56 Fun Facts About Baltimore

Baltimore takes its name from the Calvert family's barony in which country?

Ireland: the Calverts were Barons Baltimore in the Irish peerage. Cecil Calvert, the lord the city honours, sent his brother to govern Maryland and never visited the colony himself.

The bombardment of which Baltimore stronghold in 1814 inspired 'The Star-Spangled Banner'?

Fort McHenry held; Francis Scott Key watched from a ship and wrote 'Defence of Fort M'Henry'; the flag now hangs in the Smithsonian.

What shape is the fort that guarded Baltimore's harbor in 1814?

A five-pointed star: its French designer, Jean Foncin, put a bastion at each point so that every wall could be swept by crossfire from its neighbours.

'The Star-Spangled Banner' borrowed its tune from a song written for which English gentlemen's club?

The Anacreontic Society, a club of amateur musicians, sang John Stafford Smith's tune in praise of Anacreon, a Greek poet of love and wine, decades before it carried patriotic words.

Which president signed the 1931 law making 'The Star-Spangled Banner' the national anthem?

Herbert Hoover signed it 117 years after Francis Scott Key wrote the words, though the Army and Navy had treated the song as the national anthem for years.

The B&O Railroad was chartered in 1827 so that Baltimore could compete with which newly opened canal?

The Erie Canal had begun pulling western trade to New York in 1825, so Baltimore's merchants answered with one of America's first railroads, later one of the four on the Monopoly board.

Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who laid the B&O Railroad's first stone in 1828, was the last living signer of what?

The Declaration of Independence: Carroll, then 90, was a director of the new railroad, and its first bridge, the Carrollton Viaduct, is named for him and still carries trains.

About how many buildings did the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 level?

1,500: the fire burned for about 30 hours, and dynamiting buildings to clear a firebreak failed to stop it.

What was the lasting national legacy of the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904?

Standardised hose couplings: fire companies came by rail from Washington, Philadelphia and New York, but many could not connect their hoses to Baltimore's hydrants.

Which writer died in Baltimore in 1849, aged 40, under mysterious circumstances?

Edgar Allan Poe was found delirious at a Baltimore tavern on 3 October 1849 and died four days later; the city's NFL team took its name from his poem 'The Raven'.

The Baltimore Ravens were established in 1996 after which team's owner announced a move to the city?

Art Modell announced in November 1995 that he was moving the Cleveland Browns; Cleveland kept the Browns name and history, and the relocated team became the Ravens in 1996.

Which quarterback was MVP of the Ravens' Super Bowl XLVII win?

Joe Flacco threw three touchdown passes as the Ravens built a 28-6 lead, then held off the 49ers 34-31 after a power failure stopped the game for 34 minutes.

Which Ravens defender was named MVP of Super Bowl XXXV?

Ray Lewis anchored a defence that allowed 165 points, a record low for a 16-game season, then kept New York's offence off the scoreboard: the Giants' only touchdown came on a kickoff return.

Which moving company's trucks carried the Colts out of Baltimore overnight in March 1984?

Mayflower Transit's trucks reached the Colts' complex around 10 p.m., a day after Maryland's Senate voted to let Baltimore seize the team by eminent domain; by morning the Colts were gone.

The Colts' 1958 title win over the Giants is remembered as what?

'The Greatest Game Ever Played' was the NFL's first sudden-death overtime game: Johnny Unitas marched the Colts 80 yards and Alan Ameche plunged in from the one for a 23-17 win.

The Orioles arrived in 1954 when a last-place American League club moved from which city?

St. Louis: the club had lost 100 games in 1953, and its new Baltimore owners dropped the old nickname for Orioles, a name the city's ball clubs had worn since the 1880s.

Which Orioles third baseman was named MVP of the 1970 World Series against Cincinnati?

Brooks Robinson, 'the Human Vacuum Cleaner', robbed the Reds of hit after hit with his glove and still batted .429; he won 16 straight Gold Gloves at third base.

Cal Ripken Jr. became baseball's 'Iron Man' by breaking whose consecutive-games record?

Lou Gehrig's mark of 2,130 straight games had stood for 56 years; Ripken pushed the streak to 2,632 games and ended it himself in 1998 by asking out of the lineup.

Oriole Park at Camden Yards, opened in 1992, is notable as what?

The first of the 'retro' ballparks: its brick, exposed steel and old warehouse beyond right field broke with the concrete multi-purpose bowls, and the parks of the 1990s and 2000s followed its lead.

Johns Hopkins, opened in 1876, is considered the first American what?

Research university: Johns Hopkins, a Quaker merchant, left $7 million to found it alongside a hospital, and its first president, Daniel Coit Gilman, built it on the European research model.

Which company bought Baltimore's Old Bay seasoning brand in 1990?

McCormick, itself founded in Baltimore, bought the crab spice half a century after Gustav Brunn, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, created it there and named it for a local steamship line.

Baltimore's Berger Cookies are famous for a thick, hand-spread topping of what?

Chocolate fudge: the Berger brothers brought the recipe from Germany in 1835, and DeBaufre Bakeries still makes the cookies by hand in Baltimore.

How is Baltimore pit beef cooked?

Quickly at high heat and served rare: unlike slow-smoked barbecue, the beef is grilled over hot charcoal, shaved thin and piled on a roll with horseradish.

Which John Waters film starred Divine, Debbie Harry and Ricki Lake in her debut?

Hairspray (1988) was rated PG, a mainstream turn for a director known for far cruder comedies, and it was Divine's last triumph: the star died days after it opened.

The Wire was created by David Simon, who spent twelve years doing what?

Reporting for The Baltimore Sun on the police beat; his book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets became an NBC series, while writing partner Ed Burns was the ex-detective and teacher.

Which institution did The Wire's second season examine?

The docks: season two left the drug corners for the port, where union leader Frank Sobotka turns to crime to raise the money to save his stevedores' union.

In 1914 the minor-league Orioles sold Baltimore-born Babe Ruth to which major-league club, years before he became a Yankee?

Boston Red Sox: Orioles owner Jack Dunn, losing money to a rival Federal League club, sold his young pitcher less than five months after signing him out of St. Mary's Industrial School.

Baltimore's airport is named after which native son?

Thurgood Marshall grew up in Baltimore but could not attend the all-white University of Maryland law school; in 1935 he helped win the lawsuit that forced it to admit a Black student.

As an enslaved teenager, Frederick Douglass was hired out to work as what in Fell's Point?

A ship caulker: he learned the trade in Fell's Point shipyards and by 1838 was hiring out his own time, before escaping north that year and taking the name Douglass in New Bedford.

Which Olympic champion trained at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club?

Michael Phelps, raised in nearby Rodgers Forge, followed his two older sisters into the pool at seven and met coach Bob Bowman at the club; he retired with 28 Olympic medals, 23 of them gold.

Which jazz singer, who grew up in Baltimore, is honoured with a statue on the city's Pennsylvania Avenue?

Billie Holiday had a hard childhood in Baltimore, then came back as a star to sing in the clubs along Pennsylvania Avenue, once the heart of the city's jazz scene.

The Preakness winner is draped in a blanket named for which flower?

Black-eyed Susans, Maryland's state flower, bloom too late in the year for the May race, so florists fake them: daisies with painted centres at first, Viking poms today.

Baltimore's Pimlico Race Course shares its name with a district of which European capital?

London: English settlers of the 1660s are said to have named the land for a London tavern kept by Ben Pimlico, a publican famed for his nut-brown ale.

Which ship struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge on March 26, 2024, collapsing its main span?

MV Dali, a Singapore-flagged container ship, lost power and struck a bridge pier at about 1:30 a.m.; six maintenance workers were killed and the Port of Baltimore's channel was blocked for weeks.

The column in Mount Vernon Place, designed by Robert Mills, holds what distinction?

First major memorial to George Washington: Mills's column was begun in 1815 and finished in 1829, decades before his obelisk on the National Mall, which was not started until 1848.

Which parlour game got its name in a Baltimore rooming house in 1890?

Ouija: as its makers told it, medium Helen Peters asked the board what it should be called and it spelled out the name, then said the word meant 'good luck'.

The Emerson Tower downtown is better known by the name of which product?

Bromo-Seltzer: Isaac Emerson made his fortune on the fizzy headache remedy and in 1911 raised the tower over his drug factory; it was Baltimore's tallest building until 1923.

Which fake-stone facing, patented in Baltimore in the 1930s, covers rowhouses across the city?

Formstone: Baltimore's Lasting Products Company sold the moulded cement to owners tired of repainting soft brick, and the city became the Formstone capital of the world.

Which town became Baltimore County's seat after Baltimore City split off in 1851?

Towson: once the 1851 constitution cut the city loose, the county's remaining voters chose Towson as their seat in 1854, leaving Baltimore inside no county at all.

Gangs tied to which party fought Democrats in Baltimore's election riots of 1856?

The Know-Nothings: the anti-immigrant party's street gangs, such as the Plug Uglies, fought for control of Baltimore's polling places, one of the riot waves behind the nickname 'Mobtown'.

Which Inner Harbor landmark has a rooftop rain forest?

The National Aquarium opened behind schedule in 1981, so Mayor William Donald Schaefer atoned by wading into its seal pool in an 1890s bathing suit, rubber duck in hand.

The USS Constellation, moored in the Inner Harbor, was the U.S. Navy's last what?

Sail-only warship: launched in 1854, the sloop went on to lead the Navy's Africa Squadron, chasing down slave ships and freeing the captives aboard.

Under Armour, headquartered in Baltimore, was founded in 1996 by whom?

Kevin Plank, a former special-teams captain on the Terrapins football team, started out selling moisture-wicking shirts from his grandmother's basement in Georgetown.

Baltimore's Peabody Institute, founded in 1857 and now part of Johns Hopkins, is a school of what?

Music: George Peabody, once a Baltimore merchant, left to become a banker abroad and then endowed the school for the city he had left behind.

Which regional bowling variant, with small holeless balls, is a Baltimore tradition?

Duckpin: bowlers get three rolls a frame instead of two, yet the squat pins are so hard to topple that nobody has ever bowled a sanctioned perfect game.

The Baltimore Museum of Art holds more than 1,000 works by which artist?

Henri Matisse: the Cone sisters, Claribel and Etta, befriended the artist and Etta bequeathed their collection to the museum in 1949; the museum itself was founded in 1914.

Which newspaperman covering the 1925 Scopes Trial dubbed it the 'Monkey Trial'?

H. L. Mencken, the 'Sage of Baltimore', filed scathing, widely syndicated dispatches for his hometown paper that mocked William Jennings Bryan and the anti-evolution side.

Samuel Morse's 1844 telegraph message 'What hath God wrought' reached a Baltimore rail depot from which city?

Washington: Morse tapped the message out in the Capitol's old Supreme Court chamber, and his partner Alfred Vail took it down at the B&O's Mount Clare station in Baltimore.

What is a Baltimore 'chicken box'?

Wings with french fries is today's order; an early newspaper ad for a Baltimore chicken box promised two whole fried spring chickens and a loaf of bread.

Which Fells Point bar is billed as the country's oldest continuously running tavern?

The Horse You Came In On Saloon bills itself as America's oldest continually operated saloon, pouring since 1775; the name dates only from the 1970s, when a new owner's lucky day at Pimlico covered his down payment.

Baltimore was founded in 1729 on the north side of which river?

The Patapsco: Maryland's governor signed the act for a town on its north bank, and Baltimore Town, after absorbing neighbouring Jonestown and Fells Point, became a city in the 1790s.

Which people used the Baltimore area as hunting grounds in the early 1600s?

The Susquehannock, an Iroquoian-speaking people whose towns lay along the lower Susquehanna River, hunted and trapped here, and their pressure kept the Algonquian-speaking Piscataway well to the south.

Which neoclassical architect designed the Baltimore Basilica, one of America's oldest Catholic cathedrals?

Benjamin Latrobe, then also at work on the U.S. Capitol, designed it for Bishop John Carroll, who passed over the Gothic style in favour of the neoclassical one the young republic had chosen for its own capital.

The building erected for painter Rembrandt Peale was the first substantial US structure designed expressly as what?

A museum: Robert Cary Long Sr. designed it in 1814; two years later Peale lit it with gas and founded the country's first gas company, and by 1830 the building was Baltimore's City Hall.

The Port of Baltimore was created in 1706 at old Whetstone, an area now known as what?

Locust Point: the 1706 port of entry at Whetstone Point later held the piers where steamships landed immigrants beside waiting B&O trains.

Which Baltimore inventor patented the crown cork bottle cap in 1892?

William Painter patented the crown cork in 1892 and founded Crown Cork & Seal in Baltimore; King Gillette worked for him as a salesman before inventing the safety razor.