Swan Boats (Boston, Massachusetts)
The Swan Boats are a fleet of pontoon pleasure boats which operate in a pond in the Public Garden in Boston, Massachusetts. The Swan Boats have been in operation since 1877, and have since become a cultural icon for the city. They operate beginning the second weekend of April and ending Labor Day weekend in September. History Robert Paget first created the Swan Boats in the Public Garden in 1877, after seeing the opera ''Lohengrin'' with his wife Julia Paget. Inspired by the knight's gallant rescue of the damsel by riding a swan across the lake, Paget decided to capitalize on the recent popularity of the bicycle and combine the two, designing a two-pontooned boat with two wooden benches and a brass seat on top of a paddlebox concealed by a swan. The driver would sit inside the swan and pedal passengers around the pond. Swan boats have since operated every year until 2020, when they stayed closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Massachusetts. They have returned to run each year ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Boston Swan Boat Lagoon Bridge
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- most populous city in the country. The city boundaries encompass an area of about and a population of 675,647 as of 2020. It is the seat of Suffolk County (although the county government was disbanded on July 1, 1999). The city is the economic and cultural anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area known as Greater Boston, a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) home to a census-estimated 4.8 million people in 2016 and ranking as the tenth-largest MSA in the country. A broader combined statistical area (CSA), generally corresponding to the commuting area and including Providence, Rhode Island, is home to approximately 8.2 million people, making it the sixth most populous in the United States. Boston is one of the oldest munici ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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COVID-19 Pandemic In Massachusetts
The COVID-19 pandemic in Massachusetts is part of an ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. The first confirmed case was reported on February 1, 2020, and the number of cases began increasing rapidly on March 5. Governor Charlie Baker declared a state of emergency on March 10. By March 12, more than a hundred people had tested positive for the virus. Massachusetts experienced a first wave of COVID-19 that peaked in late April 2020, with almost 4,000 people hospitalized with the disease, and a rolling seven-day average of 2,300 new confirmed cases and 175 confirmed deaths a day. A second wave began in the autumn of the same year and peaked in January 2021, seeing higher daily case numbers but fewer deaths and hospitalizations than the first wave. There was a smaller third spike of increased cases and hospitalizations in March and April 2021, which resulted in significantly fewer deaths than the first two waves. A fourth wave ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Parkman Bandstand
The Parkman Bandstand is a landmark bandstand located on the eastern side of the Boston Common in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It was built in 1912 from a design by Derby, Robinson & Shephard at a cost of $1 million on the site of the Cow Pond (also known as the Horse Pond), which had been filled in 1838 after cattle-grazing had been outlawed on the Common. Named for George F. Parkman, the bandstand was constructed following his death in 1908, in honor of a $5 million donation he had willed for the care of the Boston Common and other city parks. Parkman was the son of George Parkman, a doctor who had donated land for Harvard Medical School's first campus. The site quickly became noted for the autumnal colonial-themed puppet shows that occurred there starting in 1922. Puppet shows formally ceased at the location following Flynn Dooley's controversial puppet show titled, “The Real Story of Revere’s Ride” in 1942 amidst rising tensions with Germany and a surge in patr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Fallout 4
''Fallout 4'' is a 2015 action role-playing game developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. It is the fourth main game in the ''Fallout'' series and was released worldwide on November 10, 2015, for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One. The game is set within an open world post-apocalyptic environment that encompasses the city of Boston and the surrounding Massachusetts region known as "The Commonwealth". It makes use of a number of local landmarks, including Bunker Hill, Fort Independence, and Old North Bridge near Concord, as the bridge out of Sanctuary Hills. The main story takes place in the year 2287, ten years after the events of ''Fallout 3'' and 210 years after "The Great War", which caused catastrophic nuclear devastation across the United States. The player assumes control of a character referred to as the "Sole Survivor", who emerges from a long-term cryogenic stasis in Vault 111, an underground nuclear fallout shelter. After witnes ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Trumpet Of The Swan
''The Trumpet of the Swan'' is a children's novel by E. B. White published in 1970. It tells the story of Louis (pronounced "LOO-ee" by the author in the audiobook, a reference to trumpeter Louis Armstrong, a point that is made explicit in the book), a trumpeter swan born without a voice who overcomes this difficulty by learning to play a trumpet in order to impress a beautiful swan named Serena. Plot summary In Canada during the spring of 1968, the cob (the name for an adult male swan) and the pen (the name for an adult female swan), both trumpeter swans, build their summer nest on a small island in a pond. The swans are worried when Sam Beaver, an 11-year-old boy on a camping trip with his father, begins coming to the lake every day to watch them; the cob believes that human boys are dangerous. One day while the pen steps away from her eggs to stretch her legs, a fox slips up behind her. Sam chases the fox away, saving both the female and her eggs. After this incident, t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Make Way For Ducklings
''Make Way for Ducklings'' is a children's picture book written and illustrated by Robert McCloskey. First published in 1941 by the Viking Press, the book tells the story of a pair of mallards who raise their brood of ducklings on an island in the lagoon in the Boston Public Garden. It won the 1942 Caldecott Medal for McCloskey's illustrations, executed in charcoal then lithographed on zinc plates. As of 2003, the book had sold over two million copies. The book's popularity led to the construction of a statue by Nancy Schön in the Public Garden of the mother duck and her eight ducklings, which is a popular destination for children and adults alike. In 1991, Barbara Bush gave a duplicate of this sculpture to Raisa Gorbacheva as part of the START Treaty, and the work is displayed in Moscow's Novodevichy Park. The book is the official children's book of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Praise for the book is still high over 80 years since its first publication, mainly for ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Rudder
A rudder is a primary control surface used to steer a ship, boat, submarine, hovercraft, aircraft, or other vehicle that moves through a fluid medium (generally air or water). On an aircraft the rudder is used primarily to counter adverse yaw and p-factor and is not the primary control used to turn the airplane. A rudder operates by redirecting the fluid past the hull or fuselage, thus imparting a turning or yawing motion to the craft. In basic form, a rudder is a flat plane or sheet of material attached with hinges to the craft's stern, tail, or after end. Often rudders are shaped so as to minimize hydrodynamic or aerodynamic drag. On simple watercraft, a tiller—essentially, a stick or pole acting as a lever arm—may be attached to the top of the rudder to allow it to be turned by a helmsman. In larger vessels, cables, pushrods, or hydraulics may be used to link rudders to steering wheels. In typical aircraft, the rudder is operated by pedals via mechanical linkages or hydr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Fiberglass
Fiberglass (American English) or fibreglass (Commonwealth English) is a common type of fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened into a sheet called a chopped strand mat, or woven into glass cloth. The plastic matrix may be a thermoset polymer matrix—most often based on thermosetting polymers such as epoxy, polyester resin, or vinyl ester resin—or a thermoplastic. Cheaper and more flexible than carbon fiber, it is stronger than many metals by weight, non- magnetic, non- conductive, transparent to electromagnetic radiation, can be molded into complex shapes, and is chemically inert under many circumstances. Applications include aircraft, boats, automobiles, bath tubs and enclosures, swimming pools, hot tubs, septic tanks, water tanks, roofing, pipes, cladding, orthopedic casts, surfboards, and external door skins. Other common names for fiberglass are glass-reinforced plastic (GRP), glass-fiber reinforced plastic ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lohengrin (opera)
''Lohengrin'', WWV 75, is a Romantic opera in three acts composed and written by Richard Wagner, first performed in 1850. The story of the eponymous character is taken from medieval German romance, notably the '' Parzival'' of Wolfram von Eschenbach, and its sequel ''Lohengrin'', itself inspired by the epic of '' Garin le Loherain''. It is part of the Knight of the Swan legend. The opera has inspired other works of art. King Ludwig II of Bavaria named his castle Neuschwanstein Castle after the Swan Knight. It was King Ludwig's patronage that later gave Wagner the means and opportunity to complete, build a theatre for, and stage his epic cycle '' Der Ring des Nibelungen''. He had discontinued composing it at the end of Act II of ''Siegfried'', the third of the ''Ring'' tetralogy, to create his radical chromatic masterpiece of the late 1850s, ''Tristan und Isolde'', and his lyrical comic opera of the mid-1860s, ''Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg''. The most popular and recogn ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Swan Boat Dock (Boston, Massachusetts)
Swans are birds of the family Anatidae within the genus ''Cygnus''. The swans' closest relatives include the geese and ducks. Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini. Sometimes, they are considered a distinct subfamily, Cygninae. There are six living and many extinct species of swan; in addition, there is a species known as the coscoroba swan which is no longer considered one of the true swans. Swans usually mate for life, although "divorce" sometimes occurs, particularly following nesting failure, and if a mate dies, the remaining swan will take up with another. The number of eggs in each clutch ranges from three to eight. Etymology and terminology The English word ''swan'', akin to the German , Dutch and Swedish , is derived from Indo-European root ' ('to sound, to sing'). Young swans are known as '' cygnets'' or as '' swanlings''; the former derives via Old French or (diminutive suffix et 'little' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cultural Icon
A cultural icon is a person or an artifact that is identified by members of a culture as representative of that culture. The process of identification is subjective, and "icons" are judged by the extent to which they can be seen as an authentic symbol of that culture. When individuals perceive a cultural icon, they relate it to their general perceptions of the cultural identity represented. Cultural icons can also be identified as an authentic representation of the practices of one culture by another. In popular culture and elsewhere, the term "iconic" is used to describe a wide range of people, places, and things. Some commentators believe that the word "iconic" is overused. Examples According to the ''Canadian Journal of Communication'', academic literature has described all of the following as "cultural icons": "Shakespeare, Oprah, Batman, Anne of Green Gables, the Cowboy, the 1960s female pop singer, the horse, Las Vegas, the library, the Barbie doll, DNA, and the New York Y ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Massachusetts
Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut [Massachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət],'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders on the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Maine to the east, Connecticut and Rhode Island to the south, New Hampshire and Vermont to the north, and New York (state), New York to the west. The state's capital and List of municipalities in Massachusetts, most populous city, as well as its cultural and financial center, is Boston. Massachusetts is also home to the urban area, urban core of Greater Boston, the largest metropolitan area in New England and a region profoundly influential upon American History of the United States, history, academia, and the Economy of the United States, research economy. Originally dependent on agriculture, fishing, and trade. Massachusetts was transformed into a manuf ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |