1.
Massachusetts
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It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east, the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island to the south, New Hampshire and Vermont to the north, and New York to the west. The state is named for the Massachusett tribe, which inhabited the area. The capital of Massachusetts and the most populous city in New England is Boston, over 80% of Massachusetts population lives in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, a region influential upon American history, academia, and industry. Originally dependent on agriculture, fishing and trade, Massachusetts was transformed into a manufacturing center during the Industrial Revolution, during the 20th century, Massachusetts economy shifted from manufacturing to services. Modern Massachusetts is a leader in biotechnology, engineering, higher education, finance. Plymouth was the site of the first colony in New England, founded in 1620 by the Pilgrims, in 1692, the town of Salem and surrounding areas experienced one of Americas most infamous cases of mass hysteria, the Salem witch trials. In 1777, General Henry Knox founded the Springfield Armory, which during the Industrial Revolution catalyzed numerous important technological advances, in 1786, Shays Rebellion, a populist revolt led by disaffected American Revolutionary War veterans, influenced the United States Constitutional Convention. In the 18th century, the Protestant First Great Awakening, which swept the Atlantic World, in the late 18th century, Boston became known as the Cradle of Liberty for the agitation there that led to the American Revolution. The entire Commonwealth of Massachusetts has played a commercial and cultural role in the history of the United States. Before the American Civil War, Massachusetts was a center for the abolitionist, temperance, in the late 19th century, the sports of basketball and volleyball were invented in the western Massachusetts cities of Springfield and Holyoke, respectively. Many prominent American political dynasties have hailed from the state, including the Adams, both Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also in Cambridge, have been ranked among the most highly regarded academic institutions in the world. Massachusetts public school students place among the top nations in the world in academic performance, the official name of the state is the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. While this designation is part of the official name, it has no practical implications. Massachusetts has the position and powers within the United States as other states. Massachusetts was originally inhabited by tribes of the Algonquian language family such as the Wampanoag, Narragansett, Nipmuc, Pocomtuc, Mahican, and Massachusett. While cultivation of crops like squash and corn supplemented their diets, villages consisted of lodges called wigwams as well as longhouses, and tribes were led by male or female elders known as sachems. Between 1617 and 1619, smallpox killed approximately 90% of the Massachusetts Bay Native Americans, the first English settlers in Massachusetts, the Pilgrims, arrived via the Mayflower at Plymouth in 1620, and developed friendly relations with the native Wampanoag people. This was the second successful permanent English colony in the part of North America that later became the United States, the event known as the First Thanksgiving was celebrated by the Pilgrims after their first harvest in the New World which lasted for three days
2.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
3.
Greater Boston
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The region forms the northern arc of the US northeast megalopolis and as such, Greater Boston can be described as either a metropolitan statistical area, or as a broader combined statistical area. Some of Greater Bostons most well-known contributions to human civilization involve the higher education institutions. Greater Boston has been influential upon American history and industry, the region and the state of Massachusetts are global leaders in biotechnology, engineering, higher education, finance, and maritime trade. Over 80% of Massachusetts population lives in the Greater Boston metropolitan region, the area has hosted many people and sites significant to American culture and history, particularly American literature, politics, and the American Revolution. Plymouth was the site of the first colony in New England, founded in 1620 by the Pilgrims, in 1692, the town of Salem and surrounding areas experienced one of Americas most infamous cases of mass hysteria, the Salem witch trials. In the late 18th century, Boston became known as the Cradle of Liberty for the agitation there that led to the American Revolution, the Greater Boston region has played a powerful commercial and cultural role in the history of the United States. Before the American Civil War, the region was a center for the abolitionist, temperance, in 2004, Massachusetts became the first US state to legally recognize same-sex marriage as a result of the decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in Boston. Many prominent American political dynasties have hailed from the Boston region, including the Adams, both Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also in Cambridge, have been ranked among the most highly regarded academic institutions in the world. The most restrictive definition of the Greater Boston area is the region administered by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, the MAPC is a regional planning organization created by the Massachusetts legislature to oversee transportation infrastructure and economic development concerns in the Boston area. The MAPC includes 101 cities and towns that are grouped into eight subregions and these include most of the area within the regions outer circumferential highway, I-495. The eight subregions and their towns are, Inner Core, Minuteman, MetroWest, North Shore, North Suburban, South Shore, SouthWest. Northern Bristol County is part of the Greater Boston CSA, as part of the Providence MSA, the urbanized area surrounding Boston serves as the core of a definition used by the US Census Bureau known as the New England city and town area. The set of towns containing the core urbanized area plus surrounding towns with strong social and economic ties to the area is defined as the Boston–Cambridge–Nashua. The Boston NECTA is further subdivided into several NECTA divisions, which are listed below, the Boston, Framingham, and Peabody NECTA divisions together correspond roughly to the MAPC area. The total population of the Boston NECTA was 4,540,941, the metropolitan statistical area had a total population of approximately 4,732,161 as of 2014 and is the tenth-largest in the United States. The components of the area with their estimated 2012 populations are listed below. This area consists of the areas of Manchester, Worcester, Providence, as well as Cape Cod. The total population as of 2014 for the region was estimated at 8,099,575
4.
Merrimack Valley
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The Merrimack Valley is a bi-state region along the Merrimack River in the U. S. states of New Hampshire and Massachusetts, United States. The Merrimack is one of the waterways in the New England region and has helped define the livelihood. Major cities in the Merrimack Valley include Concord, Manchester and Nashua in New Hampshire, as well as Lowell, Lawrence, the Merrimack Valley was a major center of the textile industry in America during the 19th century. The cities and towns in this area are, The population of the region in 2010 was 631,477 residents, or slightly more than the city of Bostons at the time, and about one tenth of the state. The Merrimack Valley contains a mixture of 19th-century industrial cities and mill built to take advantage of the rivers waterpower, modern suburbs. The western portion, including Greater Lowell and Haverhill/Lawrence/Methuen, is more urbanized than the eastern portion. The entire Merrimack Valley region within Massachusetts is a component of Greater Boston, automobile travel through the Massachusetts section of the Merrimack Valley is served primarily by Interstate 495. From Lowell and Lawrence, U. S. Route 3 and Interstate 93, respectively, head north along the valley, joining in Manchester, henniker marks the western extent, and Nottingham the east. Manchester boasts a regional airport, with scheduled commercial services. To the east is the Seacoast Region, to the west is the Monadnock Region, Interstate 93 bisects the region which is also served by Interstate 293, U. S. Route 3 and many New Hampshire state highways. The original settlers of the Merrimack Valley were various tribes of the Pennacook Indians, the river provided an easy means of transportation, an exceptional source of salmon as well as other fish, and the land along the river banks was suitable for hunting and sometimes farming. However, much of the soil is full of granite, the earliest European records of the river date to a French expedition under Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts, in 1605. By 1629, the British were moving into the area, the city of Newburyport, first settled in 1635, at the rivers mouth, became an important shipbuilding center during the colonial era, using lumber floated downriver from the White Mountains. Prior to this time, other canals had been built around falls and rapids to make the Merrimack navigable, such as the Pawtucket Canal at East Chelmsford. Lowell, the first large-scale planned textile center in America, remained the nations largest into the 1850s, textile production spread up and down the Merrimack Valley in both states for the next century, but eventually was eclipsed after the Second World War. Manchesters Amoskeag Mills was once the largest cotton textile plant in the world, Lawrence was the site of the Bread and Roses strike, a landmark event in the history of labor relations in the United States. After World War II, the industry collapsed rapidly. After a few decades of stagnation, the Massachusetts Miracle came to the valley, bringing the headquarters of Wang Laboratories to Tewksbury, apollo Computer located in Chelmsford and Nashua Corporation in Nashua moved beyond printing to computer products
5.
Cape Ann
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Cape Ann is a rocky cape in northeastern Massachusetts, United States on the Atlantic Ocean. It is about 30 miles northeast of Boston and marks the limit of Massachusetts Bay. Cape Ann includes the city of Gloucester and the towns of Essex, Manchester-by-the-Sea, Cape Ann was first mapped by the explorer John Smith. He had given it the name Cape Tragabigzanda, after his mistress in Istanbul and he had been taken as a prisoner of war and enslaved in the Ottoman Empire. His mistress had fallen in love him, but Smith later escaped in Russia. When Smith presented his map to Charles I, he suggested that Charles should feel free to any of the barbarous names into English ones. The king made such changes, but only four survive today. One was Cape Ann, which Charles named in honor of his mother Anne of Denmark, the English colony at Cape Ann was first founded in 1623. It was the colonizing effort in New England after Popham Colony, Plymouth Colony. Two ships of the Dorchester Company brought 32 in number with John Tylly and Thomas Gardner as overseers of a fishing operation and this colony predated Massachusetts Bay charter and colony. For that reason, members of the colony were referred to as old planters, the first Great House in New England was built on Cape Ann by the planters. This house was dismantled on the orders of John Endecott in 1628, when Higginson arrived in Salem, he wrote that we found a faire house newly built for the Governor which was remarkable for being two stories high. By 1634 the name of Cape Ann was already established, as it is mentioned and depicted on maps in William Woods New Englands Prospect first published in that year, the entirety of Cape Ann lies within Essex County. At the end of Cape Ann, and splitting Gloucester into two parts, is the Annisquam River, many locals who live in Gloucester and Rockport refer to the land east of the Annisquam as The Island. The island has its own schools, water supply and its own hospital, Cape Ann is the location of the fictional town of Sea Harbor, the setting of the Seaside Knitters mysteries by author Sally Goldenbaum. Sea Harbor is on the coast, with Gloucester as its nearest neighbor town, Cape Ann is also featured as the setting for the Harry Chapin song Dogtown, which is also the name for an abandoned town on the Cape. The fictional Gloucester Island in 1966 Cold War comedy film The Russians Are Coming, the book Slaughterhouse Five mentions Cape Ann as the honeymoon location for the main character Billy Pilgrim. Also the location of main characters home in the book Trouble, Cape Ann is the title of the fifth and final section of T. S. Eliots poe, Landscapes, which lists the coastal birds of the region
6.
U.S. state
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A U. S. state is a constituent political entity of the United States of America. There are 50 states, which are together in a union with each other. Each state holds administrative jurisdiction over a geographic territory. Due to the shared sovereignty between each state and the government, Americans are citizens of both the federal republic and of the state in which they reside. State citizenship and residency are flexible, and no government approval is required to move between states, except for persons covered by certain types of court orders. States range in population from just under 600,000 to over 39 million, four states use the term commonwealth rather than state in their full official names. States are divided into counties or county-equivalents, which may be assigned some local authority but are not sovereign. County or county-equivalent structure varies widely by state, State governments are allocated power by the people through their individual constitutions. All are grounded in principles, and each provides for a government. States possess a number of powers and rights under the United States Constitution, Constitution has been amended, and the interpretation and application of its provisions have changed. The general tendency has been toward centralization and incorporation, with the government playing a much larger role than it once did. There is a debate over states rights, which concerns the extent and nature of the states powers and sovereignty in relation to the federal government. States and their residents are represented in the federal Congress, a legislature consisting of the Senate. Each state is represented in the Senate by two senators, and is guaranteed at least one Representative in the House, members of the House are elected from single-member districts. Representatives are distributed among the states in proportion to the most recent constitutionally mandated decennial census, the Constitution grants to Congress the authority to admit new states into the Union. Since the establishment of the United States in 1776, the number of states has expanded from the original 13 to 50, alaska and Hawaii are the most recent states admitted, both in 1959. The Constitution is silent on the question of states have the power to secede from the Union. Shortly after the Civil War, the U. S. Supreme Court, in Texas v. White, as a result, while the governments of the various states share many similar features, they often vary greatly with regard to form and substance
7.
Boston
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Boston is the capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. Boston is also the seat of Suffolk County, although the county government was disbanded on July 1,1999. The city proper covers 48 square miles with a population of 667,137 in 2015, making it the largest city in New England. Alternately, as a Combined Statistical Area, this wider commuting region is home to some 8.1 million people, One of the oldest cities in the United States, Boston was founded on the Shawmut Peninsula in 1630 by Puritan settlers from England. It was the scene of several key events of the American Revolution, such as the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Siege of Boston. Upon U. S. independence from Great Britain, it continued to be an important port and manufacturing hub as well as a center for education, through land reclamation and municipal annexation, Boston has expanded beyond the original peninsula. Its rich history attracts many tourists, with Faneuil Hall alone drawing over 20 million visitors per year, Bostons many firsts include the United States first public school, Boston Latin School, first subway system, the Tremont Street Subway, and first public park, Boston Common. Bostons economic base also includes finance, professional and business services, biotechnology, information technology, the city has one of the highest costs of living in the United States as it has undergone gentrification, though it remains high on world livability rankings. Bostons early European settlers had first called the area Trimountaine but later renamed it Boston after Boston, Lincolnshire, England, the renaming on September 7,1630 was by Puritan colonists from England who had moved over from Charlestown earlier that year in quest of fresh water. Their settlement was limited to the Shawmut Peninsula, at that time surrounded by the Massachusetts Bay and Charles River. The peninsula is thought to have been inhabited as early as 5000 BC, in 1629, the Massachusetts Bay Colonys first governor John Winthrop led the signing of the Cambridge Agreement, a key founding document of the city. Puritan ethics and their focus on education influenced its early history, over the next 130 years, the city participated in four French and Indian Wars, until the British defeated the French and their Indian allies in North America. Boston was the largest town in British America until Philadelphia grew larger in the mid-18th century, Bostons harbor activity was significantly curtailed by the Embargo Act of 1807 and the War of 1812. Foreign trade returned after these hostilities, but Bostons merchants had found alternatives for their investments in the interim. Manufacturing became an important component of the economy, and the citys industrial manufacturing overtook international trade in economic importance by the mid-19th century. Boston remained one of the nations largest manufacturing centers until the early 20th century, a network of small rivers bordering the city and connecting it to the surrounding region facilitated shipment of goods and led to a proliferation of mills and factories. Later, a network of railroads furthered the regions industry. Boston was a port of the Atlantic triangular slave trade in the New England colonies
8.
New Hampshire
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New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, New Hampshire is the 5th smallest by land area and the 9th least populous of the 50 United States. Concord is the capital, while Manchester is the largest city in the state and in northern New England, including Vermont. It has no sales tax, nor is personal income taxed at either the state or local level. The New Hampshire primary is the first primary in the U. S. presidential election cycle and its license plates carry the state motto, Live Free or Die. The states nickname, The Granite State, refers to its extensive granite formations, the state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire by Captain John Mason. New Hampshire is part of the New England region and it is bounded by Quebec, Canada, to the north and northwest, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Massachusetts to the south, and Vermont to the west. New Hampshires major regions are the Great North Woods, the White Mountains, the Lakes Region, the Seacoast, the Merrimack Valley, the Monadnock Region, and the Dartmouth-Lake Sunapee area. New Hampshire has the shortest ocean coastline of any U. S. coastal state, New Hampshire was home to the rock formation called the Old Man of the Mountain, a face-like profile in Franconia Notch, until the formation disintegrated in May 2003. Major rivers include the 110-mile Merrimack River, which bisects the lower half of the state north–south and ends up in Newburyport and its tributaries include the Contoocook River, Pemigewasset River, and Winnipesaukee River. The 410-mile Connecticut River, which starts at New Hampshires Connecticut Lakes and flows south to Connecticut, only one town – Pittsburg – shares a land border with the state of Vermont. The northwesternmost headwaters of the Connecticut also define the Canada–U. S, the Piscataqua River and its several tributaries form the states only significant ocean port where they flow into the Atlantic at Portsmouth. The Salmon Falls River and the Piscataqua define the southern portion of the border with Maine, the U. S. Supreme Court dismissed the case in 2002, leaving ownership of the island with Maine. New Hampshire still claims sovereignty of the base, however, the largest of New Hampshires lakes is Lake Winnipesaukee, which covers 71 square miles in the east-central part of New Hampshire. Umbagog Lake along the Maine border, approximately 12.3 square miles, is a distant second, Squam Lake is the second largest lake entirely in New Hampshire. New Hampshire has the shortest ocean coastline of any state in the United States, Hampton Beach is a popular local summer destination. It is the state with the highest percentage of area in the country. New Hampshire is in the temperate broadleaf and mixed forests biome, much of the state, in particular the White Mountains, is covered by the conifers and northern hardwoods of the New England-Acadian forests
9.
Salem, Massachusetts
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Salem is a coastal city in Essex County, Massachusetts, in the United States, located on Massachusetts North Shore. It is a New England bedrock of history and is considered one of the most significant seaports in Puritan American history, the citys reported population was 41,340 at the 2010 census. Salem and Lawrence are the county seats of Essex County, though the county government was abolished in 1999, much of the citys cultural identity reflects its role as the location of the Salem witch trials of 1692, as featured in Arthur Millers The Crucible. Tourists know Salem as a mix of important historical sites and a vibrant downtown that has more than 60 restaurants, cafes, in 2012, the Retailers Association of Massachusetts chose Salem for their inaugural Best Shopping District award. President Barack Obama signed executive order HR1339 on January 10,2013, more than one million tourists from all around the world visit Salem annually, bringing in at least $100 million in tourism spending each year. More than 250,000 visited Salem over Halloween weekend in 2016, Salem is located at the mouth of the Naumkeag river at the site of an ancient American Indian village and trading center. It was first settled by Europeans in 1626, when a company of fishermen arrived from Cape Ann, led by Roger Conant. Conants leadership provided the stability to survive the first two years, but he was replaced by John Endecott, one of the new arrivals, Conant graciously stepped aside and was granted 200 acres of land in compensation. These New Planters and the Old Planters agreed to cooperate, in part due to the diplomacy of Conant. In 1628, Endecott ordered that the Great House be moved from Cape Ann, when Higginson arrived in Salem, he wrote that we found a faire house newly built for the Governor which was remarkable for being two stories high. A year later, the Massachusetts Bay Charter was issued creating the Massachusetts Bay Colony with Matthew Craddock as its governor in London, John Winthrop was elected Governor in late 1629, and arrived with the Winthrop Fleet in 1630, beginning the Great Migration. In 1639, Endecotts was one of the signatures on the contract for enlarging the meeting house in Town House Square for the First Church in Salem. This document remains part of the records at City Hall. He was active in the affairs of the town throughout his life, Samuel Skelton was the first pastor of the First Church of Salem, which is the original Puritan church in North America. Endecott already had a relationship with Skelton, having been converted by him. Roger Conant died in 1679 at the age of 87, a statue commemorating him stands overlooking Salem Common. Salem originally included much of the North Shore, including Marblehead, most of the accused in the Salem witch trials lived in nearby Salem Village, now known as Danvers, although a few lived on the outskirts of Salem. Salem Village also included Peabody and parts of present-day Beverly, Middleton, Topsfield, Wenham, and Manchester-by-the-Sea were once parts of Salem
10.
Salem witch trials
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The Salem witch trials were a series of hearings and prosecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts between February 1692 and May 1693. The trials resulted in the executions of twenty people, fourteen of them women, twelve other women had previously been executed in Massachusetts and Connecticut during the 17th century. Despite being generally known as the Salem Witch Trials, the hearings in 1692 were conducted in several towns, Salem Village, Salem Town, Ipswich. The most infamous trials were conducted by the Court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692 in Salem Town, the episode is one of Colonial Americas most notorious cases of mass hysteria. It has been used in political rhetoric and popular literature as a cautionary tale about the dangers of isolationism, religious extremism, false accusations. It was not unique, but a Colonial American example of the broader phenomenon of witch trials in the early modern period. Many historians consider the effects of the trials to have been highly influential in subsequent United States history. According to historian George Lincoln Burr, the Salem witchcraft was the rock on which the theocracy shattered, at the 300th anniversary events in 1992 to commemorate the victims of the trials, a park was dedicated in Salem and a memorial in Danvers. In November 2001, the Massachusetts legislature passed an act exonerating all of those convicted and listing them by name, in January 2016, the University of Virginia announced its Gallows Hill Project team had determined the execution site in Salem, where the nineteen witches had been hanged. The city owns the site and is planning a memorial to the victims, in Against Modern Sadducism, Joseph Glanvill claimed that he could prove the existence of witches and ghosts of the supernatural realm. Glanvill wrote about the denial of the resurrection, and the spirits. In his treatise, Glanvill claimed that men should believe in witches and apparitions, if they doubted the reality of spirits, they not only denied demons. Glanvill wanted to prove that the supernatural could not be denied, works by men such as Glanvill and Cotton Mather tried to prove that demons were alive. The earliest recorded execution was that of Alse Young in 1647 in Hartford. Historian Clarence F. Jewett included a list of people executed in New England in The Memorial History of Boston, Including Suffolk County. New England had been settled by religious refugees seeking to build a pure and they lived closely with the sense of the supernatural. The original 1629 Royal Charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony was vacated in 1684, Andros was ousted in 1689 after the Glorious Revolution in England replaced the Catholic James II with the Protestant co-rulers William and Mary. At the same time tensions erupted between English colonists settling in the Eastward and French-supported Wabanaki Indians of that territory in what came to be known as King Williams War
United States
Massachusetts
