1613 The first English expedition from Massachusetts against Acadia led by Samuel Argall takes place.
1620 Pilgrims aboard the ''Mayflower'' sight land at Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
1620 Pilgrim Fathers land at what becomes Plymouth in Massachusetts.
1630 The city of Boston, Massachusetts is founded.
1635 The first public school in the United States, Boston Latin School, is founded in Boston, Massachusetts.
1636 The Covenant of the Town of Dedham, Massachusetts is first signed.
1642 Georgeana, Massachusetts (now known as York, Maine), becomes the first incorporated city in the United States.
1648 Margaret Jones is hanged in Boston for witchcraft in the first such execution for the Massachusetts colony.
1656 Massachusetts enacts the first punitive legislation against the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). The marriage of church-and-state in Puritanism makes them regard the Quakers as spiritually apostate and politically subversive.
1690 The colony of Massachusetts issues the first paper money in America.
1692 Bridget Bishop is the first person to go to trial in the Salem witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts. Found guilty, she is hanged on June 10.
1704 The first regular newspaper in the United States, the ''News-Letter'', is published in Boston, Massachusetts.
1722 Dummer's War begins along the Maine-Massachusetts border.
1733 The first Masonic Grand Lodge in the future United States is constituted in Massachusetts.
1774 American Revolutionary War: The Kingdom of Great Britain orders the port of Boston, Massachusetts closed pursuant to the Boston Port Act.
1775 American Revolutionary War: The British Parliament declares Massachusetts in rebellion.
1776 The American War of Independence: The Americans capture Dorchester Heights dominating the port of Boston, Massachusetts.
1776 American Revolution: British forces evacuate Boston, Massachusetts after George Washington and Henry Knox place artillery in positions overlooking the city.
1786 Shays' Rebellion, an armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers, begins in response to high debt and tax burdens.
1788 Massachusetts becomes the sixth state to ratify the United States Constitution.
1812 Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry "gerrymanders" for the first time.
1839 In Boston, Massachusetts, the American Statistical Association is founded.
1848 In Boston, Massachusetts, the first medical school for women, The Boston Female Medical School (which later merged with the Boston University School of Medicine), opens.
1851 The first American YMCA opens in Boston, Massachusetts.
1863 American Civil War: The 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the first African American regiment, leaves Boston, Massachusetts, to fight for the Union.
1869 Boston University is chartered by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
1874 A flood on the Mill River in Massachusetts destroys much of four villages and kills 139 people.
1883 The first vaudeville theater opens in Boston, Massachusetts.
1911 Ground is broken for Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts.
1912 Opening day for baseball stadiums Tiger Stadium in Detroit, Michigan, and Fenway Park in Boston, Massachusetts.
1912 Massachusetts becomes the first state of the United States to set a minimum wage.
1930 W1XAV in Boston, Massachusetts broadcasts video from the CBS radio orchestra program, ''The Fox Trappers''. The broadcast also includes the first television commercial in the United States, an advertisement for I.J. Fox Furriers, who sponsored the radio show.
1942 In Boston, Massachusetts, a fire in the Cocoanut Grove nightclub kills 491 people.
1966 Former Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke becomes the first African American elected to the United States Senate.
1969 After a party on Chappaquiddick Island, Senator Ted Kennedy from Massachusetts drives an Oldsmobile off a bridge and his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, dies.
1970 Vietnam War: The Supreme Court of the United States votes 6 to 3 against hearing a case to allow Massachusetts to enforce its law granting residents the right to refuse military service in an undeclared war.
1979 The John F. Kennedy library is opened in Boston, Massachusetts.
1985 Free Software Foundation is founded in Massachusetts, United States.
1987 The Chase, Maryland rail wreck: An Amtrak train en route to Boston, Massachusetts from Washington, D.C., collides with Conrail engines in Chase, Maryland, killing 16 people.
1990 In the largest art theft in US history, 12 paintings, collectively worth around $300 million, are stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts.
2004 Massachusetts becomes the first U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage.