The Plymouth Night Tour

10/03/2026

Today in American history, George Washington and his Franco-American army tightened the noose around Yorktown, beginning the siege that would decide the Revolutionary War. With about 17,000 Continental and French troops working in lockstep—and the French fleet under Admiral de Grasse sealing the Chesapeake—Lord Cornwallis’s 9,000 redcoats were trapped. The genius wasn’t just on the battlefield; it was in the deception beforehand. Washington spent weeks faking plans to attack New York, even building bread ovens and fake campfires to sell the ruse, while racing south to Virginia.

What followed was a methodical European-style siege: trenches dug in stages, batteries rolled forward, and two British redoubts stormed at night—Hamilton leading one assault—opening the way for relentless bombardment. Cornwallis surrendered, effectively ending major combat and convincing a weary British government to negotiate peace. The Yorktown campaign proved that American independence rested as much on alliance, logistics, and misdirection as on courage.

10/03/2026

Shipping WORLDWIDE !!!

10/03/2026

Oh what an uproar this would be now

Yes, it is a completely true piece of American history: parents used to mail their babies through the United States Post Office.

This strange phenomenon began on January 1, 1913, when the postal service launched a new program called Parcel Post. For the first time, everyday citizens could ship heavy packages up to eleven pounds. Rural families quickly embraced the service, but a few clever parents noticed a glaring loophole in the regulations. The rules detailed strict weight restrictions, but nowhere did they explicitly state that a package could not be a living human being.

Just a few weeks after the service went live, an Ohio couple decided to test the limits of the new law. Wanting to send their eight-month-old infant to his grandmother’s house a few miles away, they weighed the baby, bought fifteen cents in postage stamps, and handed the child over to the mailman. In another famous case from Idaho, a young girl named May Pierstorff was mailed seventy-three miles to her grandparents' house. Her parents simply stuck fifty-three cents worth of stamps directly onto her jacket.

While this sounds shocking by modern safety standards, the context of the era explains why it happened. In the early 1910s, rural mail carriers were deeply trusted, prominent figures in their small communities. Parents were not stuffing their infants into dark canvas sacks or dropping them into mail slots. Instead, the local mailman would carry the children safely on his route, walking them or riding alongside them on the train. For a brief window of time, the postal service was viewed as a highly reliable, incredibly cheap babysitting and es**rt service.

The bizarre trend did not last long. As stories of children traveling by mail hit national newspapers, postal officials grew worried about the massive liability of postal workers babysitting infants across state lines. In 1914, the Postmaster General officially closed the loophole by passing a strict federal regulation stating that humans were no longer permitted in the mail network.

10/03/2026

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10/03/2026

In the 1920s, the most heavily armed boats on the Maine coast weren't Coast Guard cutters. They were low, gray, nearly silent speedboats built by a boatbuilder named Will Frost, working out of a shop on Beals Island.

Frost built rum runners and the Coast Guard boats sent to catch them, sometimes in the same season. His hulls carried aircraft engines, Sterling Vikings and Liberty motors putting out 565 horsepower, enough to push a 30 to 80 foot boat past 40 miles an hour through water the Coast Guard's slower craft simply couldn't match. One of his boats, the Good Luck, could run liquor from Jonesport to New Bedford in 22 hours. Crews painted their hulls gray, rigged small cabins and tiny portholes, and strung fishing nets across the deck so a patrol boat passing close would see what looked like just another lobster boat heading home.

It worked often enough that Prohibition turned Maine's rocky, fog-prone coast, with its hundreds of coves and uninhabited islands, into one of the busiest smuggling corridors in the country, supplied in part by French-held St. Pierre and Miquelon up in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. When the Coast Guard did catch a boat, like the Evelyne Ruth, the liquor onboard could be worth $30,000, real money in 1920s dollars. 🌊

Most of those boats are gone now, scrapped or lost to weather long ago. What's left is mostly in old photographs and a few family stories passed down in fishing towns like Jonesport and Beals. Did your family ever pass down a story like this, about the water, or about Prohibition?

10/03/2026

In December 1675, one of the most devastating events in the history of the Narragansett people took place in a frozen swamp in what is now South Kingstown, Rhode Island, and it remains one of the least visited historical sites connected to King Philip's War.

The Narragansett had built a fortified winter village deep within the swamp, believing its location would offer protection. Colonial forces located and attacked the settlement, resulting in enormous loss of life among Narragansett men, women, and children sheltering there during the harshest part of winter. The event devastated the Narragansett community and remains one of the deadliest single incidents for Native peoples in New England's colonial history.

Today the site is marked only by a small, easily overlooked monument along a quiet road, a stark contrast to how prominently other Revolutionary and colonial sites are preserved and visited throughout New England. For many, it stands as a reminder of history that deserves far more recognition and remembrance than it currently receives.

Were you taught about the Great Swamp Fight in school, or is this the first time you're hearing this part of New England's history? 🕊️

08/20/2026

Breaking news: tricorn hats are back in a BIG way!! (Or did they ever really go out of style... 👀) According to The Onion, the 250th has everyone reaching for a tricorn hat—at parades, on the playground, apparently even mid-soccer-match. Get yours at the Buckman Tavern gift shop before they run out: https://bit.ly/45iDF87

Shoutout to Neil in Indiana for alerting us to this article, and to the fact that there's a printed version of this most esteemed news source. 🗞️🧅

02/27/2026

George Carlin’s words strike at the heart of one of the greatest illusions perpetuated by the system: the illusion of choice. We are told we are free, that we can choose our own paths, but Carlin uncovers the uncomfortable truth – we are controlled, owned, and subjugated by the systems in place. The "American Dream" is nothing more than a narrative sold to keep the masses docile, a promise that we are free, when in reality, our choices are already made for us.

Holmes would no doubt observe Carlin’s statement with a keen eye. It is a classic case of uncovering the hidden forces that influence every aspect of our lives. The concept of freedom is often manipulated by those in power, and it is only through close examination that the truth comes to light. Carlin’s insight is a challenge to those who blindly accept the narratives of the powerful, urging us to look beyond the surface and question what we are really being told.

At the core of Carlin’s message lies a call for awareness – a challenge to break free from the constraints that have been placed upon us. It is a reminder that the true power lies not in the hands of those who govern, but in our ability to recognize the illusion of freedom and to seek true autonomy. 🗽🧠