Page Toppers

• Maryland, My Maryland
• So Many Things To Do So Close Together
• Streets of Baltimore
  (song by Gram Parsons)

Maryland Symbols

• Nicknames: The Free State; Old Line State; Oyster State; The Monumental state
• Slogan: So Many Things To Do So Close Together
• Motto: strong deeds, gentle words
• Song: Maryland, My Maryland (words by James R. Randall)
• Folk Dance: Square Dance
• Cat: Calico Cat
• Dog: Chesapeake Bay Retriever
• Bird: Baltimore Oriole
• Fish: Rockfish (Striped Bass)
• Crustacean: Blue Crab
• Reptile: Diamondback Terrapin
• Insect: Baltimore Checkerspot Butterfly
• Tree: White Oak
• Flower: Black-Eyed Susan
• Fossil Shell: Ecphora gardnerae gardnerae
• Dinosaur: Astrodon johnstoni
• Beverage: Milk
• Sport: Jousting
• Pro Sports Teams: Baltimore Ravens (football), Baltimore Orioles (baseball)

Facts About Maryland

• Capital: Annapolis
• Residents: Marylanders
• State Name Origin: named after Queen Mary (wife of King Charles I of England)
• Admitted to Statehood: 28 Apr 1788
• Order of Admission: 7th state
• Coastline/Shoreline: 31/3,190 miles
• Length: 250 miles
• Width: 90 miles
• Area: 12,406 square miles
• Size Rank: 42
• Number of Counties: 24
• Streams and Rivers: 17,000 miles
• Geographic Center: 4.5 miles NW of Davidsonville in Prince Georges Co.
• Mean Elevation: 350 feet
• Highest Point: Backbone Mountain in Garrett Co., 3,360 feet
• Lowest Point: Bloody Point Hole in Queen Anne's Co., 174 feet below sea level
• Agricultural Products: food products, chickens, soybeans, corn, seafood
• Commercial Products: printing and publishing, transportation equipment, electronic equipment, stone
• Average Annual Rainfall: 41.8 inches
• Average Winter High Temperature: 31 degrees
• Record Low Temperature: -40 degrees (13 Jan 1912 Oakland)
• Average Summer High Temperature: 79 degrees
• Record High Temperature: 109 degrees (10 Jul 1936 Cumberland and Frederick)
• Official Language: English
• More information about Maryland

Quotes

• The clustered spires of Frederick stand
  Green-walled by the hills of Maryland (John Greenleaf Whittier)
• I like Baltimore - despite its slicked-up touristy waterfront it remains a seedy old port city, reformable only to a negligible degree. (Larry McMurtry)
• Salisburians hold on to their language. They say 'Eastern Sho',' and they say 'wotter' for 'water,' and 'Hey!' for just plain 'Hello.' (Philip Hamburger)
• The towns that lie up the rivers and creeks of the Eastern Shore are as pretty as any you'll ever find, St. Michaels and Oxford the gems among them. (Walter Cronkite)

Items of Interest

• Maryland was inhabited by Indians as early as 10,000 B.C. Permanent Indian villages were established around 1000 A.D.
• The United States Naval Academy was founded on October 10, 1845 at Annapolis.
• The Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is the first cathedral in the United States. Baltimore represents the first Roman Catholic diocese.
• King Williams School, opened in 1696, was the first school in the United States.
• The first dental school in the United States was at the University of Maryland.
• Tilghman Island is home to the Skipjacks, the only commercial sailing fleet in North America.
• The Maryland State House is the oldest state capitol still in continuous legislative use.
• Samuel F.B. Morse reportedly received the first telegraph message in Bladensburg, in 1844, before his famous "What Hath God Wrought" message between Baltimore and Washington. His telegraph wire had been strung along the railroad right of way.
• The town of Garrett Park declared the first nuclear free zone in the US in 1982, affirming a tradition of peacefulness that began in 1898 when it became illegal to harm any tree or songbird within the town limits.
• Maryland was first to enact Workmen's compensation laws in 1902.
• Greenbelt was the first community in the United States built as a planned city. Greenbelt was an experiment in both the physical and social planning.
• The Methodist Church of America was formally organized in 1784 at Perry Hall.
• The Bollman Truss Railroad Bridge in Savage, made of both cast iron and wrought iron, is the only open railroad bridge of its type in the world.
• Annapolis once served as the capital of the United States.

Notable Natives

Some of these people were born here, others just lived a part of their life in the state.

• Spiro T. Agnew - vice president (Baltimore)
• Harold Baines - baseball player
• John Barth - writer (Cambridge)
• Frank "Home Run" Baker - baseball player
• Benjamin Bannecker - mathematician, astronomer
• Eubie Blake - pianist, composer (Baltimore)
• John Wilkes Booth - actor, Lincoln assassin (Harford county)
• Francis X. Bushman - actor (Baltimore)
• James M. Cain - writer (Annapolis)
• Anna E. Carroll - author
• Charles Carroll - revolutionary war leader
• Samuel Chase - U.S. supreme court justice (Sumerset county)
• Tom Clancy - author
• Ezra Cornell - founder of Cornell University, inventor of the telegraph pole
• Stephen Decatur - Navy officer, hero
• John Dickinson - statesman (Talbot county)
• Frederick Douglass (1817-1895) - social reformer and abolitionist leader, born a slave (Tuckahoe)
• Jimmy Foxx - baseball player
• Christopher Gist - frontiersman (Baltimore)
• Philip Glass - composer (Baltimore)
• Lefty Grove - baseball player
• John Hanson - first president elected under the articles of confederation
• Matthew Henson - explorer (Charles county)
• Billie Holiday - jazz and blues singer (Baltimore)
• Johns Hopkins (1795-1873) - financier, philanthropist, founded a hospital and university (Anne Arundel county)
• Thomas Johnson - political leader (Calvert county)
• Al Kaline - baseball player
• Francis Scott Key - poet, lawyer, composer, composed the National Anthem (Carroll county)
• Thurgood Marshall (1908- ) - first African-American justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (Baltimore)
• Henry Louis Menchen - journalist (Baltimore)
• Denny Neagle - baseball player
• Charles Willson Peale - artist, naturalist (Queen Annes county)
• Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) - author, poet
• Billy Ripken - baseball player
• Cal Ripken, Jr. - baseball player
• Dr. Peyton Rous - Nobel prize winner in medicine
• Lames Rumsey - inventor
• George "Babe" Ruth aka "The King of Swat - baseball player (Baltimore)
• Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton - first native-born American saint, canonized September 14, 1975
• Upton Beall Sinclair (1878-1968) - writer, social critic, his novel The Jungleled to reforms in the meat-packing industry (Baltimore)
• Roger B. Taney - U.S. supreme court chief justice (Calvert county)
• Carey M. Thomas - educator, feminist
• Harriet Tubman (1821-1913) - abolitionist, organized the Underground Railroad, born a slave (Dorchester county)
• Leon Uris - author (Baltimore)
• Mason Locke Weems - author
• Frank Zappa - singer (Baltimore)

You know you are from Maryland if...

• You know more than 10 people who own boats and they all park them at the same marina in Annapolis.
• You can pronounce and spell "Pocomoke," "Mattaponi," "Accokeek," and "Havre de Grace".
• You pronounce "Bowie" BOO-ie not BOW-ie or BAUW-ie.
• One hour is an easy commute to work.
• You have more than three recipes for crabcakes.
• French fries just don't taste right without Old Bay.
• There are more than two crab places in your town.
• Even your high school cafeteria made good crabcakes.
• You got your first lacrosse stick before you were six years old.
• You call all turtles "terrapins".
• You refer to your state as "Merlind".
• Your mother shops at Hecht's.
• You still call Six Flags America "Adventure World", or even "Wild World".
• You still remember the Wild World commercial (Wild World's the cure for the summertime blues!).
• You can tell the difference between the smells of septic and marsh.
• You not only know how to eat hard crabs but you also know how to catch them, cook them and tell the males from the females.
• You don't think that Assawoman Bay is a strange name for a body of water.
• You know perfectly well why Rehoboth is called "Little San Francisco"
• M R Ducks makes perfect sense. So does C M Wangs.
• You think Salisbury is a big city.
• You think of dumplings as wet slippery squares of boiled dough.
• You and your boss take off of work when the fish are running or the ducks are flying in.
• You've eaten muskrat at a church dinner but think it's better the way you fix it.
• You think of "Dairy Queen" as a pageant title and not a place to get an ice cream.
• "Formal wear" is a ball cap, a flannel shirt and Timberlands.
• You still root for the Orioles even when they suck.
• You'll never understand why tourists come to DC.
• When in Florida, you can only laugh when you see signs saying "Real Maryland Blue Crab Cakes!"
• You color with "Crowns", take a "Share" with "Wooter" and think the president lives in "Warshenton."
• You know the difference between Glen Burnie ghetto and Catonsville ghetto.
• Your whole family lives within a 200 mile radius of your town.
• Dale Earnhardt's accident was a close personal loss to your father.
• At least one man in your family is a waterman.
• You plan for "The Festival" a year in advance.
• During the summer, you spend more time in Ocean City than at home.
• Margret Heater, Hedspace, Jepetto, Outside Joke and Mary Prankster are people you think are "Famous".
• Your radio dial is stuck on 99.1.
• You actually get these jokes and pass them on to other friends from Maryland.