Roger Lowell Putnam (December 19, 1893 – November 24, 1972) was an American politician and businessman. A member of the prominent Lowell family of Boston, he served as Mayor of Springfield, Massachusetts, from 1937 until 1943, and as director of the Economic Stabilization Administration from 1951 until 1952. During his short tenure in federal office, the nation's steelworkers struck—leading United States President Harry S. Truman to seize the nation's steel mills.
For 40 years, Putnam was also the sole trustee of the Lowell Observatory. During that time, he purchased three new telescopes for the observatory and was instrumental in pushing Lowell astronomers to search for Percival Lowell's theoretical "Planet X"—which led to the discovery of Pluto in 1930. (Full article...)
The book is the official children's book of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Praise for the book is still high over 80 years since its first publication, mainly for the enhancing illustrations and effective pacing. The book is popular worldwide. (Full article...)
The Lechmere Viaduct was built in 1912; Science Park station was built on the viaduct in 1955 to serve the new museum. Until 2005, the station was accessed with a footbridge over Leverett Circle. "West End" was added to station signs in 2009 to reflect the West End neighborhood. The station was closed for six months in 2011 for accessibility renovations. It was also closed in 2004–2005 and 2020–2022 during shutdowns of the viaduct for other projects. (Full article...)
Comprehensive re-evaluation of areawide transportation plans was a major theme in the last quarter of the twentieth century for large US cities. The US Department of Transportation has said "the prototype for these reevaluations was the Boston Transportation Planning Review"[1]. Scope of the BTPR studies included evaluation and upgrading of all four MBTAmass transitrail lines and examination of every major highway and arterial project in the region. (Full article...)
Creeden became president of Georgetown University in 1918, in the aftermath of the First World War. During his presidency, the School of Foreign Service was founded, for which he was awarded the Medal of Public Instruction from the president of Venezuela. In order to support the post-war enrollment boom, he expanded the size of the campus and established the university's first endowment. Creeden also significantly reformed the university's organization, including relocating Georgetown Preparatory School to a new campus, installing Jesuit regents to oversee each of the professional schools, and improving the Law School's curriculum and admissions standards. (Full article...)
William Lane KeleherSJ (January 27, 1906 – October 27, 1975) was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit who was the president of Boston College from 1945 to 1951. During his tenure, the school oversaw rapid and significant growth in the number of students returning from World War II under the G.I. Bill. In the span of five years, enrollment increased from approximately 200 students to over 7,500.
To accommodate this growth, Keleher oversaw construction of three permanent buildings, including Fulton Hall, for the School of Management, and Lyons Hall. He also relocated several military structures onto the campus for use as student housing. While meant to be temporary, the structures remained for almost 20 years. In 1946, Boston College's School of Nursing was established, and in 1948, the college's ROTC program was created. (Full article...)
Cecil Blount DeMille (/ˈsɛsəldəˈmɪl/; August 12, 1881 – January 21, 1959) was an American filmmaker and actor. Between 1914 and 1958, he made 70 features, both silent and sound films. He is acknowledged as a founding father of American cinema and the most commercially successful producer-director in film history. His films were distinguished by their epic scale and by his cinematic showmanship. His silent films included social dramas, comedies, Westerns, farces, morality plays, and historical pageants. He was an active Freemason and member of Prince of Orange Lodge #16 in New York City.
DeMille was born in Ashfield, Massachusetts, and grew up in New York City. He began his career as a stage actor in 1900. He later moved to writing and directing stage productions, some with Jesse Lasky, who was then a vaudeville producer. DeMille's first film, The Squaw Man (1914), was also the first full-length feature film shot in Hollywood. Its interracial love story made it commercially successful, and it first publicized Hollywood as the home of the U.S. film industry. The continued success of his productions led to the founding of Paramount Pictures with Lasky and Adolph Zukor. His first biblical epic, The Ten Commandments (1923), was both a critical and commercial success; it held the Paramount revenue record for twenty-five years. (Full article...)
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Newton Centre station after the 1905–1907 grade crossing project lowered the right-of-way
John Henry Clifford (January 16, 1809 – January 2, 1876) was an American lawyer and politician from New Bedford, Massachusetts. He served as the state's attorney general for much of the 1850s, retaining the office during administrations dominated by three different political parties. A Whig, he was elected the state's 21st governor, serving a single term from 1853 to 1854. He was the first governor of Massachusetts not born in the state.
As attorney general Clifford gained fame by leading the prosecution in one of the most sensational trials of the 19th century, the Parkman–Webster murder case. The case, where both victim and assailant were from the upper crust of Boston society, featured the first use of forensic dentistry to secure a conviction. During the American Civil War Clifford supported the Union cause, and was involved in unsuccessful maneuvers to prosecute Confederate President Jefferson Davis after the war. In his later years he served as president of the Boston and Providence Railroad. (Full article...)
Elfrida von Nardroff (July 3, 1925 – November 11, 2021) was an American game show contestant. In 1958, she won $220,500 (equivalent to $2,328,602 in 2023) on the game show Twenty-One, more money than any other contestant on the show. Later, it was revealed that there was cheating on the game show and von Nardroff committed perjury in Grand Jury proceedings. (Full article...)
Godsmack is an American rock band founded in 1995 by singer Sully Erna and bassist Robbie Merrill. The band has released eight studio albums, one EP, two compilations, three video albums, and thirty-four singles. Erna and Merrill recruited local friend and guitarist Lee Richards and drummer Tommy Stewart to complete the band's lineup. In 1996, Tony Rombola replaced Richards, as the band's guitarist. In 1998, Godsmack released their self-titled debut album, a remastered version of the band's self-released debut, All Wound Up.... The album was distributed by Universal/Republic Records and shipped four million copies in the United States. In 2001, the band contributed the track "Why" to the Any Given Sunday soundtrack. After two years of touring, the band released Awake. Although the album was a commercial success, it failed to match the sales of Godsmack. In 2002, Stewart left the band due to personal differences, and was replaced by Shannon Larkin.
The band's third album, Faceless (2003), debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200. In 2004, Godsmack released an acoustic-based EP titled The Other Side. The EP debuted at number five on the Billboard 200 and was certified gold by the RIAA. The band contributed the track "Bring It On" to the Madden 2006 football game in 2005; this track is not featured on any known album or compilation. The band released its fourth studio album, IV, in 2006. IV was the band's second release to debut at number one, and has since been certified platinum. After touring in support of IV for over a year, Godsmack released a greatest hits album called Good Times, Bad Times... Ten Years of Godsmack. The album included every Godsmack single (with the exception of "Bad Magick"), a cover of the Led Zeppelin song "Good Times Bad Times" and a DVD of the band's acoustic performance at the House of Blues in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Full article...)
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The Boston Reds were a Major League Baseball franchise that played in the Players' League (PL) in 1890, and one season in the American Association (AA) in 1891. In both seasons, the Reds were their league's champion, making them the second team to win back-to-back championships in two different leagues. The first franchise to accomplish this feat was the Brooklyn Bridegrooms, who won the AA championship in 1889 and the National League (NL) championship in 1890. The Reds played their home games at the Congress Street Grounds.
The Reds were an instant success on the field and in the public's opinion. The team signed several top-level players, and they played in a larger, more comfortable and modern ballpark than the Boston Beaneaters, the popular and well established cross-town rival. Player signings that first year included future Hall of FamersKing Kelly, Dan Brouthers, and Charles Radbourn, along with other veterans such as Hardy Richardson, Matt Kilroy, Harry Stovey, and Tom Brown. The PL ended after one season, leaving most of its teams without a league. (Full article...)
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The territory of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, one of the fifty United States, was settled in the 17th century by several different English colonies. The territories claimed or administered by these colonies encompassed a much larger area than that of the modern state, and at times included areas that are now within the jurisdiction of other New England states or of the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Some colonial land claims extended all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
The first permanent settlement was the Plymouth Colony (1620), and the second major settlement was the Massachusetts Bay Colony at Salem in 1629. Settlements that failed or were merged into other colonies included the failed Popham Colony (1607) on the coast of Maine, and the Wessagusset Colony (1622–23) in Weymouth, Massachusetts, whose remnants were folded into the Plymouth Colony. The Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies coexisted until 1686, each electing its own governor annually. Governance of both colonies was dominated by a relatively small group of magistrates, some of whom governed for many years. The Dominion of New England was established in 1686 which covered the territory of those colonies, as well as that of New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. In 1688, it was further extended to include New York and East and West Jersey. The Dominion was extremely unpopular in the colonies, and it was disbanded when its royally appointed governor Sir Edmund Androswas arrested and sent back to England in the wake of the 1688 Glorious Revolution. (Full article...)
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The Boston Red Sox are a Major League Baseball (MLB) team based in Boston, Massachusetts. From 1912 to the present, the Red Sox have played in Fenway Park. The "Red Sox" name originates from the iconic uniform feature. They are sometimes nicknamed the "BoSox", a combination of "Boston" and "Sox" (as opposed to the "ChiSox"), the "Crimson Hose", and "the Olde Towne Team". Most fans simply refer to them as the Sox.
One of the American League's eight charter franchises, the club was founded in Boston in 1901. They were a dominant team in the early 20th century, defeating the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first World Series in 1903. They won four more championships by 1918, and then went into one of the longest championship droughts in baseball history. Many attributed the phenomenon to the "Curse of the Bambino" said to have been caused by the trade of Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1920. The drought was ended and the "curse" reversed in 2004, when the team won their sixth World Series championship. Championships in 2007 and 2013 followed. Every home game from May 15, 2003, through April 10, 2013, was sold out—a span of 820 games over nearly ten years. The team most recently won the World Series in 2018, the ninth championship in franchise history. (Full article...)
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The U.S. state of Massachusetts has 14 counties, though eight of these fourteen county governments were abolished between 1997 and 2000. The counties in the southeastern portion of the state retain county-level local government (Barnstable, Bristol, Dukes, Norfolk, Plymouth) or, in one case, (Nantucket County) consolidated city-county government. Vestigial judicial and law enforcement districts still follow county boundaries even in the counties whose county-level government has been disestablished, and the counties are still generally recognized as geographic entities if not political ones. Three counties (Hampshire, Barnstable, and Franklin) have formed new county regional compacts to serve as a form of regional governance. (Full article...)
Officially known as the "First-Year Player Draft", the draft is MLB's primary mechanism for assigning amateur baseball players from high schools, colleges, and other amateur baseball clubs to its teams. The draft order is determined based on the previous season's standings, with the team possessing the worst record receiving the first pick. In addition, teams that lost free agents in the previous off-season may be awarded compensatory or supplementary picks. (Full article...)
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Boston Latin School is a publicexam school located in Boston, Massachusetts, that was founded in 1635. It is the first public school and the oldest existing school in the United States.
The school's first class included nine students; the school now has 2,400 pupils drawn from all parts of Boston. Its graduates have included four Harvard presidents, eight Massachusetts state governors, and five signers of the United States Declaration of Independence, as well as several preeminent architects, a leading art historian, a notable naturalist and the conductors of the New York Philharmonic and Boston Pops orchestras. There are also several notable non-graduate alumni, including Louis Farrakhan, a leader of the Nation of Islam. Boston Latin admitted only male students at its founding in 1635. The school's first female student was admitted in the nineteenth century. In 1972, Boston Latin admitted its first co-educational class. (Full article...)
, there are 136 active stations on twelve lines, two of which have branches. 110 active stations are accessible; 26 are not. Six additional stations (Prides Crossing, Mishawum, Hastings, Silver Hill, Plimptonville, and Plymouth) are indefinitely closed due to service cuts during the COVID-19 pandemic. One station (Winchester Center) is temporarily closed due to structural deterioration. Six additional stations are under construction as part of the South Coast Rail project; several other stations are planned. (Full article...)
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This list of birds of Massachusetts includes species documented in the U.S. state of Massachusetts and accepted by the Massachusetts Avian Records Committee (MARC). As of July 2023, there are 516 species included in the official list. Of them, 194 are on the review list (see below), six have been introduced to North America, three are extinct, and one has been extirpated. An additional seven species are on a supplemental list of birds whose origin is uncertain. An additional accidental species has been added from another source.
This list is presented in the taxonomic sequence of the Check-list of North and Middle American Birds, 7th edition through the 62nd Supplement, published by the American Ornithological Society (AOS). Common and scientific names are also those of the Check-list, except that the common names of families are from the Clements taxonomy because the AOS list does not include them. (Full article...)
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Boston, the capital of the U.S. state of Massachusetts and the largest city in New England, is home to 555 completed high-rises, 37 of which stand taller than 400 feet (122 m). The city's skyscrapers and high-rises are concentrated along the roughly 2.5 mile High Spine, which runs from the Back Bay to the Financial District and West End, while bypassing the surrounding low-rise residential neighborhoods. The tallest structure in Boston is the 60-story200 Clarendon, better known to locals as the John Hancock Tower, which rises 790 feet (241 m) in the Back Bay district. It is also the tallest building in New England and the 80th-tallest building in the United States. The second-tallest building in Boston is the Prudential Tower, which rises 52 floors and 749 feet (228 m). At the time of the Prudential Tower's completion in 1964, it stood as the tallest building in North America outside of New York City.
Boston's history of skyscrapers began with the completion in 1893 of the 13-story Ames Building, which is considered the city's first high-rise. Boston went through a major building boom in the 1960s and 1970s, resulting in the construction of over 20 skyscrapers, including 200 Clarendon and the Prudential Tower. The city is the site of 25 skyscrapers that rise at least 492 feet (150 m) in height, more than any other city in New England. , the skyline of Boston is ranked 10th in the United States and 79th in the world with 57 buildings rising at least 330 feet (100 m) in height. (Full article...)
Image 13Major boundaries of Massachusetts Bay and neighboring colonial claims in the 17th century and 18th century; modern state boundaries are partially overlaid for context (from History of Massachusetts)
Image 25Boston and its neighbors as seen from Sentinel-2 with Boston Harbor (center). Boston itself lies on the southern bank of the Charles River. On the river's northern bank, the outlines of Cambridge and Watertown can be seen; to the west are Brookline and Newton; to the south lie Quincy and Milton. (from Boston)
Image 30An MBTA Red Line train departing Boston for Cambridge. Over 1.3 million Bostonians utilize the city's buses and trains daily as of 2013. (from Boston)
Image 35Certificate of government of Massachusetts Bay acknowledging loan of £20 to state treasury by Seth Davenport. September 1777 (from History of Massachusetts)
Image 36Map showing a British tactical evaluation of Boston in 1775 (from Boston)
Image 42Fenway Park, the home stadium of the Boston Red Sox. Opened in 1912, Fenway Park is the oldest professional baseball stadium still in use. (from Boston)
Image 43Boston, as the Eagle and the Wild Goose See It, an 1860 photograph by James Wallace Black, was the first recorded aerial photograph. (from Boston)
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