Falmanac: The Fallston Almanac of American History
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(NYTimes) Though there was little organized fighting along the Union defenses around Washington, they were continuously harassed by Southern skirmishers through the latter half of 1861 and into 1862.
The situation was particularly troublesome in southern Fairfax County, Va., not far from Mount Vernon and Alexandria. Rebels repeatedly challenged the Union pickets and effectively blockaded the Potomac River, which enabled them to smuggle mail and other materials across the river from Maryland. Continued
(York Dispatch) ... Pennsylvania, birthplace of the petroleum industry thanks to Col. Edwin Drake's fortuitious 1859 well near Titusville, has 19,000-plus oil wells in production. Those shallow wells plugged nearly 4 million barrels of crude oil into the marketplace last year.
In sharp contrast to deeper oil wells in the Oklahoma and Texas fields, Pennsylvania's wells are classified as stripper wells, or shallow wells that are marginal producers and eke out 10 barrels of oil or less a day. The average stripper well in Pennsylvania yields less than half a barrel (0.43) of oil a day, or about 18 gallons of crude oil.
Still, at today's going rate of nearly $100 a 42-gallon barrel, there's money to be made in conventional oil production that typically features a mom-and-pop operation going back two or three generations.
The enterprise, though, has been turned topsy-turvey because of the deep shale gas industry that has drawn in global, mega-energy companies intent on tapping hugely prolific natural gas tucked inside rock strata ten-times deeper than Pennsylvania's conventional oil sands. Continued
(Wikipedia) The first expedition to reach the geographic South Pole was led by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. He and four others arrived at the pole on 14 December 1911, five weeks ahead of a British party led by Robert Falcon Scott as part of the Terra Nova Expedition. Amundsen and his team returned safely to their base, and later learned that Scott and his four companions died on their return journey. Continued
(LoC) On November 18, 1883, four standard time zones for the continental U.S.A. were introduced at the instigation of the railroads. At noon on this day the U.S. Naval Observatory changed its telegraphic signals to correspond to the change. Until the invention of the railway, it took such a long time to get from one place to another that local "sun time" could be used. When traveling to the east or to the west, a person would have to change his or her watch by one minute every twelve miles.
When people began traveling by train, sometimes hundreds of miles in a day, the calculation of time became a serious problem. Operators of the new railroad lines realized that a new time plan was needed in order to offer a uniform train schedule for departures and arrivals. Continued
Photo: MDRails
(LoC) Pioneering panoramic map artist Albert Ruger died on November 12, 1899 in Akron, Ohio. Ruger was born in Prussia and emigrated to the United States where he initially worked as a stonemason. While serving with the Ohio Volunteers during the Civil War he began drawing landscapes.
After the war, Ruger settled in Battle Creek, Michigan. In the late 1860s, Ruger joined forces with J.J. Stoner of Madison, Wisconsin to form Merchants Lithographing Company. Over the next three decades, Ruger produced maps of towns and cities in twenty-two states from New Hampshire to Minnesota and as far south as Alabama.
A form of cartography in which towns and cities are drawn as if viewed from above at an oblique angle, panoramic mapping became popular during the late nineteenth century. Panoramic cartographers abandoned restraints of scale to illustrate street patterns, individual buildings, and major landscape features in perspective. Continued
(LoC) October 28 marks the birth date of Gilbert H. Grosvenor, the editor credited with transforming National Geographic Magazine from a small scholarly journal into a dynamic world-renowned monthly. Born in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1875, Grosvenor’s family immigrated to the United States when he was fifteen, where he became an honor student, eventually studying at Amherst College in Massachusetts. Grosvenor joined the magazine in 1899 as an assistant editor.
... The National Geographic Society was founded in Washington, D.C., in 1888 to support "the increase and diffusion of geographic knowledge." The society's founders, an eclectic group of well-traveled men, considered a magazine one means of accomplishing this mission. They published the first National Geographic nine months after forming the organization. Continued
(NYTimes) The Battle of Ball’s Bluff does not loom large in our memory of the Civil War. Yet it was the second-largest battle in the eastern theater in 1861 and a complete rout of Union forces. James Morgan, an expert on the engagement, has described it as an “accidental battle” that resulted from erroneous intelligence. But it also reveals something about the wartime role of maps. Continued
Photo: Death of Col Edward D. Baker: At the Battle of Balls Bluff near Leesburg Va. Oct. 21st 1861, (Currier & Ives/Library of Congress)
Hurricane Agnes was the first tropical storm and first hurricane of the 1972 Atlantic hurricane season. A rare June hurricane, it made landfall on the Florida Panhandle before moving northeastward and ravaging the Mid-Atlantic region as a tropical storm. The worst damage occurred along a swath from central Virginia through central Pennsylvania to the southern Finger Lakes region of New York, as illustrated by the rainfall map below [above].
Agnes brought heavy rainfall along its path, killing 129 and causing $1.7 billion in damage, with railroad damage so extensive it contributed to the creation of Conrail. At the time, it was the most damaging hurricane ever recorded, surpassing Hurricane Betsy, and it would not be surpassed until Hurricane Frederic in 1979. Agnes was also the only Category 1 hurricane to have its name retired at the time. Continued
(Wikipedia) - The 1933 Chesapeake-Potomac Hurricane was the 8th storm and third hurricane of the very active 1933 Atlantic hurricane season. The August storm formed in the central Atlantic, where it moved west-northwest. Aided by the warm ocean waters, the hurricane briefly reached Category 3 status on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale before making landfall along the Virginia/North Carolina coast as a Category 1 storm.
The hurricane caused severe damage along the East Coast of the United States. The state hardest hit by the storm was Virginia, where the center of circulation passed directly over Norfolk.... In Washington, D.C., the storm produced a storm surge of 11.3 feet (3.4 m), rainfall of 6.18 inches (152 mm) and winds of 50 mph (80 km/h). In Maryland, the hurricane caused $17 million dollars (1933 USD, $230 million 2005 USD) in damage to crops and buildings. The storm also destroyed a railroad bridge heading into Ocean City and created the Ocean City Inlet between the town and Assateague Island. The storm killed 13 people and 1,000+ animals.
On the coast, the storm damaged or destroyed several wharves and fishing piers. In Delaware, the storm caused $150,000 dollars (1933 USD, $2.03 million 2005 USD) in damage but no deaths. Continued
(NYTimes) Few battles in history have been more scrutinized than Gettysburg’s three blood-soaked days in July 1863, the turning point in the Civil War. Still, there were questions that all the diaries, official reports and correspondence couldn’t answer precisely. What, for example, could Gen. Robert E. Lee actually see when he issued a series of fateful orders that turned the tide against the Confederate Army nearly 150 years ago?
Now historians have a new tool that can help. Advanced technology similar to Google Earth, MapQuest and the GPS systems used in millions of cars has made it possible to recreate a vanished landscape. Continued
Photo: Sketch map of the battle of Gettysburg, made while on the march toward Frederick, Md. / E. Forbes, July 8, 1863 (Library of Congress).
(NYTimes) The 1860 Census was the last time the federal government took a count of the South’s vast slave population. Several months later, in the summer of 1861, the United States Coast Survey—arguably the most important scientific agency in the nation at the time—issued two maps of slavery that drew on the Census data, the first of Virginia and the second of Southern states as a whole. Though many Americans knew that dependence on slave labor varied throughout the South, these maps uniquely captured the complexity of the institution and struck a chord with a public hungry for information about the rebellion. Continued
(LoC) Pioneering panoramic map artist Albert Ruger died on November 12, 1899 in Akron, Ohio. Ruger was born in Prussia and emigrated to the United States where he initially worked as a stonemason. While serving with the Ohio Volunteers during the Civil War he began drawing landscapes.
After the war, Ruger settled in Battle Creek, Michigan. In the late 1860s, Ruger joined forces with J.J. Stoner of Madison, Wisconsin to form Merchants Lithographing Company. Over the next three decades, Ruger produced maps of towns and cities in twenty-two states from New Hampshire to Minnesota and as far south as Alabama.
A form of cartography in which towns and cities are drawn as if viewed from above at an oblique angle, panoramic mapping became popular during the late nineteenth century. Panoramic cartographers abandoned restraints of scale to illustrate street patterns, individual buildings, and major landscape features in perspective. Continued
(Baltimore Sun) A stretch of Susquehanna River and Chesapeake Bay waterfront between Harford and Cecil counties could be among the first areas to win federal funding for the construction of "water trails." The National Park Service has identified the Lower Susquehanna Heritage Greenway as a priority segment of what will be the first combined land and water trail in America. The national designation will help the non-profit group that runs the heritage area to secure federal funding for its plan to link existing trails along the Susquehanna River and build more, ultimately into a 40-mile network of waterside walkways through the two counties. Continued
(Baltimore Sun) For 15 years, Stephen White battled the elements. But time and tide have claimed another remnant of the Chesapeake Bay's fading maritime culture. White, a Methodist minister and former waterman, poured his sweat, savings and even a little blood into trying to preserve the last house on Holland Island, an eroding stretch of sand and marsh in the middle of the bay, about six miles offshore from here. The two-story frame structure, which he figures was built 112 years ago, was the last vestige of what was once a thriving fishing community of more than 300 residents, with 60-some homes, a church, school, stores and a social hall. A fleet of skipjacks, bugeyes and schooners docked there. The community had its own baseball team and a band, histories recall. Continued
(Wired) ... The final eruption also threw pumice an estimated 34 to 50 miles into the sky. Dust fell more than 3,000 miles away 10 days later. Islands of pumice floated on the oceans for months. Sulfur in the ash reacted with atmospheric ozone to scatter sunlight, causing vivid red sunsets around the world. Global temperatures dropped, and climate disruptions lasted five years. Continued
(Wikipedia) - The 1933 Chesapeake-Potomac Hurricane was the 8th storm and third hurricane of the very active 1933 Atlantic hurricane season. The August storm formed in the central Atlantic, where it moved west-northwest. Aided by the warm ocean waters, the hurricane briefly reached Category 3 status on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale before making landfall along the Virginia/North Carolina coast as a Category 1 storm.The hurricane caused severe damage along the East Coast of the United States. The state hardest hit by the storm was Virginia, where the center of circulation passed directly over Norfolk.... In Washington, D.C., the storm produced a storm surge of 11.3 feet (3.4 m), rainfall of 6.18 inches (152 mm) and winds of 50 mph (80 km/h). In Maryland, the hurricane caused $17 million dollars (1933 USD, $230 million 2005 USD) in damage to crops and buildings. The storm also destroyed a railroad bridge heading into Ocean City and created the Ocean City Inlet between the town and Assateague Island. The storm killed 13 people and 1,000+ animals. On the coast, the storm damaged or destroyed several wharves and fishing piers. In Delaware, the storm caused $150,000 dollars (1933 USD, $2.03 million 2005 USD) in damage but no deaths. Continued
(NYTimes) ... In an interview last month, Dan Houser, one of Rockstar’s founders and the company’s creative leader, described the challenge and opportunity quite aptly. “Westerns are about place,” he said. “They’re not called outlaw films. They’re not even called cowboys-and-Indians films. They’re called westerns. They’re about geography.”
“We’re talking about a format that is inherently geographical,” Mr. Houser added, “and you’re talking about a medium, video games, the one thing they do unquestionably better than other mediums is represent geography.” Continued
(Cecil Observer) Many of us drive up and down Augustine Herman Highway (Route 213) on a daily basis without really knowing anything about the Bohemian adventurer who played a major role in early Cecil County history.
Augustine Herman was born in Prague or “Bohemia” about 1605, and fought in the Thirty Years War before arriving in the New World around 1629. Existing records portray a well-educated surveyor and mapmaker, fluent in several languages, and he became a key player in the early settlement of Manhattan under Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant.
On a trip through what was then the Chesapeake Bay wilderness, he was struck by the area’s natural beauty — and by the total lack of accurate maps. Continued
(Baltimore Sun) Brian Witte, an Associated Press writer, recently revived an old debate that's been going on since Palm Sunday, April 9, 1865, when the Army of Northern Virginia stacked its arms, parked its artillery and furled its flags for the last time at Appomattox Court House, Va. The bloody Civil War had at long last come to an end with a handshake in the parlor of Wilmer McLean's house. ... "Though Marylanders live just south of the Mason-Dixon Line, their attitudes and even their accents straddle that border," Witte wrote. Continued
