Boston’s Most Interesting Facts

By John C. Barnard Last updated May 30, 2022 0

A quarter of Boston’s population is made up of people who were born in more than 100 different countries. Half of the pupils in Boston public schools speak a language other than English or another language in addition to English.
Only 17 percent of Boston’s population is under the age of 18 years old. High housing expenses are partly to blame for the decreasing numbers.

Boston’s difficult-to-navigate streets are said to be paved cow pathways, according to urban mythology. While some streets are built over cow pathways, the majority of the streets follow the historic Boston Proper coastline before the city expanded over 1,000 acres during the 19th-century landfill efforts, giving them their odd design.

On April 15, 2013, two bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon finish line, killing three people and wounding over 300 more. Rather than instilling dread, this occurrence prompted over 36,000 people to run the marathon the following year in 2014, the largest since the marathon’s 100th anniversary year in 1996, when 36,748 people started.

Boston’s Surprising Facts

About 13% of Boston residents walk to work, making it the city with the greatest percentage of pedestrian commuters among major US cities.
The Great Fire of 1872 raged across 65 acres in a 12-hour period, destroying 776 buildings and incurring $60 million in physical damage, as well as killing 13 to 30 deaths, depending on the source.
The oldest fire department in the United States is the Boston Fire Department, which was founded in 1678.
Boston was founded in 1630 by the Massachusetts Bay Company. The organization was founded by a group of English Puritan settlers who were looking for religious liberty. Previously, William Blackstone, who came in 1626, was the sole European settler in the area.
The hilltops of Boston, Pemberton, Beacon, and Mt. Vernon were reduced by 60 feet or more for a landfill project in the nineteenth century. Workers dragged soil from the hills and added it to bays and along the shore between 1830 and 1890 to expand Boston by 1,121 acres to meet the city’s ever-growing population.
The Boston Massacre occurred on March 5, 1770, when 5,000 Boston colonists challenged and rioted against British soldiers stationed at the Old State House. Six people were injured and five people died as a result of the army firing into the crowd.
Following the Boston Tea Party in 1772, the British Parliament established the Boston Port Act to punish Boston colonists. All trade-in and out of Boston Harbor was prohibited until the East India Trading Company was compensated for the loss of approximately 90,000 pounds of tea. The Intolerable Acts, as they were known by American colonists, were a major role in the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War in 1775.
About 250,000 people, or one-third of Boston’s population, are college students, leaving 600,000 “ordinary” residents.
Boston is a desert oasis, a location where the majority of people are kind, sensible, and content.
Julia Ward Howe (Julia Ward Howe)
The “New” State House’s dome was originally covered in wooden shingles. The dome was covered with copper when it began to leak. The dome was coated in 23 Karat gold in 1861.
The golden dome of Boston’s State House is topped with a golden pinecone.
Two egg-shaped sewage digesters on Deer Island in Boston Harbor keep the harbor one of the cleanest in the world.
In 1903, the Boston Pilgrims defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first World Series.
From May 15, 2003, through April 10, 2013, the Boston Red Sox sold out every home game at Fenway Park, a total of 820 games, breaking the sport’s all-time attendance record.
The Boston Red Sox went on an 86-year losing drought after Harry Frazee traded Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1920, preventing them from winning the World Series. The “Curse of the Bambino” was thought to be the cause of this trend. When the Red Sox beat the Cardinals in 2004, the losing streak and presumably the curse came to an end.
The Boston Public Library, which opened in 1849, was not only the country’s first public library, but it also became the country’s first branch library system when the first branch opened in East Boston in 1869.

Interesting Library of Boston Fact

The Boston Public Library was the first to lend books; earlier, books could not be taken out of libraries.
Due to traffic congestion, the Big Dig diverted Boston’s major highway into a 3.5-mile tunnel. The Central Artery (I-93), which was meant to carry 75,000 automobiles, had nearly 190,000 vehicles pass through it each day. With interest, the project is expected to cost $22 billion, making it the most costly roadway project in US history. The Rose Kennedy Greenway, a collection of contemporary urban parks, replaced the original highway.
In 1636, Boston created the United States’ first higher education institution. The college was named after its first patron, John Harvard, who bequeathed the college his library and part of his wealth when he died in 1638.
The Boston Mather School (1639) was the country’s first public primary school.
The “T” subway in Boston carries an average of 1.3 million passengers every day. The MBTA (Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority) is abbreviated as “T.”
Boston Common Park is a public park in Boston, Massachusetts.
Before the American Revolutionary War, the British utilized Boston Common Park as a camp.
The oldest public park in the United States is Boston Common, which was founded in 1634. To build the park, each household in the Boston colony paid a minimum of six shillings to William Blackstone, the area’s first European inhabitant.
On September 1, 1897, Boston established the first subway system in the United States. 910 bodies were discovered during the two and a half years it took to build the subway. On the first day of service, 240 people crammed into a 45-person subway car.
The Boston University Bridge is one of the few places in the world where a boat can travel beneath a railway, a car, and an airplane.
The Hancock Building in Boston has colored lights that broadcast meteorological information. Solid blue indicates a clean view; flashing blue indicates the presence of clouds; solid red indicates the presence of rain, and flashing red indicates the presence of snow. During the summer, flashing red indicates that the Red Sox game has been rained out.

On March 18, 1990, two men posing as police officers stole 12 pieces of art valued at over $100 million from Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, making it the greatest art robbery in US history. The pieces have yet to be found.
Emily Dickinson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss), Edgar Allan Poe, Sylvia Plath, Donna Summer, Mindy Kaling, Matt Leblanc, Leonard Nimoy, Conan O’Brien, Amy Poehler, George Stephanopoulos, Uma Thurman, Mark Wahlberg, Barbara Walters, Eli Whitney, Samuel F. B. Morse, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Paul Revere