9.  Zuccotti Park Was the Site of the First Public Tea Act Protests in America

On November 5, 1773, the Sons of Liberty allegedly assembled a large crowd in front of the King’s Arms Coffeehouse to protest the Tea Act; this was perhaps the first public demonstration opposing the statute in the American colonies. Notoriously, England’s aggressive tea tax would eventually inspire the Revolutionary War, which New York played an important role in.

In fact, New York City even had its own version of the Boston Tea Party: on April 18, 1774, a group of riled up New Yorkers dumped out all the tea from a ship parked in the New York Harbor. The next day, they stormed the arsenal on Wall Street and Broad Street, seizing 600 guns. The next year, the Revolutionary War would begin.