From WITTIE

Contents 1 1711- 1910 2 1911 3 1912-2000 4 2001-Present 5 Resources 6 Authors

1711- 1910

The history of Needham is quite interesting. Needham was part of Dedham from 1636 to November 5th, 1711. Needham seperated from Dedham because the town center was across the Charles River for the people who lived in what would later be Needham. It was very difficult for them to get to church on Sundays because they had to cross the river. So they broke off and became their own town so that they could have their own town center with their own church, and they didn't have to cross the river every week. Wellsley used to be part of Needham until it separated in 1846. In the late 1800's, tons and tons of soil was transported from Needham to Boston to form part of the Back Bay area.

1911

This is the year that Needham turned 200 years old. At town hall, banners of red, white and blue were hung. This was a very spirited time for the Needhamites (I wonder about 2011?)

1912-2000

Believe it or not, in 1933, bank robbers robbed Needham in the first Massachusetts machine gun bank heist. Unfortunatley, two men were killed and the robbers found in NYC.

2001-Present

Recently, we have added New Year's Needham, NYN. It is the New Year's Eve celebration where a there is a parade, ice sculptures and fire performers. Also, Needham created Olin College, the first Needham college.

Crime: Needham is a very peaceful place and we generally have little to no crime but we definetly were affected by the U013 bandits.

In the year 2007, a man from Norwood Ma came to paint a retired Needham citizens house. As well as painting the house, the man also took a baseball bat and hit the retiree over the head. It was the first murder in Needham in over 30 years. Only 1 year later, a man who has robbed several banks robbed TD Bank in the middle of Needham. It was robbed by the U-13 bandits. The man doing the holdup left a fake bomb at the counter and caused a huge distruption in the center. Bomb squads and the whole deal were called in. It was the first time in over 20 years that a bank was robbed in Needham. Also the soveriegn bank on Highland avenue was where the notorious U-13 bandits where caught after having about 7 previous succesful heists. They tried to rob the bank but the police had a tip off and arrested the man doing the hold up. However, the getaway car man nearly escaped but he was chased by police in his car and was later caught and arrested in Newton.Survey

I took a survey of 18 people of period 3B to see who knew when Needham was founded. Surprisingly, only 4 people knew when needham was founded. Some people thought that Needham was founded in the 1900's! Needham was actually founded in 1711 by people who didnt want to cross the Charles River to get to church on Sundays. In summarization, most children ages 12 and 13 do not know when Needham was founded.

          This survey had a list of choices that the people chose from.  The people that were surveyed were boys and girls of the 7th grade.  The results were that most people did not ever think about Needham's history.  Some others thought about it in a way but only two people actually thought about it in a direct way.  I was a little bit surprised that almost no one ever thought about Needham's history.  I think that you could draw accurate conclusions about the rest of the seventh grade because these are pretty straight forward results and there were no ties or anything there is mostly just an array of answers.  If most of the grade didn't think about Needham's History I think that we could say that a lot of the rest of the grade would say the same things.

Resources

Authors

--Elephant21310 13:10, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

--Redhawk 15:06, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

--Hotpockets13 14:56, 3 December 2009 (UTC)Hotpockets13