The Boston Tea Party has become more than a moment in history, now representing a template for protests across the nation, a historian says.

Tea Party historical consultant George Quintal Jr. said the event nearly 235 years ago has been mimicked countless times since by protesters in Boston and across the nation, The Boston Globe reported Sunday.

"That's the American way of protest," Quintal said. "We started out protesting with the tea party."

Included among the tea party-inspired protests have been the dumping of federal tax forms by tax opponents or the mass dispersal of leis by angry Hawaiians.