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A Prank Led to America’s First Nominated Female to Office, and Other Lesser Known American History Facts

Khalid Elhassan December 13, 2019 33 min

35. The Pilgrims Settled in Massachusetts Because They Ran Out of Beer

Beer was quite important for the Mayflower’s voyagers. Slug Signorino

Running out of beer can put a damper on festivities and harsh up partygoers’ buzz. It is a bummer, but seldom does the lack of beer produce results as far-reaching as occurred in the summer of 1620, when the Pilgrims ended up settling in Massachusetts because they were running low on beer. Nowadays, that might seem like a trifling reason for making such a momentous decision, but beer was a serious matter for the Pilgrims back then.

It began on August 5^th, 1620, when the Mayflower departed Plymouth, England, for a journey across the Atlantic to the newly established Virginia Colony. In other words, when they set out, the Pilgrims’ destination had not been Massachusetts, but a point significantly further south. The vagaries of weather, the hardships of crossing an ocean in a seventeenth-century sailing ship, coupled with low levels of beer, led them to change their minds about where to settle.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.