Falmanac: The Fallston Almanac of American History
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(InYork) - ... Stump Park will be along Days Mill Road adjacent to the York County Heritage Rail Trail's Brillhart Station parking lot.
The first phase of construction will begin in early August, said Debra Hatley, township recreation director. The park should open in fall 2010. Continued
Photo: MDRails
(NY Daily News) - Like America's first soldiers at the Battle of Brooklyn, Michael Littlejohn is fighting for his right to bear arms.
The Revolutionary War buff charges the Bloomberg administration with tyranny for trying to seize his handmade flintlock rifle - a dead ringer for the weapon once used against the redcoats. Continued
(NYTimes) - ... Not since Ralph Lauren moved into the Rhinelander mansion more than two decades ago have so many merchants focused on exhuming the accouterments of the turn-of-the-19th-century leisure class. But while Lauren’s market was Manhattan’s Upper East Side establishment (or those who wished to belong to it), the current one lives miles south of East 72nd Street and couldn’t care less about social provenance. Continued
Photo: Library of Congress
(Aegis) - About 193 acres will be added to the Deer Creek Rural Legacy Area in Harford County to restrict future development and conserve the land.
The Maryland Board of Public Works approved the $1.6 million acquisition of easements on four tracts along Deer Creek at its meeting in Annapolis Wednesday. Continued
Photo: "Wilson Mill Bridge, Spanning Deer Creek at MD Route 161, Darlington vicinity, Harford County, MD" (Library of Congress)
(Wikipedia) - The Town of Baltimore was founded on July 30, 1729, and is named after Lord Baltimore (Cecilius Calvert), who was the first Proprietary Governor of the Province of Maryland. Cecilius Calvert was a son of George Calvert, who became the First Lord Baltimore of County Cork, Ireland in 1625. Baltimore grew swiftly in the 18th century as a granary for sugar-producing colonies in the Caribbean. The profit from sugar encouraged the cultivation of cane and the importation of food. Baltimore's shorter distance from the Caribbean, compared to other large port cities such as New York City and Boston, reduced transportation time and minimized the spoilage of flour. Continued
Photo:Old man gnar
Cass Elliot (September 19, 1941 – July 29, 1974), born Ellen Naomi Cohen, was a noted American singer, best remembered as Mama Cass of the pop quartet The Mamas & the Papas. After the group broke up, she had a successful solo career, releasing five studio albums.
... Ellen Cohen was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to Philip and Bess Cohen. Continued
Photo: Wikipedia
(Wikipedia) - The Sea Venture was a 17th-century English sailing ship, the wrecking of which in Bermuda is widely thought to have been the inspiration for Shakespeare's The Tempest. She was the flagship of the Virginia Company, and was a highly unusual vessel for her day. Continued
Photo: The coat of arms of Bermuda features a representation of the wreck of the Sea Venture (Wikipedia).
(Wikipedia) - Jeremiah Dixon (Cockfield, County Durham July 27, 1733 – Cockfield, County Durham January 22, 1779) was an English surveyor and astronomer who is perhaps best known for his work with Charles Mason, from 1763 to 1767, in determining what was later called the Mason-Dixon line. Continued
Photo: Mason/Dixon crown stone near New Freedom, PA. Canon EOS 30D & EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS lens
(NYTimes) - It was built to be impenetrable, from its “super rugged transparent polycarbonate housing” to its intricate double-tabbed lid that would keep campers’ food in and bears’ paws out. Continued
(LoC) - Joseph Jenkins Roberts declared Liberia, formerly a colony of the American Colonization Society, an independent republic on July 26, 1847. He was elected the first president of the republic in 1848.
A native of Petersburg, Virginia, Roberts immigrated to Liberia in 1829 at the age of twenty under the auspices of the American Colonization Society. The Society was organized in late December 1816 by a group which included Henry Clay, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Francis Scott Key, Bushrod Washington, and Daniel Webster. The colonization scheme, controversial from the outset among blacks and whites alike, was conceived as an alternative to emancipation. Continued
Photos: Library of Congress
(Wikipedia) - Randolph Frederick "Randy" Pausch (October 23, 1960 – July 25, 2008) was an American professor of computer science and human-computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pausch learned that he had pancreatic cancer, a terminal illness, in September of 2006. He gave an upbeat lecture entitled "The Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams" on September 18, 2007 at Carnegie Mellon, which became a popular YouTube video and led to other media appearances. He then co-authored a book called The Last Lecture on the same theme, which became a New York Times best-seller. Pausch died of complications from pancreatic cancer on July 25, 2008. Continued
(WBAL) - Baltimore County police are looking for those responsible for burglarizing five churches in the northern part of the county.
The break-ins happened at three locations in Cockeysville -- two on Warren Road and one on Poplar Hill Road -- and the others occurred in Timonium and Towson. Continued
Photo: Poplar Grove UMC
(HistoryNet) - To put it bluntly, it is clear these 146 years after his reflections that Lee—even though he had just completely reorganized his army, with new officers serving at all levels—failed to see that his battle instructions were fully communicated to all of his commanders. It wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last, that a battle turned on a misapprehension or miscommunication. Gettysburg had more than its share of both, however, due in no small part to Lee’s hands-off management style—and his determination to make this battle the one that changed the war. Continued
Photo: Library of Congress
(LoC) - Roman Catholic Cardinal James Gibbons, champion of labor and advocate of the separation of church and state, was born to Irish immigrants in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 23, 1834. Not long after his birth, Gibbons' ailing father moved the family back to Ireland at his doctor's suggestion. After his father's death in 1847, Gibbons' mother decided to move her family back to the United States. Continued
(Baltimore Sun) - Baltimore City retained the historic Senator Theatre Wednesday after a brief but highly contentious public auction in which two bids were submitted. Bidding on the ailing theater opened at $750,000, and a bid was submitted by proxy for $800,000. After some discussion, the city, which has owned the mortgage of the financially struggling theater since May, bid $810,000. Continued
Photo: Wikipedia
(Wikipedia) - Alexander Milne Calder (22 July 1898 – 11 November 1976), also known as Sandy Calder, was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing the mobile. In addition to mobile and stabile sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys, tapestry and jewelry.
Born in Lawnton, Pennsylvania, on July 22, 1898, Calder came from a family of artists. Continued
Photo: Library of Congress
(Lee Siegel) - If you want to see one of the most affecting instances of documentary journalism since Let Us Now Praise Famous Men—James Agee and Walker Evans’ famous book, by turns lyrical and dispassionate, about white sharecroppers living through the Depression—go to interviewproject.davidlynch.com. That’s right. David Lynch, the creative force behind bare-knuckle surrealist films like Wild at Heart, Mulholland Drive, and his masterpiece Blue Velvet, as well as the equally weird and original Twin Peaks television series. Continued
Photo: Snowmanradio/Wikipedia
(York Daily Record) - The Red Lion Mile remains partially complete, with half being used by hikers and bikers and the other awaiting enough money to finish it.
The committee working on the conversion of the defunct Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad into a hiking/biking trail had hoped the entire one-mile length from North Main Street to Springwood Road would be complete by Aug. 8, the date of the Red Lion Street Fair.
The goal is unlikely now because water woes, and insufficient funds to resolve them, have delayed work. Continued
Photo: MDRails
OXFORD, Ala. (AP) - Bucket loaders and bulldozers are tearing apart a hill that researchers call the foundation of an ancient Native American site to provide fill dirt for a Sam's Club store, a move that appalls preservationists.
Tribal advocates and state officials say a large stone mound that tops the 200-foot rise was put there a millennium ago by Indians during a religious observance. It is similar to rock mounds found up and down the Eastern Seaboard, historians say, and likely dates to Indians of the Woodlands period that ended in 1000 A.D. Continued
Photo: Hand cut from mica from the Hopewell Mound Group (NPS via Wikipedia).
(Wikipedia) - James Emory "Jimmie" Foxx (October 22, 1907 – July 21, 1967) (nicknamed Double X and The Beast) was an American first baseman and noted power hitter in Major League Baseball. Foxx was the second major league player to hit 500 career home runs, and at age 32 years 336 days, is the second youngest to reach that mark, behind Alex Rodriguez.
Born in Sudlersville, Maryland, Foxx played baseball in high school and dropped out to join a minor league team managed by former Philadelphia Athletics great Frank "Home Run" Baker. Continued
(Reuters) — The 15th century Vinland Map, the first known map to show part of America before explorer Christopher Columbus landed on the continent, is almost certainly genuine, a Danish expert said Friday. Controversy has swirled around the map since it came to light in the 1950s, many scholars suspecting it was a hoax meant to prove that Vikings were the first Europeans to land in North America -- a claim confirmed by a 1960 archaeological find. Continued
Photo: Vinland map (Wikipedia).
(NYTBR) - We all live in history. Some of us make it, others are made — or broken — by it. Many of us read it. A few of us write it. Most of us try, at least fitfully, to make use of it, usually by ransacking the past for analogies to explain the present and to predict the future. And more than a few of us, in Margaret MacMillan’s amply documented opinion, routinely botch it. Continued
(NYTimes) - WHO was your Nancy Drew?
“She was a team leader,” said Susan Silbermann, 47, who, as a Baltimore tween, painstakingly collected the series about the Girl Sleuth and her sidekicks. Ms. Silbermann became a team leader herself — president of Pfizer’s pharmaceutical business in Latin America. Continued
Photo: Wikipedia
It seems like there was Edward R. Murrow, and then Walter Cronkite, and not much after that. LBJ said that Cronkite cost him the war. I don't doubt it.
Video via boingboing
(InYork) - Douglas Ryan said he remembers Louis Root as the businessman who annually made sure the York community was treated to the best steam whistle concert possible.
"(Root) was a very generous man," said Ryan, 66, of Springettsbury Township. "He helped me and my dad develop this for the people of York." Continued
(Wikipedia) - Katharine Meyer Graham (June 16, 1917 – July 17, 2001) was an American publisher. She led her family's newspaper, The Washington Post, for more than two decades, overseeing its most famous period, the Watergate coverage that eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Her memoir, Personal History, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998. Continued
Photo: U.S. Gov via Wikipedia
(New River Notes) - ..Perhaps no county in the State has improved more in appearance, fertility and general prosperity, during the last few years, than Harford. The productions are wheat, buckwheat, oats, corn and hay. This county possesses fine water powers, improved by furnaces, factories, foundries, flour mills and numerous saw and grist mills. In this county are large quarries of excellent building stone of a goelsa or granite character. The county possesses large beds of iron ore, asbestos, and some of the most valuable chrome beds in the world. Near the Pennsylvania line, extensive slate quarries have been worked, and near Ahingdon there exists a very large deposit of kaolin or porcelain clay, of a pure white color, very good quality, fit for making fine porcelain ware. Very large shad and herring fisheries are located around the Susquehanna and Bay shore, and innumerable flocks of wild fowl swarm around the tide waters of the county, and afford with the fisheries a good business for many of the inhabitants of that region.
The Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad passes through the county from Havre de Grace, and the Tidewater Canal runs along the west bank of the Susquehanna, having its outlet at Havre de Grace. The Baltimore, Towsontown and Delta Railroad, which is now being laid out, when constructed, will give additional facilities to a large portion of the county. Continued
Photo: Joesting Farm, Tollgate Road, Watervale, Harford County, MD (Library of Congress).
(Wired) - ... The problem was that it didn’t stand up well to tension or shearing. You couldn’t make a concrete wall too thin, concrete pillars were likely to buckle, and concrete horizontal beams are just not up to the task of holding things up.
Enter Monier, a French gardener looking for a better flower pot. Clay pots broke too easily, and wood weathered poorly. He tried making them out of concrete. But the weight of the plant and the soil tended to stretch the concrete pots and break them. Continued
(NYTimes) - ... A dapper man with a rich baritone voice and a gray mustache, Mr. Tomaras, 73, was narrating a tour of Kronos Foods, the world’s largest manufacturer of gyros (pronounced YEE-ros, Greek for “spin”), the don’t-ask mystery meat that has been a Greek restaurant staple in the United States since the mid 1970s. Cones of gyro meat rotate on an estimated 50,000 vertical broilers across the country, to be carved a few slices at a time and folded in pita bread along with a dollop of yogurt sauce. Continued
Duh. Link
(NYTimes) - Kenneth M. Stampp, a leading Civil War historian who redirected the scholarly view of slavery in the antebellum South from that of a benign relationship between white plantation owners and compliant slaves to one of harsh servitude perpetuated to support the South’s agrarian economy, died Friday in Oakland, Calif. He was 96. Continued
Photo: Library of Congress
(Baltimore Sun) - ... At the end of Church Lane, just off York Road in Cockeysville, Brighton is leading about a dozen archaeology students in what historians believe is the first survey of an Irish immigrant village in the United States. The students have unearthed numerous bottles, coins, buttons and shards of pottery that help tell the story of the Irish quarry workers and their families, who settled the area and named it Texas, after the original destination that they never reached. Continued
Photo: 163 Church Street, Texas, Baltimore County, MD (Library of Congress).
(Wired) - ... Guitarists have a reputation for coaxing as much volume as possible out of their instruments — whether it’s advisable or not. But guitarists playing in dance bands, larger combos and jazz orchestras in the early 1930s certainly needed the volume boost. They were often playing in situations where they were straining to be heard over the drums, brass and audience chatter. Continued
Photo: Ro-Pat-In Cast Aluminum Electric Hawaiian "Frying Pan" Guitar. (B.J. Morgan)
(NYTimes) - ... It’s been 10 years now, and “SpongeBob” still seems refreshing and innocent compared with so much other precocious children’s programming. Edward Gorey, the master illustrator of the macabre, once said that there is no such thing as “happy nonsense.” “SpongeBob” could be the exception. Continued
Photo: Wikipedia
(Politics Daily) - John Calvin turned 500 Friday and he's probably never looked better. This makeover is no mean feat, not just because Calvin is so old, but because for most of that time he has been identified -- with some justification, so to speak -- with the most dour form of Christianity. Or, as religion writer Ray Waddle puts it, "religion that won't dance."
... But perhaps we shouldn't try to tame Calvin too much. In the current economic climate, the man credited with shaping a sober form of capitalism -- Calvin's thought lay behind Max Weber's landmark 1905 study, "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" -- may have more to say to us today than ever. Calvin's fierce writings against materialism, and his equation of theft with murder, and the rich with thieves, certainly strike a satisfying chord as we look around at the Bernie Madoffs of the world. "Calvin said if you have so much then you probably stole it!" as Stanley Hauerwas, the quotable theologian and social ethicist at Duke -- and fan of Calvin --put it to me. Continued
(NYTimes) - “YOU’RE going to want the jumbos, hon,” my waitress said as she stood, pen poised over her pad, next to my unadorned pine picnic table on the crowded outdoor deck of Waterman’s crab house.
I understood the advice. There’s nothing more disheartening than picking up a steamed blue crab that looks undersize and limp, without the ballast of plenty of meat under the shell — and knowing that the minutes about to be spent cracking and picking through it will be less than amply rewarded. Continued
(Smithsonian) - Love them or hate them, the once-ubiquitous women’s accessory was a revolutionary invention that helped transform women’s fashion. Continued
Photo: lostwackys.com
(YDR) - The Friends of Wallace-Cross Mill want to learn more about the mill's last owner.
Harry Cross gave his East Hopewell Township mill to York County 30 years ago Sunday. It's now a landmark where visitors can see how millers ground farmers' grains to make feed and flour on the site as early as 1826. Continued
Photo: Kim Choate
(Wikipedia) - Thomas West, 3rd (or 12th) Baron De La Warr (July 9, 1577 – June 7, 1618) was the Englishman after whom the bay, river, American Indian tribe, and U.S. state, all later called "Delaware", were named.
... After the Powhattans murdered the colony's governor, Lord Ratcliffe, and attacked the colony in the first First Anglo-Powhatan War, Lord De La Warr headed the contingent of 150 men who landed in Jamestown, Virginia on June 10, 1610, just in time to persuade the original settlers not to give up and go home to England. Continued
(Huffington Post) - National Archives visitors know they'll find the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights in the main building's magnificent rotunda in Washington. But they won't find the patent file for the Wright Brothers' Flying Machine or the maps for the first atomic bomb missions anywhere in the Archives inventory.
Many historical items the Archives once possessed are missing, including: Continued
(Wikipedia) - Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige (July 7, 1906– June 8, 1982) was an American baseball player whose pitching in several different Negro Leagues and in Major League Baseball made him a legend in his own lifetime.
Paige was a right-handed pitcher and was the oldest rookie to play Major League Baseball. He played with the St. Louis Browns around the age of fifty and represented them in the Major League All-Star Game in both 1952 and 1953. His professional playing career lasted from the mid-1920s until 1965. In 1971, Paige was the first player to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame from the Negro Leagues. Continued
Photo: Library of Congress
(Wikipedia) - John Paul Jones (July 6, 1747 - July 18, 1792) was America's first well-known naval fighter in the American Revolutionary War. Although he made enemies among the American ruling class, his actions in British waters during the Revolution earned him an international reputation which persists to this day.
During his engagement with Serapis, Jones uttered, according to the later recollection of his First Lieutenant, the legendary reply to a quip about surrender from the British captain: "I have not yet begun to fight!" Continued
There was a time in Harford County when corn on the cob came in two basic varieties: white or yellow. The yellow corn started disappearing from roadside stands some 20 years ago. "Can't sell it, the yuppies think it's cow corn," one local proprietor told me.
Around the same time, crab cakes started getting snotty too, or perhaps I should say "phlegmy," the culprit was too much mayonnaise. To be fair, mayonnaise has been a standard ingredient of many Maryland crab cake recipes since the 1930's, but the levels were reasonable. Take the recipe on the side of the Old Bay can for example:
2 slices white bread, crusts removed and crumbled
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
2 teaspoons OLD BAY® Seasoning
OR OLD BAY® 30% Less Sodium Seasoning
2 teaspoons McCormick® Parsley Flakes
1/2 teaspoon prepared yellow mustard
1 egg, beaten
1 pound lump crabmeat
Two tablespoons of mayonnaise for a pound of crab meat is fine and tasty, but any more and you're getting into crab imperial territory. It used to be an easy choice: if you wanted mustardy, you ordered a crab cake, if you wanted creamy, you ordered the imperial.
Believe it or not, there was a time when Maryland crab cakes didn't contain mayonnaise at all. Here's a recipe from 1685:
To fry Crabs Take the meat out of the great claws being first boiled, flour and fry them and take the meat out of the body strian half if it for sauce, and the other half to fry, and mix it with grated bread, almond paste, nutmeg, salt, and yolks of eggs, fry in clarified butter, being first dipped in batter, put in a spoonful at a time; then make sauce with wine-vinegar, butter, or juyce of orange, and grated nutmeg, beat up the butter thick, and put some of the meat that was strained into the sauce, warm it and put it in a clean dish, lay the meat on the sance, slices of orange over all, and run it over with beaten butter, fryed parasley, round the dish brim, and the little legs round the meat.
Here's another, more recent version from the 1950's (This one comes from the University of Maryland Agriculture and Home Economics Extension Service, circa 1956, and is a personal favorite - sans onions):
1 pound blue crab meat
2 tablespoon chopped onion
2 tablespoons butter or other fat, melted
1 egg beaten
1/2 teaspoon powdered mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt
Dash pepper
Dash cayenne pepper
1/2 cup dry bread crumbs
Now that's a list of ingredients that'll make a good, authentic mid-20th century crab cake. Fried or broiled? One of each please.
Photo: Falmanac
(Wikipedia) - William B. "Bill" Watterson II (born July 5, 1958), is an American cartoonist and the author of the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes cartoon series.
... Watterson was born in Washington, D.C., where his father, James G. Watterson, worked as a patent examiner while going to George Washington University Law School before becoming a patent attorney in 1960. Continued
Photo: Zooomabooma
(Wired) - The Declaration of Independence can be fairly said to stand alongside the Magna Carta and Bill of Rights as the most important documents in the history of democracy. Its significance was understood from the moment it was signed, so one is left to wonder why its preservation was ignored for so long. Continued
Photo: "John Trumbull's painting, Declaration of Independence, depicting the five-man drafting committee of the Declaration of Independence presenting their work to the Congress. The painting can be found on the back of the U.S. $2 bill. The original hangs in the US Capitol rotunda." (Wikipedia)
(NPS) - The largest combined reunion of Civil War veterans ever held occurred at Gettysburg in 1913. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania hosted the event and extended invitations to every surviving honorably discharged Union and Confederate veteran in the nation. It was scheduled to be a unique encampment, a combined reunion of members of the Grand Army of the Republic and United Confederate Veterans. The response was overwhelming and despite efforts to limit the numbers attending, over 50,000 veterans came to Gettysburg and settled into the great camp situated on the battlefield. Former foes walked together over the old battlefield and re-lived the terrible days where so many of their comrades had lost their lives. Continued
(Slate) - Did FBI agents shoot and kill John Dillinger on the streets of Chicago on July 22, 1934? Or was it the cops from East Chicago who fired the fatal rounds, the very officers who later received the reward money? Did the famous bank robber pull his gun at the last moment, as the feds maintained? Or were the eyewitnesses, who said they saw no weapon, telling the truth? Continued
Photo: John Dillinger (Wikipedia).
(HSoCC) - ... On Friday the 10th, listen to Woody Guthrie celebrate the life of working people in his songs, poetry and prose. On Saturday the 11th, hear how Jackie Robinson dealt with being the first black player in major league baseball. And on Sunday the 12th, see how Eleanor Roosevelt changed both our nation and the world through her commitment to social activism. Continued
