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James A. RyderSJ (October 8, 1800 – January 12, 1860) was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit who became the president of several Jesuit universities in the United States. Born in Ireland, he immigrated with his widowed mother to the United States as a child, to settle in Georgetown, in the District of Columbia. He enrolled at Georgetown College and then entered the Society of Jesus. Studying in Maryland and Rome, Ryder proved to be a talented student of theology and was made a professor. He returned to Georgetown College in 1829, where he was appointed to senior positions and founded the Philodemic Society, becoming its first president.
Institute professor is the highest title that can be awarded to a faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. It is analogous to the titles of distinguished professor, university professor, or regents professor used at other universities in recognition of a professor's extraordinary research achievements and dedication to the school. At MIT, institute professors are granted a unique level of freedom and flexibility to pursue their research and teaching interests without regular departmental or school responsibilities; they report only to the provost. Usually no more than twelve professors hold this distinction at any one time.
Institute professors are initially nominated by leaders representing either a department or school. The chair of the faculty then consults with the Academic Council and jointly appoints with the president an ad-hoc committee from various departments and non-MIT members to evaluate the qualifications and make a documented recommendation to the president. The final determination is made based upon recommendations from professionals in the nominee's field. The case is then reviewed again by the Academic Council and approved by the executive committee of the MIT Corporation. The position was created by President James R. Killian in 1951, and John C. Slater was the first to hold the title. (Full article...)
The strike has its background in the presidency of John Silber, who became president of the university in 1971. Over the next few years, Silber made many changes that proved unpopular with the university's faculty, and in 1975, the university's chapter of the American Association of University Professors (BU-AAUP) voted to act as a collective bargaining unit. Silber initially challenged the legality of the union, but by 1978, a court ruling mandated that the university had to commence negotiations with the union. Over the next few months, neither side came to a solid agreement, with pay increases being a particular point of contention. (Full article...)
The town of Stockbridge was established in the late 1730s as a mission community to the Mahicans. John Sergeant was the first missionary, formally beginning his service in 1735. His first house, built in the valley where the Indians lived, has not survived; this house was built in the white community on the hill above the town following his marriage in 1739. It remained in the Sergeant family until the 1870s, and survived Gilded Age developments of the late 19th century. (Full article...)
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A map of the U.S. state of Massachusetts highlighting two of its counties in the Pioneer Valley; Hampshire County appears in green, Hampden County in red, with the Tofu Curtain tracing the line between them.
Tofu Curtain is a nickname for a cultural or socioeconomic divide between two geographic regions and the people who reside in them, with the concept of tofu symbolizing certain lifestyles and political leanings. The term was coined in Massachusetts to identify trends on either side of a county line in the Pioneer Valley along the Connecticut River, and has also been widely used similarly with regards to gentrifying neighborhoods in Melbourne, Australia. While the Tofu Curtain most often refers to these specific regions of Victoria and Western Massachusetts, other tofu curtains have been named along similar socioeconomic, educational, ideological, political and/or ethno-racial divides in various locations around the globe.
The term derives from the political and ideological Iron Curtain that separated communistEastern Bloc countries from Western Europe during the Cold War. The insertion of "tofu" into the phrase asserts that a high proportion of vegetarians reside on one side of the divide, and associates left wing politics with vegetarianism. (Full article...)
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Irene at peak intensity over the southern Bahamas on August 24
Hurricane Irene was a large and destructive tropical cyclone which affected much of the Caribbean and East Coast of the United States during late August 2011. The ninth named storm, first hurricane, and first major hurricane of the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season, Irene originated from a well-defined Atlantictropical wave that began showing signs of organization east of the Lesser Antilles. Due to development of atmospheric convection and a closed center of circulation, the system was designated as Tropical Storm Irene on August 20, 2011. After intensifying, Irene made landfall in St. Croix as a strong tropical storm later that day. Early on August 21, the storm made a second landfall in Puerto Rico. While crossing the island, Irene strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane. The storm paralleled offshore of Hispaniola, continuing to slowly intensify in the process. Shortly before making four landfalls in the Bahamas, Irene peaked as a 120 mph (190 km/h) Category 3 hurricane.
Thereafter, the storm slowly leveled off in intensity as it struck the Bahamas and then curved northward after passing east of Grand Bahama. Continuing to weaken, Irene was downgraded to a Category 1 hurricane before making landfall on the Outer Banks of North Carolina on August 27, becoming the first hurricane to make landfall in the United States since Hurricane Ike in 2008. Later that day, the storm re-emerged into the Atlantic from southeastern Virginia. Although Irene remained a hurricane over water, it weakened to a tropical storm while making yet another landfall in the Little Egg Inlet in southeastern New Jersey on August 27. A few hours later, Irene made its ninth and final landfall in Brooklyn, New York City. Early on August 29, Irene transitioned into an extratropical cyclone while striking Vermont, after remaining inland as a tropical cyclone for less than 12 hours. (Full article...)
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Long Point Light and remains of a Civil War artillery battery. Also shown is the Darby cross erected by the Beachcombers club.
Long Point is a peninsula located in Provincetown, Massachusetts, United States, at the extreme tip of Cape Cod, as it curls back in on itself to create Provincetown Harbor. The Long Point Light was built on this point in 1827. The lighthouse once shared this peninsula with a settlement of fishermen that came to be known as Long Point, Massachusetts. This Provincetown village grew and thrived from 1818 until the late 1850s. When the settlers decided to leave Long Point, they took most of their houses with them – about 30 structures in all – by floating them across the harbor.
During the Civil War, the military established a defensive coastal artillery post and garrison at this location. The Long Point Battery came to be known as "Fort Useless" and "Fort Ridiculous" among the local residents. (Full article...)
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The Society in 1853. Standing: Charles Eliot Ware, Robert William Hooper, Le Baron Russell, and Samuel Parkman. Seated: George Amory Bethune, O. W. Holmes, Samuel Cabot III, Jonathan Mason Warren, William Edward Coale, and James Browne Gregerson. The Boston Society for Medical Improvement was an elite society of Boston physicians, established in 1828 for "the cultivation of confidence and good feeling between members of the profession; the eliciting and imparting of information upon the different branches of medical science; and the establishment of a Museum and Library of Pathological Anatomy". It held regular meetings until at least 1917. (Full article...)
Socrates Nelson (January 11, 1814 – May 6, 1867) was an American businessman, politician, and pioneer who served one term as a Minnesota State Senator from 1859 to 1861. He was a general store owner, lumberman, and real estate speculator and was associated with numerous companies in the insurance and rail industries. He was involved in the establishment of the community of Stillwater, Minnesota and was an early member of the first Independent Order of Odd Fellows lodge in Minnesota. He served on the University of Minnesota's first board of regents before being elected to the Minnesota Senate.
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...)
Historically, this station is perhaps best known as WAAF, which carried a commercialrock music format for nearly 50 years in various forms of the genre, with an active rock orientation between 1989 and 2020. The station also featured personalities including Bob Rivers, Liz Wilde and Greg Hill, and was the first high-profile radio home for Opie and Anthony in the mid-1990s. The station was sold by Entercom (now known as Audacy, Inc.) to the Educational Media Foundation on February 18, 2020. WAAF's former programming continues on a digital subchannel of WWBX, as well as on the Audacy platform. (Full article...)
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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Team photograph of the 1890 Boston Reds 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...)
, there are 135 active stations on twelve lines, two of which have branches. 109 active stations are accessible; 26 are not. Two additional stations are temporarily closed: Haverhill due to reconstruction of an adjacent bridge, and Winchester Center due to structural deterioration. Six additional stations (Prides Crossing, Mishawum, Hastings, Silver Hill, Plimptonville, and Plymouth) are indefinitely closed due to service cuts during the COVID-19 pandemic. Six new stations are under construction as part of the South Coast Rail project; several other stations are planned. (Full article...)
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The front entrance to Boston Latin School on Avenue Louis Pasteur
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...)
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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...)
Map depicting lines of charters and grants for Massachusetts-related colonies and provinces 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...)
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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Skyline of Boston's Back Bay 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...)
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...)
Image 24Major 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 28Fenway 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 29Boston 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 40Packed circles diagram showing estimates of the ethnic origins of people in Boston in 2021 (from Boston)
Image 41Boston, as the Eagle and the Wild Goose See It, an 1860 photograph by James Wallace Black, was the first recorded aerial photograph. (from Boston)
Image 50Map of Boston-area universities (from Boston)
Image 51Certificate of government of Massachusetts Bay acknowledging loan of £20 to state treasury by Seth Davenport. September 1777 (from History of Massachusetts)
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