WThe Cape Cod Airshow & Open House was an airshow held in August of every odd numbered year at Otis Air National Guard Base in Falmouth, Massachusetts. It most recently was run in 2007 after a six-year hiatus. The show in 2003 was canceled because of Operation Iraqi Freedom and the show in 2005 was canceled for unknown reasons. The most recent show exhibited the 101st Air Refueling Wing, the 102nd Fighter Wing, the 103rd Fighter Wing, the 104th Fighter Wing, and various other aircraft from the United States and Canada. The United States Air Force Thunderbirds performed as well. The show was usually attended by several hundred thousand spectators.
WThe Baystate Marathon is a marathon held in the city of Lowell, MA every October. It was first run in 1990 and has been run every year since then. The course is known as one of the flattest and fastest marathon courses in the northeastern United States. The race runs along the Merrimack River and crosses different bridges spanning this river. This fast course is often used by many runners to garner a qualifying time for the Boston Marathon. During the day of the race, there is also a half marathon, The Lowell Sun Half Marathon, in Lowell.
WThe Boston Athletic Association (B.A.A.) is a non-profit, running-focused, organized sports association for the Greater Boston area. The B.A.A. hosts such events as the Boston Marathon, the B.A.A. 5K, the B.A.A. 10K, the B.A.A. Half Marathon, the B.A.A. Distance Medley, and the B.A.A. Invitational Mile.
WA Brewster Chair is a style of turned chair made in mid-17th-century New England, United States.
WThe Cape Cod Canal is an artificial waterway in the U.S. state of Massachusetts connecting Cape Cod Bay in the north to Buzzards Bay in the south, and is part of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. The approximately seven-mile-long (11 km) canal traverses the neck of land joining Cape Cod to the state's mainland. It mostly follows tidal rivers widened to 480 feet (150 m) and deepened to 32 feet (9.8 m) at mean low water, shaving 135 miles (217 km) off the journey around the Cape for its approximately 14,000 annual users.
WThe Dorchester Historical Society is a non-profit historical society devoted to telling the history of Dorchester, Massachusetts since it was founded in 1630. The Dorchester Historical Society was "founded in 1843 and incorporated in 1891." The Historical Society is headquartered in the William Clapp House and also operates several other historic house museums in Dorchester, including the James Blake House (c.1661), and Captain Lemuel Clap House which are open for tours on third Sunday of each month from 11 AM to 4 PM.
WThe Dresden Dolls are an American musical duo from Boston, Massachusetts. Formed in 2000, the group consists of Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione. The two describe their style as "Brechtian punk cabaret", a phrase invented by Palmer because she was "terrified" that the press would invent a name that "would involve the word gothic". The Dresden Dolls are part of an underground dark cabaret movement that started gaining momentum in the early 2000s.
WEvacuation Day is a holiday observed on March 17 in Suffolk County, Massachusetts and also by the public schools in Somerville, Massachusetts. The holiday commemorates the evacuation of British forces from the city of Boston following the siege of Boston, early in the American Revolutionary War. Schools and government offices are closed. If March 17 falls on a weekend, schools and government offices are closed on the following Monday in observance. It is the same day as Saint Patrick's Day, a coincidence that played a role in the establishment of the holiday.
WThe Head of the Charles Regatta, also known as HOCR, is a rowing head race held on the penultimate complete weekend of October each year on the Charles River, which separates Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is the largest 2-day regatta in the world, with 11,000 athletes rowing in over 1,900 boats in 61 events. According to the Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau, the two-day event brings 225,000 people to the Greater Boston area and $72 million to the local economy.
WHollywood East is a term for the multiple efforts to build film industry agglomerations on the East Coast of the United States. Recently, the term has been applied to the growing film industry in New England, particularly in Massachusetts and Connecticut, that served as home to the production of over 140 major motion pictures and television series between 2000 and 2013. It is a reference to Hollywood, California, the center of the American film industry, located on the west coast of the United States. The term as used in New England was popularized in the press in 2007 as film and television productions migrated to the east coast to take advantage of the region's scenery, culture, character, and tax incentives put in place by several state governments.
WThe Human Dog Sled Competition is an event held in February during the Winterfest celebration of Lowell, Massachusetts, USA. Each year, a field of approximately 32 teams compete against each other in a double elimination tournament to determine the National Human Dog Sled Champion. The teams consist of six persons including four sled pullers, a sled rider, and a sled pusher. The sled race is approximately 50 meters long and takes place along a snow-covered street in downtown Lowell. Team members often dress in wacky costumes and there is a prize for the most creative of attire. The Human Dogsled Competition has been recognized for several years by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) for its animal-friendly approach to winter fun.
WThe Lexington Battle Green, also known as Lexington Common, is the historic town common of Lexington, Massachusetts, United States. It was at this site that the opening shots of the Battles of Lexington and Concord were fired on April 19, 1775, starting the American Revolutionary War. Now a public park, the common is a National Historic Landmark.
WThis partial list of city nicknames in Massachusetts compiles the aliases, sobriquets, and slogans that cities and towns in Massachusetts are known by, officially and unofficially, to municipal governments, local people, outsiders or their tourism boards or chambers of commerce. City nicknames can help in establishing a civic identity, helping outsiders recognize a community or attracting people to a community because of its nickname; promote civic pride; and build community unity. Nicknames and slogans that successfully create a new community "ideology or myth" are also believed to have economic value. Their economic value is difficult to measure, but there are anecdotal reports of cities that have achieved substantial economic benefits by "branding" themselves by adopting new slogans.
WThe Miss Massachusetts competition is a scholarship pageant put on annually by the Miss Massachusetts Scholarship Foundation, Inc. The winner of the pageant receives the title of Miss Massachusetts and represents the state of Massachusetts at the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
WMulticultural BRIDGE is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Lee, Massachusetts. Co-founded by Gwendolyn Hampton VanSant and Marthe Bourdon, BRIDGE serves diverse groups in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, Boston, and other regions in Massachusetts, Vermont, and New York City. Services include workforce cultural literacy and cultural competency training, youth leadership and multicultural education, community-based civil rights and social justice forums and conferences, and multicultural advocacy. In 2015, BRIDGE received the Berkshire Trendsetter Award for Nonprofit Impact from 1Berkshire. BRIDGE is a minority and women-run nonprofit and is certified by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as a Massachusetts Supplier Diversity Program Provider.
WNorth of Boston is a collection of seventeen poems by Robert Frost, first published in 1914 by David Nutt in Great Britain. Most of the poems resemble short dramas or dialogues. It is also called a book of people because most of the poems deal with New England themes and Yankees farmers. Ezra Pound wrote a review of this collection in 1914. Despite it being called "North of Boston", none of the poems have that name.
WPatriots' Day is an annual event, formalized as several state holidays, commemorating the battles of Lexington, Concord, and Menotomy, some of the first battles of the American Revolutionary War. The holiday occurs on the third Monday of April each year, with celebrations including battle reenactments and the Boston Marathon.
WPlymouth Colony was an English colonial venture in America from 1620 to 1691 at a location that had previously been surveyed and named by Captain John Smith. The settlement served as the capital of the colony and developed as the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts. At its height, Plymouth Colony occupied most of the southeastern portion of Massachusetts.
WPlymouth Colony was an English colonial venture in America from 1620 to 1691 at a location that had previously been surveyed and named by Captain John Smith. The settlement served as the capital of the colony and developed as the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts. At its height, Plymouth Colony occupied most of the southeastern portion of Massachusetts.
WThe Plymouth General Court was the original colonial legislature of the Plymouth colony from 1620 to 1692. The body also sat in judgment of judicial appeals cases.
WThe Sacred Cod is a four-foot-eleven-inch (150 cm) carved-wood effigy of an Atlantic codfish, "painted to the life", hanging in the House of Representatives chamber of Boston's Massachusetts State House—"a memorial of the importance of the Cod-Fishery to the welfare of this Commonwealth" (i.e. Massachusetts, of which cod is officially the "historic and continuing symbol"). The Sacred Cod has gone through as many as three incarnations over three centuries: the first (if it really existed—the authoritative source calling it a "prehistoric creature of tradition") was lost in a 1747 fire; the second disappeared during the American Revolution; and the third is the one seen in the House today.
WThe Slutcracker is a burlesque, satirical version of The Nutcracker that is the creation of Lipstick Criminals troupe director Vanessa White. It has been performed in Somerville, Massachusetts, and Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The performance incorporates burlesque and tango dancers, drag kings, hoopers, ballerinas, acrobats, and belly dancers in a retelling of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet from the point of view of a young woman who experiences a sexual awakening during a holiday dream-like sequence.
WThe smoot is a nonstandard, humorous unit of length created as part of an MIT fraternity prank. It is named after Oliver R. Smoot, a fraternity pledge to Lambda Chi Alpha, who in October 1958 lay down repeatedly on the Harvard Bridge so that his fraternity brothers could use his height to measure the length of the bridge.