340 chests of tea, some weighing 400 pounds, were smashed open and dumped into Boston Harbor. According to the Boston Tea Party Museum, the tea was worth $1.7 million in today's dollars, and modern estimates indicate that the destroyed tea could have brewed 18,523,000 cups of tea.

Squanto helped the settlers survive in the New World by teaching them how to catch eel & grow corn, as well as serving as their native interpreter. Native American chiefs Massassoit & Samoset, along with 90 of their men, also joined the celebration.

A resident of Massachusetts is called a Massachusettsan or Bay Stater.

The Great Molasses Flood occurred on January 15, 1919, in the North End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. A large storage tank filled with 2.3 million US gal (8,700 m³) of molasses burst, and the resultant wave of molasses rushed through the streets at an estimated 35 mph (56 km/h), killing 21 and injuring 150. The event entered local folklore and residents claimed for decades afterwards that the area still smelled of molasses on hot summer days.

Basketball was invented by James Naismith in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1891. Volleyball was invented by William G. Morgan in Holyoke, Massachusetts, in 1895.

Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg has become famous beyond Central Massachusetts for having the longest name of any geographic feature in all of the United States. The lake's name comes from Loup, an Algonquian language, and is sometimes translated as "You fish on your side, I'll fish on my side, and no one shall fish in the middle."

The black-capped chickadee (Poecile atricapillus) is well known for its ability to lower its body temperature during cold winter nights, its good spatial memory to relocate the caches where it stores food, and its boldness near humans (sometimes feeding from the hand).

In Boston, Cheers fans can visit the real-life bar that inspired the setting of the iconic sitcom. After scouting several locations in the city, the Bull & Finch tavern in Beacon Hill was eventually chosen by the show's producers. In 2002, the establishment officially changed its name to "Cheers", the place "where everybody knows your name".

Walden Pond was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1962 for its association with the writer Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), whose two years living in a cabin on its shore provided the foundation for his famous 1854 work, Walden; or, Life in the Woods.

Rumors that Fig Newton cookies were named after Sir Isaac Newton are false: The Fig Newton was actually named after the town of Newton, Massachusetts.