On this day in 1773, American colonists destroyed an entire East India Company shipment of tea, chucking it into the Boston Harbor. This act of defiance against taxation without representation became known as the Boston Tea Party, and coffee became America’s hot drink of choice. As tensions built between England and the colonies, it would be the heated debates and public discourse in coffeehouses that would raise support for a growing independence movement. Coffee would be brewed on camp stoves and in headquarters tents as the Continental Army marched against occupying British forces.