On this day in 1773, a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians board three British tea ships moored in Boston Harbor and dump 342 chests of tea into the water. Now known as the “Boston Tea Party,” the midnight raid was a protest of the Tea Act of 1773, a bill enacted by the British parliament to save the faltering British East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and granting it a virtual monopoly on the American tea trade. The low tax allowed the company to sell its tea even more cheaply than that smuggled into America by Dutch traders. Many colonists viewed the act as…

By Brian Resnick Now an American icon, the Huckleberry Finn author received his first big break in the pages of this magazine   Over its 154 years, the pages of The Atlantic have hosted essays and commentaries from literary luminaries such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Walt Whitman, Arthur Miller, and Saul Bellow. But perhaps most culturally salient of them all is Mark Twain. Required reading for nearly all school children, Twain’s works are inextricably linked to American history. Today, on what would be Twain’s 176th birthday, his name and his work are still provocative. At the time of its publication, his most famous book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, was a poignant satire of the South set against…