Boston Sports and Concert Events

Boston

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" (shortened from Oliver Wendell Holmes's phrase The Hub of the Universe), and The Athens of America, due to its great influence on cultural, intellectual, and political matters. As of the 2000 census, its population was 589,141. 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. From its founding until the 1760s, Boston was America's largest, wealthiest, and most influential city. 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 (such as the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Siege of Boston) occurred near the city. 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. On September 1, 1897 the Boston subway opened as the first underground metro in North America. The Boston area is well-known for its colleges and universities. The Boston area is home to 60 colleges. In addition to the schools in Boston proper, such as Boston University, Emerson College, and Berklee College of Music, surrounding cities host famous schools like Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston College, Babson College, Wellesley College, and Tufts University. Among the newspapers published from Boston, The Boston Globe, owned by the New York Times Company, and The Boston Herald are two major daily newspapers. A local edition of The Metro, a free paper, is also available. The Boston Phoenix and the Weekly Dig are weekly newspapers. Spare Change is a bi-weekly paper. The following professional sports franchises operate out of Boston: Boston Bruins (Ice Hockey - National Hockey League), Boston Celtics (Basketball - National Basketball Association), Boston Red Sox (Baseball - Major League Baseball), Boston Cannons (Lacrosse - Major League Lacrosse).