Forgotten US airship crash recalled 80 years later

 

(AP) History buffs will gather this week near the New Jersey coast to commemorate a major airship disaster.
No, not that one.
Newsreel footage and radio announcer Herbert Morrison's plaintive cry, "Oh, the humanity!" made the 1937 explosion of the Hindenburg at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station probably the best-known crash of an airship.
But just four years earlier, a U.S. Navy airship seemingly jinxed from the start and later celebrated in song crashed only about 40 miles away, claiming more than twice as many lives.
The USS Akron, a 785-foot dirigible, was in its third year of flight when a violent storm sent it plunging tail-first into the Atlantic Ocean shortly after midnight on April 4, 1933. Continued

The Civilian Conservation Corps

 

(Wikipedia) The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a public work relief program for unemployed men, providing vocational training through the performance of useful work related to conservation and development of natural resources in the United States from 1933 to 1942. As part of the New Deal legislation proposed by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), the CCC was designed to aid relief of the unemployment resulting from the Great Depression while implementing a general natural resource conservation program on federal, state, county and municipal lands in every U.S. state, including the territories of Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The CCC became one of the more popular New Deal programs among the general public, providing economic relief, rehabilitation and training for a total of 3 million men. The CCC also provided a comprehensive work program that combined conservation, renewal, awareness and appreciation of the nation's natural resources. Continued

Image: "CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) boys at work, Prince George's County, Maryland" (Carl Mydans/Library of Congress).

 

Secretariat

 

(Wikipedia) Secretariat (March 30, 1970 – October 4, 1989) was an American thoroughbred racehorse. Secretariat won the 1973 Triple Crown, becoming the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years, and set still-standing track records in two of the three races in the Series, the Kentucky Derby (1:59 2/5), and the Belmont Stakes (2:24). Like the famous Man o' War, Secretariat was a large chestnut colt and was given the same nickname, "Big Red." Continued

Three Mile Island

 

(Wikipedia) - The Three Mile Island accident was the most significant accident in the history of the American commercial nuclear power generating industry.... The accident began on Wednesday, March 28, 1979, and ultimately resulted in a partial core meltdown in Unit 2 of the nuclear power plant (a pressurized water reactor manufactured by Babcock & Wilcox) of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania near Harrisburg. Continued 

Washington D.C. Builds a Subway

 

(Wikipedia) ... WMATA approved plans for a 98-mile (158 km) regional system in 1968, and construction on the metro began in 1969, with groundbreaking on December 9. The system opened March 27, 1976, with 4.6 miles (7 kilometers) available on the Red Line with five stations from Rhode Island Avenue to Farragut North, all in the District of Columbia. Arlington County, Virginia was linked to the system on July 1, 1976; Montgomery County, Maryland on February 6, 1978; Prince George's County, Maryland on November 20, 1978; and Fairfax County, Virginia and Alexandria, Virginia on December 17, 1983. Continued

Photo: MDRails

 

Nancy Pelosi

(Wikipedia) ... Pelosi was born in Baltimore, Maryland. The youngest of six children, she was involved with politics from an early age. Her father, Thomas D'Alesandro, Jr., was a U.S. Congressman from Maryland and a Mayor of Baltimore. Her brother, Thomas D'Alesandro III, also a Democrat, was mayor of Baltimore from 1967 to 1971, when he declined to run for a second term. Pelosi graduated from Institute of Notre Dame, a Catholic all-girls high school in Baltimore, and from Trinity College (now Trinity Washington University) in Washington, D.C. in 1962. Pelosi interned for Senator Daniel Brewster (D-Maryland) alongside future House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. Continued 

 

Maryland Day

 

(LoC) On March 25, Marylanders celebrate the 1634 arrival of the first colonists to the land that King Charles I of England had chartered to Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore. Named for the king's wife, Henrietta Maria, Maryland was the first proprietary colony in what is now the United States. As the head of a proprietary colony, Lord Baltimore had almost absolute control over the colony in return for paying the king a share of all gold or silver discovered on the land. Continued 

Secrets of Duffy’s Cut Yield to Shovel and Science

 

(NYTimes) They laid his bones in a bed of Bubble Wrap, with a care beyond what is normally given to fragile things. They double-boxed those bones and carried them last month to the United Parcel Service office on Spruce Street in Philadelphia. Then they printed out the address and paid the fee.
With that, the remains of a young man were soon soaring over the Atlantic Ocean that he had crossed once in a three-masted ship. His name is believed to have been John Ruddy, and he was being returned to the Ireland he had left as a strapping teenage laborer in 1832.
His voyage home is the latest turn in the tale of Duffy’s Cut, a wooded patch that is little more than a sylvan blur to those aboard commuter trains rocketing past. It is a mass grave, in fact: the uneasy resting place for dozens of Irish immigrants who died during a cholera epidemic, just weeks after coming to America, as an old song says, to work upon the railway. Continued

Photo by smallbones 

 

Quartering Act of 1765

(Wikipedia) ... This first Quartering Act (citation 5 Geo. III c. 33) was given Royal Assent on March 24, 1765, and provided that Great Britain would house its soldiers in American barracks and public houses, as by the Mutiny Act of 1765, but if its soldiers outnumbered the housing available, would quarter them "in inns, livery stables, ale houses, victualing houses, and the houses of sellers of wine and houses of persons selling of rum, brandy, strong water, cider or metheglin", and if numbers required in "uninhabited houses, outhouses, barns, or other buildings"... "upon neglect or refusal of such governor and council in any province", required any inhabitants (or in their absence, public officials) to provide them with food and alcohol, and providing for "fire, candles, vinegar, salt, bedding, and utensils" for the soldiers "without paying any thing for the same". Continued 

Charles Carroll

(Wikipedia) - Charles Carroll (March 22, 1723 – March 23, 1783) was an American lawyer and statesman from Annapolis, Maryland. He was a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1776 and 1777. ... In 1760 he completed construction of his summer home and estate at Georgia Plantation, west of Baltimore. He named the home [Mount Clare] after his grandmother. In June of 1763 Charles married, to Margaret Tilghman (1742-1817), daughter of Matthew Tilghman of Talbot County. Although the couple had no children who reached maturity, they remained together until his death. She became the mistress of Mount Clare, and earned a reputation for her greenhouse and pinery, where she grew oranges, lemons, and pineapple. Continued

Image: Mount Clare Museum House, Baltimore, Maryland

The Great Disappointment

(Wikipedia) The Great Disappointment was a major event in the history of the Millerite movement, a 19th century American Christian sect that formed out of the Second Great Awakening. William Miller, a Baptist preacher, proposed based on his interpretations of the prophecies in the book of Daniel (Chapters 8 and 9, especially Dan. 8:14 "Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed"), that Jesus Christ would return to the earth during the year 1844.
... Between 1831 and 1844, on the basis of his study of the Bible, and particularly the prophecy of Daniel 8:14—"Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed,"—William Miller, a Baptist preacher, predicted and preached the imminent return of Jesus Christ to the earth. He first assumed that the cleansing of the sanctuary represented purification of the Earth by fire at Christ's Second Coming. Then, using an interpretive principle known as the "day-year principle", Miller, along with others, interpreted a prophetic day to read not as a 24-hour period, but rather as a calendar year. Further, Miller became convinced that the 2,300 day period started in 457 B.C. with the decree to rebuild Jerusalem by Artaxerxes I of Persia. Simple calculation then revealed that this period would end—and hence Christ’s return occur—in 1843.
Despite the urging of his supporters, Miller never personally announced an exact date for the expected Second Advent. However, in response to their urgings he did narrow the time-period to sometime in the Jewish year 5604, stating: “My principles in brief, are, that Jesus Christ will come again to this earth, cleanse, purify, and take possession of the same, with all the saints, sometime between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844.” Continued

Photo: A playful caricature of a Millerite, an adherent of the Adventist preacher William Miller who predicted that the world would end on April 23, 1844. The man sits in a large safe labeled "Patent Fire Proof Chest," stocked with a ham, a fan (hanging on the door of the safe), cheese, brandy, cigars, ice, a hat, and a small book marked "Miller." As he thumbs his nose, he says "Now let it come! I'm ready." The "salamander safe," probably a trade name of the period, is named after the animal mythically reputed to have the ability to endure fire (and, presumably, the holocaust) without harm. (Library of Congress)

 

George Caleb Bingham

 

(Wikipedia) George Caleb Bingham (March 20, 1811 – July 7, 1879) was an American artist whose paintings of American life in the frontier lands along the Missouri River exemplify the Luminist style. Left to languish in obscurity, Bingham's work was rediscovered in the 1930s. By the time of his bicentennial in 2011, he was considered one of the greatest American painters of the 19th century. That year the George Caleb Bingham Catalogue Raisonné Supplement Of Paintings & Drawings announced the authentication of ten recently discovered paintings by Bingham; like all but about 5% of his works, they are unsigned. Continued

Thomas McKean

 

(Wikipedia) Thomas McKean (March 19, 1734 – June 24, 1817) was an American lawyer and politician from New Castle, in New Castle County, Delaware and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. During the American Revolution he was a delegate to the Continental Congress where he signed the United States Declaration of Independence and served as a President of Congress. He was at various times a member of the Federalist and Democratic-Republican parties, who served as President of Delaware, Chief Justice of Pennsylvania, and Governor of Pennsylvania. Continued
 

Edward Everett Horton

(Wikipedia) Edward Everett Horton (March 18, 1886 – September 29, 1970) was an American character actor with a long career in film, theater, radio, television and voice work for animated cartoons.
Horton was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Isabella S. Diack and Edward Everett Horton. His mother was born in Matanzas, Cuba to Mary Orr and George Diack, immigrants from Scotland. Many sources state that Edward Everett Horton's grandfather and namesake was Edward Everett Hale, author of The Man Without a Country. Horton attended the Baltimore City College high school in Baltimore, Maryland, where he was inducted into that school's Hall of Fame. Continued 

The Irish Shrine and Railroad Workers Museum

 

The Irish Shrine and Railroad Workers Museum at Lemmon Street is a historic site that celebrates the history of the immense Irish presence in Southwest Baltimore City in the late 1840's. The museum officially opened on June 17th, 2002. This site consists of a group of 5 alley houses where the Irish immigrants who worked for the adjoining B&O Railroad lived. Two of the houses, 918 and 920 Lemmon St., are the Irish Shrine and Railroad Workers Museum. The Irish Shrine and Railroad Workers Museum are the centerpiece of a larger historical district that includes the B&O Railroad Museum, St. Peter the Apostle Church, the Hollins Street Market, and St. Peter the Apostle Cemetery. The museum is a project of the Railroad Historical District Corporation, a non-profit organization. Continued 

Sergeant Stubby

(Wikipedia) Sergeant Stubby (1916 or 1917 – March 16, 1926), was the most decorated war dog of World War I and the only dog to be promoted to sergeant through combat. ... After returning home, Stubby became a celebrity and marched in, and normally led, many parades across the country. He met Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, and Warren G. Harding. Starting in 1921, he attended Georgetown University Law Center with Conroy, and became the Hoyas' mascot. He would be given the football at halftime and would nudge the ball around the field to the amusement of the fans.
In 1926, Stubby died in Conroy's arms. His remains are featured in The Price of Freedom: Americans at War exhibit at the Smithsonian. Continued

 

Titian Peale

(Wikipedia) - Titian Ramsay Peale (November 2, 1799 – March 13, 1885) was a noted American artist, naturalist, entomologist and photographer. He was the sixteenth and youngest son of noted American naturalist Charles Willson Peale. Peale was first exposed to the study of natural history while assisting his father on his many excursions in search of specimens for the Peale Museum. The family moved to Germantown, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia, where he began collecting and drawing insects and butterflies. Like his older brothers, Peale helped his father in the preservation of the museum's specimens for display, which included contributions from George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Continued 

 

The Girls of the Manhattan Project

 

(The Daily Beast) ... In The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II, Denise Kiernan recreates, with cinematic vividness and clarity, the surreal Orwell-meets-Margaret Atwood environment of Oak Ridge as experienced by some of the women who were there: secretaries, technicians, a nurse, a statistician, a leak pipe inspector, a chemist, and a janitor. “Site X” began construction in late 1942, and was also known as the Clinton Engineering Works (CEW) and the Reservation. Staff members were recruited from all over the U.S., but particularly from nearby Southern states, and were offered higher than average wages, on-site housing and cafeterias, and free buses. Continued

A Road Trip to Gettysburg and Homes of Founding Fathers

(NYTimes) You can almost see them, spectral figures moving through thick forest, ragged, rugged men who endured astonishing hardship just to get here, creeping with their muskets in the sticky haze of a July morning in central Pennsylvania’s Appalachian Mountains. They wouldn’t even know the name of this place, Gettysburg. Yet their blood would become the ink that sets down the town’s name for history.
It is a cast of tens of thousands, generals and infantry, civilians, horses, even dogs.
This was the vision that lodged in my mind as I drove through Gettysburg, the first stop on a winter tour of historic sites in four states. Continued

The Blizzard of '88

 

(Wikipedia) The Great Blizzard of 1888 (March 11 – March 14, 1888) was one of the most severe blizzards in United States recorded history. Snowfalls of 40-50 inches (102-127 cm) fell in parts of New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut, and sustained winds of over 45 miles per hour (72 km/h) produced snowdrifts in excess of 50 feet (15.2 m). Railroads were shut down and people were confined to their houses for up to a week.... The storm, referred to as the Great White Hurricane, paralyzed the East Coast from the Chesapeake Bay to Maine, as well as the Atlantic provinces of Canada. Telegraph infrastructure was disabled, isolating New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. for days. From Chesapeake Bay through the New England area, over 200 ships were either grounded or wrecked, resulting in the deaths of at least 100 seamen. Continued 

Photos: NOAA

Zelda Fitzgerald

(Wikipedia) - Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald (July 24, 1900–March 10, 1948), born Zelda Sayre in Montgomery, Alabama, was a novelist and the wife of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. She was an icon of the 1920s—dubbed by her husband "the first American Flapper". After the success of his first novel This Side of Paradise, the Fitzgeralds became celebrities. The newspapers of New York saw them as embodiments of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties: young, rich, beautiful, and energetic. Continued

Photo: Zelda and Scott's grave in Rockville, Maryland (Wikipedia).

Mosby Bags a General

 

(NYTimes) “On the bed we saw the general sleeping,” recalled the memoirist. “There was no time for ceremony, so I drew up the bedclothes, pulled up the general’s shirt, and gave him a spank on his bare back, and told him to get up.” This brief description captured the apex of one military career, and the nadir of another.
In the early morning hours of March 9, 1863, Lt. John Singleton Mosby led 29 Confederate partisans east along the Little River Turnpike in northern Virginia, quietly passing through a gap in the Union lines and soon arriving at Fairfax Courthouse. Mosby already had a fierce reputation for leading his “rangers” on stunning strikes behind enemy lines; most notably, he had helped plan J.E.B. Stuart’s famous 1862 ride around Gen. George B. McClellan’s army parked near Richmond, Va. Mosby’s Rangers would become so effective that the area of northern Virginia stretching east from the Shenandoah Valley along the Potomac River to Alexandria and south to the Rappahannock River would become known as “Mosby’s Confederacy.” Continued

Emergency Banking Act

(Wikipedia) The Emergency Banking Act (the official title of which was the Emergency Banking Relief Act) was an act of the United States Congress spearheaded by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression. It was passed on March 9, 1933. The act allowed a plan that would close down insolvent banks and reorganize and reopen those banks strong enough to survive. In summary, the provisions of the act were as follows: Continued

Gnadenhütten Massacre

The Gnadenhutten massacre, also known as the Moravian massacre, was the killing on March 8, 1782, of ninety-six Christian Lenape (Delaware) by colonial American militia from Pennsylvania during the American Revolutionary War. The incident took place at the Moravian missionary village of Gnadenhütten, Ohio, near present-day Gnadenhutten. The site of the village was preserved. A reconstructed cabin and cooper's house were built there, and a monument to the dead was erected. The village site has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
In an unrelated event in 1755, during the French and Indian War (part of the Seven Years War), Native Americans allied with the French massacred 11 missionaries and converted Munsee Lenape at another Moravian mission village which however bore the same name; this event took place at Gnadenhütten, Pennsylvania, in the English colony. The term Gnadenhutten massacre is usually only used to refer to the 1782 event in Ohio. Continued 

Photo by Bwsmith84, some rights reserved.

 

Remembering the Alamo

(LoC) Texans or Texians, according to some sources, began fighting for independence from Mexico in 1835. By December the small Texas army had captured the important crossroads town of San Antonio de Bexar and seized the garrison known as the Alamo. Mexican General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna recaptured the town on March 6, 1836, after a thirteen-day siege; the Mexican army suffered an estimated 600 casualties. Of the official list of 189 Texan defenders, all were killed. Historians continue to debate the number of defenders inside the Alamo.
The defense of the Alamo is well-known for those who fought for Texas. David Crockett, James (Jim) Bowie, and William Barret Travis were among those remembered by the "Remember the Alamo" reported to be yelled at the victory at San Jacinto. Continued  

Howard Pyle

(Wikipedia) Howard Pyle (March 5, 1853 – November 9, 1911) was an American illustrator and writer, primarily of books for young audiences. A native of Wilmington, Delaware, he spent the last year of his life in Florence, Italy.
In 1894 he began teaching illustration at the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry (now Drexel University), and after 1900 he founded his own school of art and illustration called the Howard Pyle School of Illustration Art. The term the Brandywine School was later applied to the illustration artists and Wyeth family artists of the Brandywine region by Pitz (later called the Brandywine School). Some of his more famous students were Olive Rush, N. C. Wyeth, Frank Schoonover, Elenore Abbott, and Jessie Willcox Smith. Continued  

The long, sad death of Harry Gilmor

Harry Gilmor, a partisan ranger in the Confederate army, who was from the Towson Maryland area, is often spoken of in a lighthearted manner. He was a picture-book cavalry officer who loved to have fun, not as much as the next guy, but more. This contrasts strongly with his war record, which was impressive, and his death, years after the war, which was terrible. Here's some of his obit, from the Baltimore Sun:
"Colonel Harry Gilmor, the celebrated Confederate cavalry officer, after a lingering and painful illness, died at five minutes past 8 o’clock last night (March 4, 1883) at his residence, No. 43 First Street, just beyond the city limits. Colonel Gilmor had been suffering acutely for several months past from a cancerous affliction in the left side of his face, which resulted from a diseased jaw-bone. His right side was paralyzed and the left side partially so on last Monday morning, and from that time he gradually sank, until death brought relief. Several years ago the Colonel had a tooth extracted, the roots of which had grown into the bone, and in the course of the operation the jawbone was fractured at a point where it had been weakened by a pistol shot wound received during the war. About two years ago he began suffering intense neuralgic pains, and these continued until last September. A consultation was held at this time between Prof. Alan P. Smith and Dr. G. Halstead Boyland at the office of Dr. T.C. Norton, when an exploring operation was performed, and a malignant disease of the bone was discovered. From that time the tumor began to grow, and assumed large proportions. The growth had extended throughout the left side of the face, and had forced the eye out of position, thus rendering him blind; as he had lost the right eye years ago." Continued

 Photos: 1. "Confederate Hill" at Loudon Park Cemetery, where Gilmor is buried. 2. Harry Gilmor.

York County farm preservation has less money to spend, but a new idea might net more land

(YDR) York, PA - Sally Barnes and her husband, Casey, don't ever want their land turned into a development, with dozens of houses replacing pasture, hay and woodland.
Both of them have full-time jobs, but they wake up early to care for the horses they breed and raise on the land. Some of the land they rent to a farmer who makes hay. They live there, too.
"I think it's a very unspoiled little secret of York County," said Sally, 34.
Their 35 acres in York Township sit a little more than three miles from a Giant supermarket in Windsor Township, and closer than that to a high school. Continued

Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands

(Wikipedia) The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (usually referred to as the Freedmen's Bureau) was a U.S. federal government agency that aided distressed refugees of the American Civil War.
The Freedmen's Bureau Bill, which created the Freedman's Bureau, was initiated by President Abraham Lincoln and intended to last for one year after the end of the war. Passed on March 3, 1865, by Congress to aid former slaves through education, health care, and employment, it became a key agency during Reconstruction, assisting freedmen (freed ex-slaves) in the South. The Bureau was part of the United States Department of War. Headed by Union Army General Oliver O. Howard, the Bureau was operational from June 1865 to December 1868. Continued

 

Photo: McComas Institute, a Freedmen's Bureau school built in 1867, Joppa, Maryland.

  

Saint David's Day

Saint David's Day (Welsh: Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Sant) is the feast day of Saint David, the patron saint of Wales, and falls on 1 March each year. The date of 1 March was chosen in remembrance of the death of Saint David. Tradition holds that he died on that day in 589. The date was declared a national day of celebration within Wales in the 18th century. Continued