Your Maryland

A little known story behind the scenes of the making of the Hollywood blockbuster "King Kong" and its ties to Maryland.

Before he made a name for himself in the vaudeville scene in New York, Eubie “Mouse” Blake got his start playing honkytonk music in the pool halls, saloons, and brothels of East Baltimore.

During the Revolutionary War, Charles Wilson Peale served with, and painted portraits of, many great leaders fighting for independence from England, including George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. 

On December 2nd, 1859, abolitionist John Brown met his end at the gallows in Charlestown, Virginia.

On November 19th, at the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, one of America's greatest orators of the time, Edward Everett, gave a grand speech. But it was Abraham Lincoln’s brief address, consisting of only 272 words, which will be remembered forever.  

In 1893, Mary Garrett, daughter of B&O Railroad magnate John Work Garrett, used her fortune to fund the nation's first co-educational medical school at Johns Hopkins. 

In June, 1932, desperate veterans, who had been promised a "bonus" for their service in WWI with the Allied Expeditionary Forces in France, marched on Washington, DC, to demand payment.

In the 1870's, horse racing began at a track in Pimlico with a series of exciting sweepstakes races.

In 1851, Maryland farmer Edward Gorsuch formed a posse and tried to retrieve some runaway slaves that had fled over the Pennsylvania border. It did not end well.

In 1902, Joe Gans, a black boxer from Baltimore, became Lightweight Champion of the World. 

Francis Scott Key writes the Star Spangled Banner whilst aboard a truce ship in the harbor where he witnessed the bombardment of Fort McHenry.

In September 1814, after raiding and burning Washington, British troops turned their sites on Baltimore. They were met with great resistance from the Americans, and the planned invasion of Baltimore never took place.

  In 1848, Henry Grainger sent his young son George to be formally educated at St. Timothy's School in Catonsville. George's complaints may sound very familiar to parents all over Maryland as students return to school this week.

In August, 1776, 400 Marylander s of the “Dandy 5th” Regiment fought bravely to hold the American line in Brooklyn Heights, New York, while George Washington and his troops beat a hasty retreat after a disastrous encounter with the British. 

During the War of Independence, in the spring of 1778, the 28 gun British frigate “Mermaid” chose to surrender to a “nest of pirates” on the Eastern Shore rather than be taken a prize by the notorious French vice admiral Charles Hector D’Estaing.

On July 24, 1868, a great flood swept through the Patapsco River valley, causing great damage and loss of life.

Before he became a major league phenom, "Little George" Ruth learned about baseball, and life, with the help of Brother Mathias at St. Mary's Industrial School, a Catholic institution for "incorrigible" boys in Baltimore.

On July 3, 1863, Confederate officer Henry Kyd Douglas was wounded just south of Gettysburg and became first a patient and then a prisoner of Union troops and their allies.

Between the 1880s and the 1920s, Dr. William S. Halsted revolutionized the practice of hygiene and medicine at Johns Hopkins hospital, all the while nursing a secret drug habit.

Between the 1880s and the 1920s, Dr. William S. Halsted revolutionized the practice of hygiene and medicine at Johns Hopkins hospital, all the while nursing a secret drug habit.

In the summer of 1776, soldiers from Maryland volunteer to fight for independence, but are still denied the right to vote. 

On July 4th, 1863, residents of Baltimore went about marking Independence Day in the usual manner, whilst local Union and Confederate soldiers dealt with the terrible carnage of the previous day's battle just 58 miles away in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

In 1816, a global series of volcanic eruptions sent a cloud of ash and volcanic dust across the Northern hemisphere with catastrophic results.

In the Allegheny County mining town of Lonaconing, Maryland, Robert Moses “Lefty” Grove perfected his fast ball and went on to a storied career with the Baltimore Orioles throughout the 1920’s and 30’s.

On June 6, 1944, the 29th Division of the United States Army, made up of soldiers from Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, landed on Omaha Beach in Normandy to begin the liberation of France and Northern Europe from the Nazis.

During the 1960's, Rachel Carson raised the alarm about pesticides and their harmful effects on the environment and human beings.

In 1861, as the Civil War began, Roger B. Taney fights to free John Merryman from a cell in Fort McHenry, where he was being held after the suspension of Habeas Corpus.

In 1794, in the wake of the French Revolution, The Stier family fled Europe and settled near Annapolis, much to the chagrin of his youngest daughter, Rosalie.

Making his way home to Maryland after the surrender at Appomattox, Confederate officer Henry Kyd Douglas was arrested in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, and briefly detained in Washington during the trial of the Lincoln Conspirators.

In January, 1834, a young man named Frederick Bailey was sent from Baltimore to the Eastern shore of his birth, to “re-learn what it meant to be a slave.”