The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States.
Most of its population of 6.4 million lives in the Boston metropolitan area.
It ranks third among U.S. states in GDP per capita.
Massachusetts was named after the indigenous population, the Massachusett.
Plymouth was the second permanent English settlement in North America and many of Massachusetts's towns were founded by colonists from England in the 1620s and 1630s.
During the eighteenth century, Boston became known as the "Cradle of Liberty" for the agitation there—Emerson later called it the Shot heard round the world—which led to the American Revolution and the independence of the United States from Great Britain.
