1. 1776: The Battle of Bound Brook, a small skirmish during the American Revolution, took place in Bound Brook, New Jersey. Many soldiers from Massachusetts fought in this battle, including John Glover's Marblehead Regiment, which played a key role in ferrying George Washington's troops across the Delaware River later that year.

2. 1792: The first U.S. patent for a cotton-spinning machine was issued to Samuel Slater, who had emigrated from England to Massachusetts and had memorized the design of the machines used in Britain's textile industry. Slater's patent led to the establishment of New England's textile industry, which heavily relied on the labor of young women from rural areas.

3. 1954: Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Anne Sexton was admitted to McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts, where she was treated for depression, alcoholism, and suicidal tendencies. It was at McLean that she met her psychiatrist, Martin Orne, who encouraged her to pursue her writing as a form of therapy. Sexton later published several critically acclaimed volumes of poetry, including "Live or Die" and "Transformations."

4. 1969: Tom Phillips, a computer programmer from Massachusetts, invented the first electronic bulletin board system (BBS), which allowed computer users to exchange messages and files with one another. Phillips's BBS, which was called Community Memory, was installed in public locations throughout San Francisco and was used by thousands of people until the early 1980s, when the rise of the internet made it obsolete.

5. 2013: Two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring more than 260 others. The attack was carried out by two brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who had immigrated to the United States from Kyrgyzstan. The incident prompted a massive manhunt that resulted in the death of Tamerlan and the capture of Dzhokhar. He was later convicted of terrorism charges and sentenced to death.