The long lost sword of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the commanding officer of the North’s first all-black regiment during the Civil War, has been acquired by the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Christie’s is auctioning a rare 1692 deposition from the Salem witch trials that helped sentence an elderly widow to death. By Allison Meier.

The aged gangster welcomed me at the door....This was Ralph DeMasi, once a feared member of the New England underworld...

In 1637, Mary Dyer of Boston gave a monstrous birth and its midwife was Anne Hutchinson. Both were Puritans of-a-kind… Ed Simon.

Thomas Peter Riggs was not like most soldiers. A private in the 54th Massachusetts regiment, his race would have stood out first to contemporary observers: Riggs was black, and his unit was the first to be organized in the North, after President Lincoln and the Union Army acquiesced to expanding the power of the Emancipation Proclamation with African-Americans fighting as soldiers.

It started with a candle in an abandoned warehouse. It ended with the men of the Worcester Fire Department in a fight for their lives. By Sean Flynn.

A museum at a small liberal arts college in Massachusetts has removed or covered dozens of artwork produced by immigrant artists or donated by foreign-born collectors to illustrate their contribution to the cultural wealth of the United States. The Art-Less project has effectively removed or shrouded 120 works of art, or about 20 per cent of artwork on display in the galleries at Wellesley College's Davis Museum.

Massachusetts could become the first state in America to be powered entirely by renewable energy. Lawmakers recently introduced a bill that would require an economy-wide transition to obtaining power via clean sources like wind and solar, and 53 state legislators from both the House and the Senate have shown support for the measure.

Sen Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts

Witchcraft, trials, death and the Devil: how the long road of history winds from 1692 Salem, Massachusetts to 2015. By “Rachel.”

Ahead of its 300th birthday, we get a special look at the history of America's first lighthouse in Little Brewster Island from its current and first woman keeper.

No politician was more determined than Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts to ensure that secession and war resulted in emancipation.

An outbreak of chronic hiccups in teens in Danvers, Massachusetts, site of the Salem Witch Trials, spurred a big investigation. Health officials suspected the culprit was a group psychological phenomenon, but kept that out of the final report. By Dan Vergano.

Add to the list of Massachusetts’ odd laws. The Codfish State already forbids tomatoes in clam chowder, tattooing and body piercing, dueling to the death on Boston Common on Sundays unless the Governor is present, and playing the fiddle in Boston at any time, according to Only in Your State. The latest judiciary jaw-dropper requires that ride-hail companies subsidize taxi companies, according to Reuters. The new law, just inked by the Massachusetts governor, requires that Uber, Lyft, and other ride-hailing companies pay a 5-cent fee per ride to taxi companies.

Massachusetts is preparing to levy a 5-cent fee per trip on ride-hailing apps such as Uber and Lyft and spend the money on the traditional taxi industry, a subsidy that appears to be the first of its kind in the United States. Republican Governor Charlie Baker signed the nickel fee into law this month as part of a sweeping package of regulations for the industry. Ride services are not enthusiastic about the fee.

A police officer was shot and killed during a traffic stop in a central Massachusetts town early Sunday and authorities are now hunting for the suspect, Fox 25 Boston reported. The murdered officer, Ronald Tarentino, 42, joined the Auburn Police Department two years ago after transferring from the Leicester, Mass., department, Auburn Police Chief Andrew Sluckis said at a news conference Sunday afternoon.

The government questions whether The Judge Rotenberg Center has been straight with families about the risks of its electrical shock devices and alternative treatments.

Were you to draw a Venn diagram of Democrats, meritocrats, and plutocrats, the space where they intersect would be Martha's Vineyard. By Thomas Frank.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been “reminded” not to solicit votes near polling sites after President Bill Clinton ventured into a polling location in Boston on Tuesday.

Critics are blasting a Massachusetts city’s new law that they claim requires residents applying for a license to carry handguns to write “an essay” and pay upwards of $1,100 for training. The new laws take effect this week in Lowell, a city of 110,000 that lies 35 miles north of Boston. Pushed by Police Superintendent William Taylor and passed by the City Council, they require applicants for unrestricted handgun licenses to state in writing why they...