Pawtucket, RI news and local guide

In the 1790s investors began building mills along the Blackstone River, and Slater Mill is recognized as a birthplace of the Industrial Revolution in the United States. When mill owners lengthened hours and cut pay for power-loom weavers, all of them women aged 15 to 30, about 100 women walked out in May 1824, shutting the mills from May 26 to June 3 in what is called the first factory strike in the country. Pawtucket became a town in Massachusetts in 1828, was shifted into Rhode Island on March 1, 1862, ending a boundary dispute of 225 years, and in 1886 the East and West Pawtucket sides merged as a city. By the 1920s Pawtucket was a prosperous mill town with about six movie theaters, but the 1922 New England Textile Strike shut its mills, and the industry declined in the Depression as manufacturers closed or moved south. The toy maker Hasbro has long been headquartered in the city, and in 1981 McCoy Stadium was the scene of the longest game in professional baseball history, 33 innings. Sources Wikipedia: Pawtucket, Rhode Island