The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. Two thirds of its population of 6.6 million lives in the Boston metropolitan area in the eastern half of the state. Western Massachusetts is mostly rural, except for the Knowledge Corridor region in the Connecticut River Valley, surrounding the area's economic and cultural center, Springfield. Massachusetts is the most populous of the six New England states and ranks third among U.S. states in GDP per capita.Culturally, historically, and commercially, Massachusetts has been significant throughout American history. Plymouth was the second permanent English settlement in North America. Many of Massachusetts's towns were founded by colonists from England in the 1620s and 1630s. Harvard University, founded in 1636, is the oldest institution of higher learning in the (now) United States. In 1692, the towns surrounding Salem, Massachusetts experienced one of America's most infamous cases of mass hysteria, the Salem Witch Trials. In the eighteenth century, the Protestant First Great Awakening, which swept the Atlantic world, originated from the pulpit of Northampton, Massachusetts preacher Jonathan Edwards. In the late 18th century, Boston became known as the "Cradle of Liberty" for the agitation there that led to the American Revolution and the independence of the United States from Great Britain. Before the American Civil War, Massachusetts was a center for the temperance, transcendentalist, and abolitionist movements. In 1837, Mount Holyoke College, the United States' first women's college, was opened in the Connecticut River Valley town of South Hadley. In the late nineteenth century, the (now) Olympic sports of basketball and volleyball were invented in the Western Massachusetts cities of Springfield and Holyoke, respectively. In 2004, Massachusetts became the first U.S. state to legally recognize same-sex marriage. The state has contributed many prominent politicians to national service, including members of the Adams family and of the Kennedy family.

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