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Boston City
Boston is the capital and largest city in Massachusetts
in the United States. It is the unofficial capital of the region known as
New England. It is also one of the oldest and wealthiest cities in the
United States, with an economy based on education, health care, finance,
and high technology. Its nicknames include "Beantown", "The Hub", and The
Athens of America, due to its great influence on cultural, intellectual,
and political matters. The Greater Boston metropolitan area, including
nearby cities like Cambridge, Somerville, and Brookline, has about 5.7
million residents. Boston is the county seat of Suffolk County. Founded on
September 17, 1630, on a peninsula called Shawmut by the Native Americans
who lived there, Boston is named after Boston, England, a town in
Lincolnshire from which several prominent colonists originated. Boston's
deep harbor and advantageous geographic position helped it to become the
busiest port in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, surpassing Plymouth, and
Salem. From its founding until the 1760s, Boston was America's largest,
wealthiest, and most influential city. On June 1, 1660, Mary Dyer was
hanged on Boston Common for repeatedly defying a law banning Quakers from
the colony. She is considered to be the last religious martyr in North
America. On March 20, 1760 the "Great Fire" of Boston destroyed 349
buildings. Boston played a key role in the American Revolutionary War. The
Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party and several of the early battles of
the revolutionary war occurred near the city. During this period, Paul
Revere made his famous ride. As a result Boston is known as the Cradle of
Liberty and historic sites remain a popular tourist draw to this day.
After the revolutionary war, the city became one of the world's wealthiest
international trading ports, exporting products such as rum, fish, salt
and tobacco. It was chartered as a city in 1822, and by the mid-1800s it
was one of the largest manufacturing centers in the nation noted for its
garment, leather goods, and machinery industries. In 1831, William Lloyd
Garrison founded The Liberator, an abolitionist newsletter, in Boston. It
advocated "immediate and complete emancipation of all slaves" in the
United States, and established Boston as the center of the abolitionist
movement. On September 1, 1897 the Boston subway opened as the first
underground metro in North America. Today it is affectionately known as
"The T" and is run by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. The
Boston area is well-known for its colleges and universities. Boston
College was the first institution of higher education to be founded in the
city of Boston, though it moved from the city's South End to then-rural
Chestnut Hill as a result of rapid growth and urbanization in the late
nineteenth century. Harvard University, the nation's oldest university,
was founded in Cambridge, where it maintains its main campus, though the
bulk of its current land holdings lie in the city of Boston. The greater
Boston area is home to over 100 colleges. In addition to schools in Boston
proper, including Berklee College of Music, the Boston Conservatory, the
Boston Architectural Center, Boston University, Emerson College, Emmanuel
College, Fisher College, the Massachusetts College of Art, the New England
Conservatory of Music, Northeastern University, Simmons College, and
Suffolk University, surrounding cities host Babson College, Bentley
College, Brandeis University, Hellenic College, Lesley University, the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Merrimack College, Pine Manor
College, Regis College, Tufts University and Wellesley College, among
others. Boston is also the home to many professional sports franchises
like Boston Bruins, Boston Celtics, Boston Red Sox and Boston Cannons.
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