Compiled by Sean Connelly

October 9(1635) Religious dissenter Roger Williams banished by Massachusetts General Court. The dissident exile founded Rhode Island the following year.

October 10(1837) Robert Gould Shaw was born in Boston. During the Civil War, he commanded the Union army’s 54th Massachusetts Infantry, the first all-Black regiment recruited in the North. A bronze memorial honoring the regiment was installed at the Common in 1897.

October 11(1841) Boston utopians purchase Brook Farm in West Roxbury. Nathaniel Hawthorne and Charles A. Dana were among the experimental community’s famous residents.

October 12(2004) New York Yankees defeat Boston Red Sox in the first game of Major League Baseball’s seven game ALCS playoffs. The Sox would shock the baseball world with an unprecedented comeback after falling behind 0-3 in the series.

October 13(1860) James Wallace Black photographs Boston from aerial balloon, and becomes the author of “the nations first-ever birds’ eye view of the earth.”

October 14(1894) Poet E.E. Cummings born in Cambridge.

October 15(1900) Symphony Hall inaugurated, providing a home for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, who had formerly performed at the Boston Music Hall.

October 16(1846) The first demonstration of ether used as an anesthetic, at Massachusetts General Hospital by Boston dentist William Morton. The doctor famously remarked to spectators, “Gentlemen, this is no humbug.”