Greenbelt, Maryland's 75th Anniversary
For most people, Greenbelt is a typical Washington, DC, suburb. However, at its heart is a federally recognized National Historic Landmark: the original portion of the city. You might think, “So what? Lots of cities and towns have historic districts.” The difference is that Greenbelt’s is only 75 years old—hardly mature enough to be considered historic. But the Prince George’s County city is unique because it was one of the federal government’s first forays into housing created under the Resettlement Administration in 1935 under authority of the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act. “From the beginning it was designed as a complete city, with businesses, schools, roads and facilities for recreation and town government. Greenbelt was a planned community, noted for its interior walkways, underpasses, its system of inner courtyards and one of the first mall-type shopping centers in the United States,” Read more…
Remembering Battle of Antietam in 1937
As Western Maryland prepares to remember the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam in Sharpsburg, no actual Civil War veterans will be attending. The last major anniversary event for a Civil War battle that saw actual veterans in attendance was the 75th. Antietam’s 75th anniversary was in 1937. For Washington County residents, the event also represented the bicentennial of the settling of the county and the 175th anniversary of the founding of Hagerstown. The latter events had been originally planned for 1935, but they had been postponed because of the country’s poor economic condition. The money just wasn’t there to plan for a big event. However, remembering Antietam was not only a big event, but it was a federal one. President Franklin Roosevelt created the National Antietam Commemoration Commission and appointed Maryland U.S. Sen. Millard Tydings to chair it, Read more…
"Battlefield Angels" Review
The Citizen’s Companion and the Camp Chase Gazette recently reviewed my book, Battlefield Angels: The Daughters of Charity Work as Civil War Nurses. The book is a non-fiction recounting of the rarely recognized work of 300 Daughters of Charity during the Civil War. These Catholic sisters provided care on battlefields like Antietam and Gettysburg, on troop transports on the James River, in POW prisons like Point Lookout in Maryland and in hospitals like Satterlee in Philadelphia. They earned the nickname of “Battlefield Angels” because their wide, white cornettes looked somewhat like angel’s wings. They could be found in just about every state involved in the war. The Citizen’s Companion noted, “The stories are told in a compelling narrative, though the story tends to jump around because it is told chronologically. … Battlefield Angels is a non-fiction history book that reads Read more…
The Only Known Movie of Mark Twain
Being a writer and history enthusiast, I thought that this was a nice little piece of history when I ran across it. Thomas Edison visited his friend Mark Twain in 1909 and filmed him at Twain’s Redding, CT, home. It’s a silent film clip, but it’s neat to actually see the real Mark Twain moving around. Twain would die the following year and so this remains the only known film of the iconic author. Unfortunately, there are no voice recordings of Twain. While Edison also made phonographs of Twain reading his stories out loud, they were destroyed in a 1914 fire. Here’s a frame of the clip. You can watch the entire movie here at Mental Floss.
Real-life Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein found
Ten years ago researchers found bodies off the coast of Scotland that were dated to be about 3,000 years old. At first what interested the researchers was that some of the bodies were mummified, which marked the oldest mummification of corpses outside of Egypt. Then they noticed that the bones looked odd. For instance, the male skeleton had arthritis in its neck vertebrae but nowhere else on the spine. Also, the lower jaw had all its teeth, but there were none in the upper jaw. So researchers tested the bones and found out that the skeleton was made up of the torso and limbs of one man, the skull and neck of another, and the lower jaw from a third, possibly a woman. Likewise, a woman’s skeleton was similarly composed of the bones of three different people. The lower jaw, Read more…
The Sands of Time Reveal Plane After 70 Years
I wrote about a lost plane that had been found in Alaska after 60 years last month. Now I’ve come across another story of a lost plane. In the 1960’s movie Flight of the Phoenix, James Stewart plays a pilot whose plane crashes in the Sahara in a storm. He then must find a way to get his passengers to safety before they die of thirst or from desert bandits. He eventually does get them to safety. Though the pilot of an American-made Curtiss Kittyhawk P-40 that crashed in desert 70 years ago apparently survived his crash, he may not have been as lucky as Stewart. A Polish oil company worker, Jakub Perka, recently found the nearly intact plane while exploring a remote area of the Western Desert in Egypt about 200 miles from the nearest town. “Perhaps low on Read more…
Military plane found 60 years after it went down on Alaskan glacier
Wreckage of a military plane believed to have crashed on Colony Glacier, east of Anchorage, AK, was discovered on June 10. Along with the wreckage, human remains of the 52 people who had been on board the plane were also found. This is a story that struck a chord with me. It reminds me of the stories you read occasionally of mammoths being found in glaciers in Russia or even the story of Captain America that was touched on in “The Avengers” earlier this year. Unfortunately, these people weren’t lucky enough to live in an age when medical miracles like that could happen. According to an AP account, the civil air patrol member was Terris Moore, who was president of the University of Alaska. After returning from the site, he told reporters that the plane “obviously was flying at full Read more…
First Lincoln Assassination Report Found After 147 Years
This summer, we’ll hear that Abraham Lincoln is a vampire still living today. Luckily, we can also read an interesting non-fiction report that hasn’t been seen since 1865. The first doctor to reach President Abraham Lincoln after he was shot wrote his report on the day that Lincoln died. However, his report was filed away in the National Archives and believed to not have been seen since that time.I saw this story and found it interesting. I’ve read some books about the Lincoln assassination and even written a little about it. There are so many books out there about Lincoln that it’s hard to find something new about him (hopefully, you don’t consider Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter a fresh view). Dr. Charles Leale was 40 feet from Lincoln in Ford’s Theater the night the President was shot. He rushed to Read more…
Who is “Genl. Scofield”?
As the country remembers the men who fought in the Civil War 150 years ago, a general lies forgotten in a grave atop Meadow Mountain just off of old U.S. Route 40. The only clue to who this man was is a grave marker that answers few questions and raises more. In Memory of Genl. Scofield Civil War Veteran Killed on this Mountain 1894 Donated by A.J. Irwin & Son For years, Marie Lancaster of Addison, Pa., cared for the grave making sure the grave was trimmed and occasionally bringing flowers or a U.S. flag to leave by the marker. “We just saw the grave while we were taking a Sunday drive and, after looking at it up close, my husband and I were of the opinion that a high-ranking military man like Gen. Scofield deserved a more prominent burial Read more…
Giving History a Hand…and Arm
History can be funny, fascinating, inspiring and sometimes just plain yucky. The National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick, MD, received a forearm as an anonymous donation this year. It is a human foremarm that still has the right hand and skin attached. It is said to have been found by a farmer in Sharpsburg, MD, about two weeks after the 1862 Battle of Antietam. It had been displayed for decades at a private museum. It was shown in a glass-topped, pine case with a card that read, “Human arm found on the Antietam Battlefield,” according to the Associated Press report. When the museum’s owner died in 2001, the museum’s contents were sold at auction. Museum officials are hoping to verify that it is a relic of the battle, though they have little hope of figuring out which soldier’s arm Read more…
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