Earl Weaver

(Wikipedia) - Earl Sidney Weaver (born August 14, 1930 in St. Louis, Missouri) is a former Major League Baseball manager. He spent his entire managerial career with the Baltimore Orioles, managing the club from 1968–1982 and 1985–1986. Weaver was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1996. Continued

Students substitute Hollywood fiction for real historical fact, study finds

(Live Science) - If you thought Tom Cruise's character in "The Last Samurai" represented a real figure from history, you were wrong. But don't feel ashamed. A new study shows that even students, with facts staring them in the face, tend to substitute Hollywood fiction for historical fact in their minds. Continued

Photo: Wikipedia

Historic black church may be reborn as museum

(Baltimore Sun) - The 19th-century laborers pooled their money and did what they could to build this biscuit box of a church along Offutt Road in the southwest corner of Baltimore County. Atop a stone foundation they put up four walls, eight windows, a peaked roof, three rows of pews, a pulpit for inspiration and a wood stove for warmth - and called the thing done. Continued

Photo: Louis Diggs

The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America

(NYTBR) - ... Roosevelt talked about lordly elk and manifest destiny, a far cry from today’s scientists with their complex computer models of climate change. Saving redwoods is one thing, properly inflating your tires something else. Roosevelt made conservation a vital, almost violent pursuit. It went with being manly, brave, patriotic. It was as populated with animals as any children’s book. It was scientific and yet saturated with religious meaning, patrician but populist, global and yet fueled by jingoistic fervor. It was fun. Continued

Photo: Theodore Roosevelt montage (Library of Congress).

Etchebarren is new Revs manager

(InYork) - Andy Etchebarren, 66, the former Orioles catcher and the current bench coach for the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs, has been named the next manager for the York Revolution, according to a member of the York Revolution's ownership group - Opening Day Partners.
ODP President Jon Danos expects Etchebarren to manage his first game for York when the Revolution play the Long Island Ducks Friday at Sovereign Bank Stadium. Continued

Photo: 1972topps.blogspot.com

Where is the Arctic Sea?

The Arctic Sea is missing. Nobody has seen or heard from it since the end of July. MV Arctic Sea, a cargo ship, set out from Finland, carrying a load of timber bound for Algeria, when it was boarded by men dressed as police officers, off the coast of Sweden. The men, who most likely were not police officers, tied up the crew, searched the ship, stole some equipment, and left. At least, that's how it was reported. Continued

Photo: Cargo ship in Port of Baltimore

Dara O'Briain - York Model Railway Centre

Munching goats helping solve a history mystery

(Baltimore Sun) - Perhaps a herd of goats will help Gibson Islanders solve a mystery that was created when an ancient tulip poplar that blew over six years ago during Tropical Storm Isabel revealed several handmade bricks in its extensively tangled root ball. Earlier this year, a Gibson Islander out for a stroll with his dog was greeted with a present of a handmade brick when his dog exited the thick underbrush. A quick glance and the passer-by realized that it wasn't a typical run-of-the-mill Home Depot brick; it turns out it harks back to the 18th century. Continued

Photo: A man and his goat (Library of Congress).

Deterioration of 100-Yr-Old Bridge Closes Watervale Road

(The Dagger) - ... Engineers determined the bridge needed to be replaced after an inspection of the bridge revealed a deterioration of the bridge deck. The bridge will be removed and will be used elsewhere in the county in as a pedestrian bridge, thus maintaining the historical significance of the structure which is believed to be over 100 years old. Continued

Photo: Historic Bridges of the United States

Lament for a Dying Field: Photojournalism

(NYTimes) - When photojournalists and their admirers gather in southern France at the end of August for Visa pour l’Image, the annual celebration of their craft, many practitioners may well be wondering how much longer they can scrape by.
Newspapers and magazines are cutting back sharply on picture budgets or going out of business altogether, and television stations have cut back on news coverage in favor of less-costly fare. Continued

Photo: Dorothea Lange

Maryland outdoors writer Bill Burton dies at 82

(Baltimore Sun) - Bill Burton, who wrote about Maryland's outdoors and was a fierce advocate for its natural resources for more than a half century, died Monday. He was 82. Continued

Rich history of 110th comes to an end in Pikesville: National Guard unit traces roots to Revolutionary War

(Baltimore Sun) - When Ferd H. Reuwer served in Maryland's 110th Field Artillery in the early 1930s, they still used horses to haul cannons around the unit's training site in Pikesville.The horses were phased out in 1935, but the National Guard unit carried on, storming Omaha Beach on D-Day in 1944, turning out for the riots in Baltimore after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 and guarding Washington after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Continued

The Art of Rebellion

(NYTBR) - If not for Mad magazine, there might never have been (in no particular order) 1960s youth culture, underground comics, Wacky Packs, “Laugh-In,” “Saturday Night Live,” R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman or an age of irony, period. Mad, which began in 1952 as a comic book that parodied “serious” comics as well as American popular culture, with an emphasis on television, movies and advertising, was conceived and originally edited by Harvey Kurtzman (1924-93), a Brooklyn-born comic-strip artist, writer and editor. Kurtzman was the spiritual father of postwar American satire and the godfather of late-20th-century alternative humor. Continued

Train station museum dedicated to man who once lived there

(InYork) - Roger Shaffer's childhood memories make the Hanover Junction Train Station seem to come alive.
Shaffer, 96, of Hellertown, Northampton County, was raised at the station from the time he was about 2 years old until he was in high school, he said. Continued

Tailfins: The Punctuation at the End of the ’50s

(NYTimes) - ... Inspired by aircraft of the 1940s, tailfins inched upward through the ’50s to reach their zenith on the 1959 Cadillac. That car and many others presented a comic-book vision of travel — over the earth and through space — that was to evolve in the early ’60s into less fanciful designs more attuned to the actual spacecraft that were by then putting Americans into orbit. Continued

Photo: Morven