation with roots reaching back to the seventeenth century. A formal conservation trail leads through the site, where industrial ruins sit unexpectedly amid coastal woodland.
Boston, MA
Inside Massachusetts General Hospital is the historic operating theater where ether anesthesia was publicly demonstrated during surgery in 1846. The room also contains antique surgical material, a skeleton and an Egyptian mummy, making it one of Boston's strongest medical-history oddities.
Salem, MA
This seventeenth-century mansion inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1851 novel and has accumulated centuries of architectural alterations, hidden spaces and family stories. The museum complex includes Hawthorne's birthplace and guided access to the famously named house.
Salem, MA
Game-company founders George, Charles and Edward Parker are buried in Salem, linking the city to the company behind generations of American board games. Parker Brothers later published titles ranging from Monopoly and Clue to the Ouija talking board, giving the family plot an appropriately game-filled legacy.
Williamstown, MA
A former mobile-home community devastated by flooding was cleared and transformed into a public park. Roads, plantings and other subtle traces of the vanished neighborhood remain, giving the open landscape the feel of a community erased without being completely forgotten.
Salem, MA
The seventeenth-century home of Judge Jonathan Corwin is the only surviving building in Salem with direct ties to the 1692 witch trials. Corwin participated in the proceedings, and the preserved house now interprets the trials, colonial life and the beliefs that helped fuel the panic.
Arlington, MA
A bronze statue honors Arlington-born Samuel Wilson, the meatpacker traditionally associated with the origin of the national personification 'Uncle Sam.' Whether the familiar story is completely accurate is debated, but Arlington has firmly embraced the connection with this dedicated plaza.
Westford, MA
Marks on a roadside rock have been promoted as the carved image of a medieval Scottish knight and evidence of a pre-Columbian Templar expedition to New England. Most researchers favor natural weathering and later human markings, but a plaque and knight statue ensure the disputed theory remains physically memorialized.
Salem, MA
One of America's oldest candy companies still sells old-fashioned sweets near the House of the Seven Gables. Its famous Gibralters and Black Jacks preserve recipes and candy traditions reaching back to the early nineteenth century.
