Professional sports are an important part of life in Boston. The Red Sox play baseball at Fenway Park, the oldest stadium in Major League Baseball (1912). The Celtics, a basketball team, and the Bruins, a hockey team, both play at the TD Garden. Boston's football team, the New England Patriots, play in Foxborough, a town 22 miles south of the city.
In 2013, the population of Boston was 645,966. The population has grown 9.6% since 2000. Boston has 13,339 people per square mile. The population is 47.8% male and 52.2% female. The racial breakdown is shown in the Racial Groups table. The people from outside the United States are 178,805. 27.7% of the population come from outside of the United States.
The unemployment rate in Boston is 5.9% since June 2014. The 35th annual homeless census from 2015 said there were 7,663 homeless men, women, and children in Boston. The homeless population increased 5.6% since 2013. The number of homeless people sleeping on the streets decreased by 22.8% since 2013. However, the number of adults in emergency shelters has grown by 10.9%. In 2015, the homeless family population increased by 25%. The total number of homeless men, woman, families and children increased by 20.9% from 3,541 to 4,281.
Mayor Marty Walsh announced his goal to help those in need for a permanent housing solution. Agencies such as Pine Street Inn, Boston Healthcare, Project Hope, and Boston Public Health Commission are helping the homeless. The homeless are helped by reducing family evictions. Property management companies and nonprofits, such as Project Hope and the Department of Neighborhood Development, will increase affordable housing options. Boston Public Health Commission and the Department of Neighborhood Development will work together to provide support for treatment options and shelters. The Wyman Re-Entry Center has a 90-day residential substance-abuse and recovery program. The Safe Harbor serves adults with HIV. The project SOAR stands for Stability, Opportunity, Achievement, and Recovery, and helps clients maintain a healthy lifestyle and provide support in moving to permanent housing.
Over 85.6% of the population ages 20 years and over in Boston have a high school diploma or higher in 2013. Those with a Bachelor's degree or higher make up 45.2% of the population.
Some of the Colleges and Universities in Boston are:
There are many more not listed here.
The MBTA runs the city's subway (known as "the T"), commuter rail, buses, and ferries. The main airport for the city is Logan International Airport.
The main highways for the area are:
Parti Québécois
The Parti Québécois (PQ) is a political party that wants sovereignty for the province of Quebec. The party wants Quebec to become its own country, or secede from Canada.
The Parti Québécois, or PQ was founded by René Lévesque. PQ's main goals are to get independence for Québec. In the provincial election of 1976, the Parti Québécois was elected to the government of Québec for the first time and René Lévesque, became the premier of Quebec. Many French people in Québec were happy to see the Lévesque as premier, while many English people were not happy..
The PQ passed a bill called Bill 101. This bill is a law that makes French the languages used most in Quebec, even though English and French are the languages spoken in Canada. The party was elected again in the 1981 election, but in November 1984 founder René Lévesque left the party and the PQ lost the 1985 election.
The Parti Québécois started the first Quebec referendum, having the citizens vote to decide to either leave Canada or stay a part of the country. 60 per cent of the people who voted decided to stay in Canada. The PQ had a second referendum in 1995. The citizens once again voted to stay in Canada. The leader of the party, Jacques Parizeau, quit after the referendum failed.
The current Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe was the first to announce that he would to try to become the leader of the PQ, on May 11, 2007. Pauline Marois also said she was going to try to become leader, but Duceppe changed his mind on the 12th leaving Marois the only candidate. On June 26, 2007 Marois won the leadership. Pauline Marois is the current leader of the PQ. She has said that the PQ plans to have another referendum in the future. On , Marois led her party to minority victory in the Quebec general election, thus becoming the first female premier in the province's history. After an electoral defeat in , she resigned. The current leader of the PQ is Jean-François Lisée, elected in 2016.
The Bloc Québécois is a federal political party in Canada that was made in 1990 by future PQ leader Lucien Bouchard. The Bloc also wants sovereignty for Québec. The two parties help each other during elections.
Wheel gymnastics
Wheel gymnastics is a form of gymnastics which originated in Germany.
Wheel gymnasts do exercises in a large wheel known as the "Rhönrad", "gymnastics wheel", "gym wheel", or "German wheel".
There are three main categories of exercise in wheel gymnasts. They are: "straight line", "spiral", and "vault".
While being a child, Otto Feick, the son of a blacksmith from Reichenbach, Germany, used to roll down a hill in two wagon tires which inspired him later to invent the wheel gymnastics between 1920-1922. The current wheel gymnastics obtained its final shape in 1974 with the introduction of the PVC coating. Now, it's a competitive sport practiced in Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Japan, and United States of America.
Trampolining
Trampolining is a competitive Olympic sport in which gymnasts perform airborne acrobatics while bouncing on a trampoline. These can include simple jumps in the "pike", "tuck" or "straddle position" to more complex combinations of forward or backward somersaults and twists.
There are two related competitive rebound sports: "synchronized trampoline" and "double mini-trampoline".
The currently accepted basic format for individual trampoline competitions usually consists of two or three "routines", one of which may involve a compulsory set of skills. The skills consist of various combinations of somersaults, shaped bounces, body landings and twists performed in various body positions.
In the early 1930s, an American gymnast George Nissen observed "trapeze" artistes performing tricks when bouncing off the "safety net". He made the first modern trampoline in his garage to reproduce that net on a smaller scale and used it to help with his diving and tumbling activities. It was the beginning of a new sport.
In the USA, trampolining was quickly introduced into school physical education programs and was also used in private entertainment centers. Since trampolining became an Olympic sport in 2000, many countries have started developing programs for producing very competitive athletes.
Priapulida
Priapulida (priapulid or penis worms) are a phylum of marine worms. Their name refers to their extensible spiny proboscis, which, in some species, may have a shape similar to that of a human penis. They live in the mud, which they eat, in comparatively shallow waters up to .
Their nearest relatives are probably Kinorhyncha and Loricifera with which they constitute the taxon Scalidophora. Besides arthropods and velvet worms, the priapulids are the only members of the Ecdysozoa which are relatively large in size. They feed on slow-moving invertebrates, such as polychaete worms.
Priapulid fossils are known at least as far back as the Middle Cambrian. They were probably major predators of the Cambrian period. There are only sixteen known living species of priapulid worms.
Kinorhyncha
Kinorhyncha is a phylum of small (1 mm or less) marine invertebrates. They are widespread in mud or sand at all depths of the sea. They are sometimes called mud dragons. About 150 species are known. Kinorhynchs eat either diatoms or organic material found in the mud, depending on species.