The Finest China in the Cabinet - The Dish.

I was just tooling around the universe's greatest time waster, when I came across some articles about Boston's unique holiday, Evacuation Day. Every year, I submit the missus to my usual Beavis and Butthead inspired jokes about Evacuation Day and bodily functions (don't tell me you never made the connection). But I always thought that every kid growing up in Boston knew the real story behind the holiday; in my childhood I knew it as a holiday marking an event more heroic (and with a better ending) than the Alamo.

In 1775 Ethan Allen (yes, the furniture stores are named after him)and his Green Mountain Boys captured Fort Ticonderoga in New York from the British. He was helped by a Connecticut soldier named Benedict Arnold, and a Boston bookseller named Henry Knox (yes, where the gold is kept).

Allen was captured by the British in the ill-fated and poorly planned invasion of Canada in late 1775, and not released until 1778. Knox, however, had a plan for the large British cannons captured at Ticonderoga. Through harsh New England winter weather, and over dreadful terrain, Knox and his men dragged the artillery pieces to Boston, where George Washington placed them on Dorchester Heights in March of 1776. The British awoke on March 17 and saw that Washington's artillery completely dominated their positions-they shit their pants and sailed to Nova Scotia. That's why we call it Evacuation Day.

So next year, tell someone you know why it's called evacuation day.