126 Fun Facts About Boston

Boston was named after a market town in which English county?

Boston takes its name from Boston, Lincolnshire, the English market town from which several leading Puritan settlers, including the Rev. John Cotton, had come.

Boston's founders left Charlestown for lack of what?

Fresh water was so short at Charlestown that the settlers accepted William Blaxton's invitation to share an excellent spring across the river, on the peninsula that became Boston.

Boston Common, dating from 1634, holds what national distinction?

The first public park in the U.S. began as a shared cow pasture, bought from William Blaxton in 1634; cattle went on grazing the Common until 1830.

Founded in 1635, what is the oldest public school in the United States?

Boston Latin first met in 1635 in its master's own home; the schoolhouse later built for it gave downtown's School Street its name.

The oldest subway tunnel in North America, opened in Boston in 1897, runs beneath which thoroughfare?

Tremont Street was so clogged with streetcars by the 1890s that the tracks were sent underground; the tunnel was built for trolleys, not trains.

What did settler William Blaxton call the peninsula on which Boston stands?

Shawmut was Blaxton's alone until he invited the Puritans across in 1630; within five years he had sold them nearly all his land and moved away to what is now Rhode Island.

Boston's Back Bay neighbourhood was created in the 19th century by doing what?

Nearly 600 acres of Charles River marsh were filled with gravel brought by rail from Needham.

How did many of the men who dumped tea into Boston Harbor disguise themselves?

As Mohawk warriors, the men boarded three ships and spent about three hours hacking open the chests; Parliament answered by closing Boston's port until the tea was paid for.

Who is remembered as the Boston Massacre's first victim?

Crispus Attucks, thought to have escaped slavery twenty years earlier and gone to sea on whalers, was the first to fall; his body lay in state at Faneuil Hall before the victims were buried in one grave.

Which future U.S. president defended the British soldiers accused in the Boston Massacre?

John Adams, then a 34-year-old Boston lawyer, defended the British captain and his soldiers at their 1770 trials and won acquittals for all but two, who were branded on the thumb for manslaughter.

The 1775 Battle of Bunker Hill was mostly fought on which neighbouring Charlestown hill?

The colonists fortified Breed's Hill rather than the higher Bunker Hill; the British took it on June 17, 1775, at a cost of more than 1,000 casualties.

Which Revolutionary War hero laid the Bunker Hill Monument's cornerstone in 1825?

The Marquis de Lafayette laid the stone during his farewell tour of America and took home soil from the hill, which covers his grave in Paris.

Two lanterns hung in the steeple of which Boston church on April 18, 1775, signalling British movements before Paul Revere's ride?

Old North Church showed its two lanterns only briefly: the agreed code was one if the regulars marched out by land, two if they crossed the Charles by boat.

What was Paul Revere's trade?

Paul Revere was a silversmith who also engraved prints, fitted false teeth and, after the Revolution, ran a foundry and a copper mill.

Which Founding Father was born on Boston's Milk Street in 1706?

Benjamin Franklin, tenth son of a Boston soap and candle maker, slipped away from his apprenticeship in his brother's print shop at 17 and made his name in Philadelphia.

The USS Constitution, berthed in Charlestown, earned what nickname after defeating HMS Guerriere in 1812?

Sailors dubbed her Old Ironsides after British cannonballs appeared to bounce off her thick live-oak hull during the August 1812 victory over HMS Guerriere.

Faneuil Hall, nicknamed the Cradle of Liberty, is topped by a weathervane in the shape of what?

A grasshopper of gilded copper, made by Shem Drowne in 1742, is thought to echo the one on London's Royal Exchange, a sign that Boston meant to be a centre of commerce too.

The Freedom Trail through Boston is marked on the pavement by what?

A red line of bricks links the trail's 16 sites; newspaperman Bill Schofield proposed marking the route in a 1951 column, floating names such as 'Puritan Path' and 'Liberty Loop'.

Which Founding Father is buried in Boston's Granary Burying Ground?

Samuel Adams lies in the Granary Burying Ground, named for a grain store that once stood next door; John Hancock and Paul Revere are buried there too.

Who designed the Massachusetts State House, completed in 1798?

Charles Bulfinch designed the State House, completed in January 1798; Paul Revere's company sheathed its leaking wooden dome in copper in 1802.

What tops the Massachusetts State House dome, a nod to early lumbering?

A pine cone tops the dome's lantern; the famous golden dome beneath it began as wooden shingles and was not gilded until 1874.

A wave of what substance killed 21 people in Boston on January 15, 1919?

Molasses burst from a waterfront tank that had leaked ever since it was built in 1915, in a wave moving at about 35 mph that flattened buildings across several blocks.

Which mythical creature is the emblem of the Boston Athletic Association and appears on Boston Marathon finishers' medals?

The unicorn was adopted by the B.A.A. in 1890, seven years before it staged the first Boston Marathon, now the world's oldest annual one; the club itself calls the reason for the choice a mystery.

The Boston Marathon starts in which town?

Hopkinton has hosted the start since 1924, when the line was moved west from Ashland to lengthen a course that had begun at about 24.5 miles.

The Boston Marathon is traditionally run on which holiday?

Patriots' Day marks the 1775 battles of Lexington and Concord, fought on April 19; in 1969 the holiday, and the race with it, moved from that date to the third Monday of April.

Where did Bobbi Gibb hide before the 1966 Boston Marathon?

Roadside bushes hid Gibb until the start: told by letter that women were not physiologically able to run a marathon, she slipped into the field in her brother's shorts and a hooded sweatshirt and became the first woman to finish.

Fenway Park hosted its first major-league game in April 1912, five days after which disaster?

The sinking of the Titanic came on April 15, 1912; five days later the Red Sox beat New York in their new park's first league game, and they went on to win that year's World Series.

Before it was painted green in 1947, what covered the left-field wall at Fenway Park?

Advertisements covered the 37-foot wall until 1947, when it was painted over in the green that later earned it the name Green Monster; ads only crept back decades afterwards.

The illuminated Citgo sign that looms beyond Fenway Park's outfield stands over which Boston square?

Kenmore Square nearly lost the sign in the early 1980s, when Citgo planned to tear it down; Bostonians protested, the city's landmarks commission stepped in, and it was relit in 1983.

The Red Sox's 86-year title drought, ended in 2004, was blamed on a curse named after which player?

Babe Ruth, the Bambino, had helped Boston to three titles when owner Harry Frazee, a Broadway producer who was always short of money, sold him to the Yankees after the 1919 season.

Which team did the Celtics beat in the 2024 NBA Finals?

The Dallas Mavericks fell in five games, which gave Boston its 18th title and moved it one clear of the Lakers; Jaylen Brown was named Finals MVP.

The Boston Bruins, founded in 1924, hold what distinction in the NHL?

The oldest U.S.-based team in the NHL was founded by grocery tycoon Charles Adams, who dressed the Bruins in brown and yellow, the colours of his stores.

TD Garden, home of the Bruins and Celtics, sits directly above which Boston railway terminal?

North Station's concourse lies under the arena, so fans can step off a commuter train and walk up to their seats; the building replaced the old Boston Garden in 1995.

Which Boston-set crime film, about a mole in the police and a mole in the mob, won Best Picture for 2006?

The Departed is a remake of the Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs, moved to South Boston; it also brought Martin Scorsese his only Oscar as director.

How are Boston's Swan Boats propelled?

Foot pedals worked by the driver turn a paddle wheel hidden inside the swan; Robert Paget built the first boat in 1877, borrowing the pedals from the bicycle and the swan from Wagner's opera Lohengrin.

Robert McCloskey's Make Way for Ducklings follows a mallard family settling in which Boston park?

Public Garden visitors can climb on bronze statues of Mrs. Mallard and her eight ducklings, installed in 1987; in 1991 Barbara Bush gave a copy to Raisa Gorbachev for a Moscow park.

Boston's Emerald Necklace chain of parks was designed by which landscape architect?

Frederick Law Olmsted began the chain in 1878 with a sanitation job, turning a polluted, flood-prone swamp at the edge of Back Bay into the Fens, then strung parks on towards Franklin Park.

What hangs today in the Boston gallery spaces left bare by the Gardner Museum's 1990 art theft?

Empty frames still hang where the Rembrandts were cut out and the Vermeer lifted from its frame; the museum keeps them as placeholders and as symbols of hope for the works' return.

How did the Gardner Museum thieves get inside?

Posing as police officers answering a disturbance call, two men were buzzed in by a guard; they handcuffed both guards in the basement and left with their haul 81 minutes later.

The Big Dig rerouted which highway into a tunnel beneath downtown Boston?

I-93 now runs through a tunnel in place of the elevated Central Artery; first priced at under $3 billion, the Big Dig was finished in 2007 for more than $14 billion.

The ribbon of parks laid over the Big Dig's buried highway is a greenway named for which Kennedy?

Rose Kennedy, the president's mother, was born a few streets from the parks, the daughter of a Boston mayor whose name was on the elevated expressway they replaced.

The Charles River separates most of Boston from which neighbouring city?

Cambridge faces Boston across a river that winds some 80 miles through eastern Massachusetts; a dam near its mouth turns the last stretch between the two cities into a broad basin.

Which university left Boston's Back Bay in 1916 for a new campus across the Charles River?

MIT, long nicknamed Boston Tech, built its riverside campus largely with gifts from a mysterious 'Mr. Smith', revealed in 1920 as Kodak founder George Eastman.

The Pops was founded in 1885 as a lighter offshoot of which ensemble?

The Boston Symphony's founder launched the lighter 'Promenade Concerts' in 1885 partly to give his players summer work; audiences called them 'Popular Concerts', later shortened to 'Pops'.

Where does the Boston Pops play its famous Fourth of July concert?

The Hatch Shell stands on the Charles River Esplanade, where Arthur Fiedler began outdoor concerts in 1929; the July 4 show ends with the 1812 Overture, real cannon fire and fireworks.

The exterior of which Beacon Street pub was used as the bar in the sitcom Cheers?

The Bull & Finch Pub at 84 Beacon Street supplied the exterior shots; interiors were filmed in Los Angeles. The show ran 275 episodes from 1982 to 1993.

Which Cheers regular, the bar's resident know-it-all, worked as a Boston mail carrier?

Cliff Clavin was not in the original pilot script: John Ratzenberger, who had read for another part, suggested the bar needed a know-it-all and got the role.

Boston cream pie is said to have been created in 1856 at which hotel?

The Parker House, opened in 1855, claims the custard-filled cake; in 1996 a high-school civics class got it named the state dessert, ahead of the Toll House cookie and Indian pudding.

Which Boston neighbourhood is famous for its Italian restaurants and pastry shops?

The North End is the one part of the early town that has stayed residential since the 1630s; Italian immigrants arriving from the late 19th century gave it the cafes and bakeries it is known for.

Dunkin' was founded in 1950 in which town just south of Boston?

Quincy's shop had opened two years earlier as the Open Kettle before Bill Rosenberg renamed it.

The Boston Terrier was bred by crossing an English terrier with which other breed?

The Bulldog cross produced one of the few breeds created in the United States, now the state dog of Massachusetts; its tuxedo-like coat and good manners earned it the nickname 'the American Gentleman'.

Which Boston mayor served twenty years, the longest tenure in the city's history?

Thomas Menino, then city council president, became mayor in 1993 when Ray Flynn left to be ambassador to the Vatican, then won five elections and stayed until 2014.

What wooden carving hangs in the chamber of the Massachusetts House of Representatives as a tribute to the state's first great industry?

A codfish, known as the Sacred Cod, has hung over the lawmakers for more than two centuries as a reminder that fishing gave the colony food, fertiliser and goods to trade.

Logan Airport lies mostly in which Boston neighbourhood?

East Boston began as five harbour islands; landfill joined them into one, and much of the made land became the runways of the airfield that opened in 1923.

Boston's name is traditionally said to be a contraction of the 'town' or 'stone' of which Anglo-Saxon saint?

St. Botolph is the saint of the English town's great church; etymologists add that the Botolph behind the name may simply have been a local Anglo-Saxon landowner.

Whose 1861 poem turned Paul Revere's midnight ride into an American legend?

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow took liberties: his Revere rides alone and reaches Concord, but the real one had fellow riders and was captured by British soldiers before he got there.

Which Indigenous people lived in the Boston region before European colonisation?

The Massachusett people, whose name the colony and state adopted, lived around Massachusetts Bay; an epidemic around 1616-19 had devastated their villages before the Puritans arrived.

Which hill is the last of the three peaks behind Boston's early name, Trimountaine?

Beacon Hill is the last of the three peaks, and a lower one than the Puritans knew: its top was cut down and its two neighbours levelled to make landfill for the growing town.

Which Puritan woman was tried and banished from Massachusetts in the 1630s for the religious meetings she held in her Boston home?

Anne Hutchinson drew crowds to her house to pick apart the ministers' sermons; cast out, she left for Rhode Island, and a statue of her now stands on the State House lawn.

Which town, almost surrounded by Boston, voted against being annexed by the city in 1873?

Brookline voted no on the day Brighton and West Roxbury voted yes, and its refusal ended Boston's run of annexations: the city absorbed no other town until Hyde Park in 1912.

How did a 1974 court order desegregate Boston's public schools?

Busing students between mostly white and mostly Black neighbourhoods began that September and met violent protests; the city's schools stayed under the court's supervision for more than a decade.

Which fare card does the MBTA use on Boston's subways and buses?

CharlieCard honours Charlie of 'M.T.A.', a 1949 mayoral campaign song that the Kingston Trio turned into a 1959 hit, about a rider who can never get off the train.

Alexander Graham Bell's first telephone call, made in Boston in 1876, summoned whom?

Thomas Watson heard Bell call 'Mr. Watson, come here' over the wire from another room on March 10, 1876, three days after Bell, then a Boston University professor, was granted his telephone patent.

Which Boston Marathon climb in Newton, just past mile 20, got its name from a famous 1936 duel?

Heartbreak Hill is where Johnny Kelley patted rival Tarzan Brown on the shoulder as he passed in 1936; Brown surged back to win, which was said to have broken Kelley's heart.

The first Boston Marathon in 1897 was inspired by the marathon at which Games a year earlier?

The Athens Olympics of 1896 had a US team made up mostly of Boston Athletic Association men; their manager John Graham came home and staged a 24.5-mile race of his own, with 15 starters.

Which woman ran the 1967 Boston Marathon as an official entrant after registering under her initials?

Kathrine Switzer ran with bib 261; race official Jock Semple tried to tear the number off her mid-race before her boyfriend shoved him away, and photos of the scuffle went around the world.

Which impostor crossed the 1980 Boston Marathon finish line as first woman before being disqualified?

Rosie Ruiz is believed to have slipped out of the crowd onto the course close to the finish; she was stripped of the title eight days later, and Canadian Jacqueline Gareau was named the winner.

Where does the Boston Marathon finish, near Copley Square?

Boylston Street's painted line is only the latest finish: the first race in 1897 ended nearby on a running track, the Irvington Oval.

Which two brothers carried out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing?

The Tsarnaevs, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar, set two pressure-cooker bombs near the finish line; after a manhunt that shut down much of greater Boston, Dzhokhar was found hiding in a boat in a Watertown backyard.

Which Boston mayor, grandfather of a future US president, threw out the first ball at Fenway Park's opening game in 1912?

John F. Fitzgerald, known as 'Honey Fitz', was the grandfather and namesake of John F. Kennedy; at 83 he sang 'Sweet Adeline' at the party when JFK first won a seat in Congress.

Which Fenway Park feature is named after a light-hitting Red Sox infielder?

Pesky's Pole, the right-field foul pole just 302 feet from home plate, honours shortstop Johnny Pesky, who hit only 17 home runs in his career; pitcher Mel Parnell popularised the name.

Which team, led by shortstop Honus Wagner, did the Red Sox beat in the first World Series in 1903?

The Pittsburgh Pirates led three games to one before Boston, then called the Americans, won four straight, as their Royal Rooters fans sang 'Tessie' to rattle Wagner.

Which slugger was named MVP of the Red Sox's 2013 World Series win?

David Ortiz, known as Big Papi, batted .688 in the 2013 Series, months after rallying a shaken Fenway crowd in the first home game after the marathon bombing; it was the club's eighth title.

Which coach led the Celtics past the Lakers to the 2008 NBA title?

Doc Rivers had coached the Celtics to just 24 wins the season before; trades for Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen brought 66 wins and the title, the biggest one-season turnaround the NBA had seen.

Besides playing, what second job did Bill Russell hold with the Celtics from 1966 to 1969?

Head coach: when Red Auerbach stepped down in 1966, Russell took over as the NBA's first Black head coach while still playing centre, and won the 1968 and 1969 titles in the double role.

Which of these teams joins the Boston Bruins among the NHL's 'Original Six'?

Chicago Blackhawks are one of the six, but the label misleads: the 'Original Six' were simply the only NHL teams from 1942 until the league doubled in 1967, not its founders.

Which Bruin scored the 1970 Stanley Cup-winning goal, then flew through the air?

Bobby Orr was tripped just after scoring in overtime against St. Louis, and the photo of him in mid-air became a bronze statue outside the Bruins' arena. He also won eight straight Norris Trophies.

Which Red Sox star hit .406 in 1941, the American League's last .400 season?

Ted Williams stood at .39955, which rounds up to .400, before the final day; offered the chance to sit out, he played both games of a doubleheader and went 6-for-8.

Which boxing promoter of Jack Dempsey's biggest fights built the original Boston Garden in 1928?

Tex Rickard, who had staged boxing's first million-dollar gates, opened the arena with a night of fights and died just seven weeks later.

Harvard's 'Statue of Three Lies' earns its nickname partly because the inscription gives John Harvard which disputed title?

Founder is one of the 'three lies' guides recite: John Harvard was a donor rather than the founder, the college dates from 1636 rather than the carved 1638, and the face is a model's.

A 1958 fraternity prank left which Boston bridge marked off in 'Smoots', the height of one student?

Harvard Bridge is 364.4 Smoots 'plus or minus one ear' long; Oliver Smoot, the pledge laid end to end to measure it, went on to head the international standards body ISO.

Boston University began in which Vermont town, which shares its name with a famous Back Bay shopping street?

Newbury Biblical Institute, a Methodist seminary, opened in Newbury, Vermont, moved to Concord, New Hampshire, in 1847 and to Boston in 1867, and was chartered as Boston University in 1869.

Which organisation founded Northeastern University in 1898?

It is now the largest university in Massachusetts by enrollment.

Boston College bought land in 1907 to move from the South End to where?

Chestnut Hill was then rural: the college had outgrown the cramped South End quarters it shared with its high school, so it built on the old Lawrence farm instead.

Which three words are carved over the Boston Public Library's main entrance on Copley Square?

Free to All echoes the wish of banker Joshua Bates, whose $50,000 gift in 1852 got the library started on the understanding that anyone could use it without paying.

Which museum left Copley Square for Huntington Avenue in 1909?

The Museum of Fine Arts left its Copley Square building for the Fenway; the old museum was torn down, and the Copley Plaza hotel opened on its site in 1912.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra has spent its summers since 1937 at which music venue in the Berkshires?

Tanglewood owes its concert shed to a storm: rain and thunder drowned out an all-Wagner night in 1937, and at the interval an organiser appealed for money to build a permanent shelter.

Boston's Symphony Hall, opened in 1900, was one of the first concert halls in the world designed using what?

Scientific acoustics came from Harvard physicist Wallace Sabine, hired by the architects to work out how the room would sound; its 1999 landmark listing ranked the hall among the world's top three for acoustics.

Massachusetts General Hospital stands in which Boston neighbourhood, largely bulldozed for urban renewal in the late 1950s?

The West End's old immigrant enclave was razed and thousands of residents were displaced, but the hospital, which admitted its first patient there in 1821, stayed put.

Which colour lines make up the MBTA's three heavy-rail metro lines?

Blue, Orange and Red were among the colours given to the lines in 1965; blue is said to stand for the harbour the line tunnels under, and red for Harvard's crimson at what was then the line's last stop.

Which Boston Harbor island, once a city dump, was capped with Big Dig earth and reopened as a park?

Spectacle Island took the city's rubbish for decades; dirt and clay dug out for the Big Dig then buried the dump, and the reshaped island opened to visitors in 2006.

On the news in Massachusetts, 'Beacon Hill' is shorthand for what?

Because the State House sits atop Beacon Hill, 'Beacon Hill' stands for the Massachusetts state government, much as Capitol Hill means Congress in Washington.

Boston has New England's last historic Chinatown since those in Portland, Maine, and which New England state capital faded away?

Providence lost its first Chinatown to a street extension in 1915, and the one that regrouped on Summer Street later disappeared too; Portland's also faded, leaving Boston's as the region's last.

Which author, usually linked with Baltimore, was born in Boston in 1809 and signed his first book 'a Bostonian'?

Edgar Allan Poe was born to two actors on Carver Street, then spent years mocking Boston's writers as 'Frog-Pondians', after the pond on the Common; the city gave him a statue anyway in 2014.

Which Boston mayor gave his name to the 1826 market complex beside Faneuil Hall?

Josiah Quincy, mayor from 1823 to 1828, pushed the market through to replace overcrowded stalls beside a stinking town dock, sending eviction notices to property owners who held out.

Completed in 1713, which is Boston's oldest surviving public building?

The Old State House, built in 1713, housed the colonial government; on July 18, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was read to the crowd below from its balcony.

Which architect's firm designed both the John Hancock Tower and the Kennedy Library?

I. M. Pei had his name on the firm, but partner Henry N. Cobb led the tower's design; its glass panes began falling out during construction, and all 10,344 had to be replaced.

What did the John Hancock Tower become known as after its naming lease expired in 2015?

200 Clarendon Street is simply its address: the tower could keep the Hancock name only while the insurer's lease ran, and the owner said it was no longer allowed to use it.

When it was completed in 1964, the Prudential Tower was North America's tallest building outside which city?

New York had every taller building on the continent in 1964; the 749-foot Prudential Tower took the title from Cleveland's Terminal Tower, though one New York critic called it 'urban character assassination'.

Which street separates the Public Garden from Boston Common?

Charles Street divides two very different parks: cows grazed the Common until a mayor banned them in 1830, while the Garden across the road was laid out as a formal Victorian promenade.

Which film composer succeeded Arthur Fiedler as conductor of the Boston Pops in 1980?

John Williams led the Pops for 14 seasons but nearly quit in 1984, handing in his resignation after players hissed during a rehearsal of his music; Keith Lockhart followed him in 1995.

The Head of the Charles, held in Boston each October, is a race in which sport?

Rowing crews set off one after another and race the clock over three miles of river, a 'head race' format that an English-born sculling coach suggested when the regatta began in 1965.

Which British captain led the soldiers who fired in the Boston Massacre?

Thomas Preston led seven soldiers to the aid of a lone sentry; pelted with clubs, stones and snowballs, they fired, and a Boston jury acquitted Preston, unconvinced that he had given the order.

Whom did Washington send to bring the Ticonderoga cannons to Boston in 1775?

Henry Knox, a 25-year-old Boston bookseller, hauled some 60 tons of cannon by ox-drawn sled over 300 miles; mounted on Dorchester Heights, they forced the British out on March 17, 1776.

Which 1773 act of Parliament provoked the December protest at Griffin's Wharf?

The Tea Act actually cut the price of legal tea, to undercut smuggled Dutch leaf; colonists objected because every pound they bought would mean paying Parliament's Townshend duty.

Thieves in Halloween masks stole $2.7 million from which armoured-car company's Boston building in 1950?

Brink's lost what was then the biggest haul in US history; the gang stayed free for nearly six years, until one member talked just days before the statute of limitations ran out.

Which rock band is nicknamed 'the Bad Boys from Boston'?

Aerosmith once shared an apartment at 1325 Commonwealth Avenue; in 2012 the band went back and played a concert outside it.

Isabella Stewart Gardner's 1903 museum was modelled on the palaces of which city?

Gardner built Fenway Court in the style of a 15th-century Venetian palace around a garden courtyard; Venice was her favourite city abroad, and she regularly stayed at its Palazzo Barbaro.

Roughly how much does the FBI say the art stolen in Boston's 1990 museum heist is worth?

$500 million is the FBI's figure for the thirteen works, up from $200 million at the time of the theft; in 2017 the museum doubled its reward for their return to $10 million.

Which 1997 film, about a South Boston janitor with a gift for maths, won Matt Damon and Ben Affleck a screenwriting Oscar?

Good Will Hunting began as Matt Damon's homework: asked for a one-act play in a Harvard writing class, he handed in 40 pages of script, then finished it with his school friend Ben Affleck.

Boston's fire engines were hauled by hand to the Great Fire of 1872 because the horses had been struck by what?

A flu epidemic was sweeping America's horses that autumn, so the fire chief hired 500 extra men to pull the engines; the blaze still destroyed 776 buildings across 65 acres of downtown.

Which governor won national fame during Boston's 1919 police strike by declaring 'no right to strike against the public safety'?

Calvin Coolidge backed the commissioner who refused to rehire the strikers, and his rebuke to union leader Samuel Gompers made him a national name: a year later he was on the Republican ticket as vice president.

Which safety rule followed Boston's deadly 1942 Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire?

Revolving doors cannot be the only way out because the club's single revolving door jammed with bodies as the crowd fled, and 492 people died; flammable decorations were banned too.

Who confessed to being the Boston Strangler, blamed for 13 murders?

Albert DeSalvo was never charged with the killings and went to prison for other crimes; in 2013 DNA from his exhumed body tied him to the last victim, though doubts about the other killings remain.

Whitey Bulger took over which Boston-area Irish mob group in 1979?

The Winter Hill Gang, named for a Somerville neighbourhood, was run by Howie Winter in the 1970s before Bulger took control; FBI handler John Connolly tipped him off in 1994 and he fled for 16 years.

Which Boston mayor was elected alderman in 1904 while in prison for fraud?

James Michael Curley, jailed for taking a civil-service exam on a friend's behalf, won the 1904 aldermanic race from his cell; he served four terms as mayor between 1914 and 1950.

Which Boston department store was famous for its 'Automatic Bargain Basement'?

Filene's marked its basement prices down automatically the longer goods sat unsold, a scheme Edward Filene devised to clear surplus stock from the store upstairs.

Boston Consulting Group's famous matrix has stars, question marks, dogs and what?

Cash cows are steady earners in slow markets, 'milked' to fund the stars and question marks; Bruce Henderson, who set the firm up in 1963, popularised the matrix in a 1970 essay.

William J. Riley founded which sneaker giant in Boston in 1906 as an arch-support firm?

New Balance began as the New Balance Arch Support Company, a name said to come from the way a chicken's three-toed foot keeps its balance.

What do Bostonians traditionally call a milkshake blended with ice cream?

A frappe, said 'frap', is what most of America calls a milkshake; order a 'milkshake' at an old-school Boston counter and you could get flavoured milk with no ice cream at all.

Which lighthouse, first lit in 1716 on Little Brewster Island, was the first built in what is now the United States?

Boston Light was blown up by British troops as they left the harbour in 1776 and rebuilt in 1783, which is why New Jersey's Sandy Hook is the oldest lighthouse still working.

Which physician and author called the Boston State House 'the hub of the solar system', giving the city its nickname?

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. was teasing: his 1858 essay adds that you couldn't pry the idea out of a Boston man with a crowbar. The city kept 'the Hub' anyway, later inflating it to 'Hub of the Universe'.

Which medical first happened in a Massachusetts General Hospital amphitheatre on October 16, 1846?

Public surgery under inhaled ether began when dentist William Morton put a patient to sleep and surgeon John Collins Warren cut a tumour from his neck, then told the audience, 'Gentlemen, this is no humbug.'

Founded in 1630, which is the oldest burying ground in Boston?

King's Chapel Burying Ground belongs to no church: it was Boston's only graveyard for 30 years, and the Anglicans, unable to buy land elsewhere, were later given a corner of it for their chapel.

Which Boston institution, a specialist in jazz and popular music, began in 1945 as Schillinger House?

Berklee College of Music got its name in 1954, when Lawrence Berk, who had started the school, renamed it after his young son, Lee Berk, by flipping the boy's name around.

Which singalong became a fixture of the eighth inning at every Red Sox home game in 2002?

Sweet Caroline had been played at Fenway on and off since the late 1990s; days after the 2013 marathon bombing, Neil Diamond came and led the crowd in it himself.