120 Fun Facts About Maryland

Maryland, chartered in 1632, was named for Henrietta Maria, the wife of which English king?

Charles I granted the charter in June 1632 to Cecil Calvert, whose father had asked for it but died weeks before it was sealed; the colony was named for the king's wife.

What is the capital of Maryland?

Annapolis, not much bigger Baltimore, has been the capital since the 1690s, when royal governor Francis Nicholson moved the government there and laid out the new town's plan himself.

Maryland held out until 1781 before ratifying which document?

The Articles of Confederation needed every state, and Maryland refused until 1781, once bigger states agreed to give up their western land claims; it went on to ratify the US Constitution as the seventh state in April 1788.

The Province of Maryland was chartered in 1632 primarily as a haven for which persecuted group?

Catholics were a minority even in their own haven: most of the labourers and servants on the first two ships in 1633 are said to have been Protestant, though Catholic gentlemen led the venture.

Maryland's varied landscapes, from Appalachian mountains to Atlantic beaches, earned it what nickname?

America in Miniature is the tourism office's favourite line: the ninth-smallest state is said to hold almost every kind of natural feature except a desert, because water is never far away.

Maryland's 'Free State' nickname was revived in 1923 by a Baltimore editor mocking demands that it enforce what?

Prohibition never got a state enforcement act in Maryland. When a Georgia congressman called the state a traitor for that, Sun editor Hamilton Owens drafted a mock call to secede as 'the Maryland Free State'.

Maryland's highest point, Hoye Crest at 3,360 feet, sits on which ridge?

Backbone Mountain carries the Eastern Continental Divide: rain on one side runs to the Atlantic, while the country beyond it is the only part of Maryland that drains to the Mississippi.

Near Hancock, Maryland is under two miles wide between the Mason-Dixon line and which river?

The Potomac marks Maryland's border with Virginia and West Virginia, and at Hancock it swings north toward the dead-straight surveyed line, pinching Maryland into a waist less than two miles across.

Washington, D.C.'s land came from Maryland's Montgomery County and which other county?

Prince George's and Montgomery supplied the Maryland side of the original diamond; Virginia's share was later handed back, so today the whole District sits on former Maryland land.

Lacrosse is Maryland's team sport, but what is its official state sport?

Jousting made Maryland the first state with an official sport. It is the ring version: riders gallop under a row of arches spearing small hanging rings, and nobody is knocked out of the saddle.

What is Maryland's state flower?

Black-eyed Susan blankets drape the winners at Maryland's biggest race meeting each May, but they are stand-ins: florists build them from Viking poms, a yellow chrysanthemum with a brown centre.

Which reptile is both a Maryland native and the mascot of the University of Maryland?

Diamondback terrapin was the football coach's idea for a mascot in 1932; the bronze statue of Testudo outside the campus library now has a nose polished bright by people rubbing it for luck.

Which Chesapeake Bay catch has a scientific name that translates as 'beautiful savoury swimmer'?

Blue crab is Callinectes sapidus, and the swimmer part is earned: its rear pair of legs is flattened into paddles, so it swims as readily as it walks.

Which two abolitionists were both born into slavery on Maryland's Eastern Shore?

Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass were born in Dorchester and Talbot counties, a few years apart. After escaping, Tubman went back about 13 times and led some 70 family and friends north.

BWI airport is named for which Baltimore-born Supreme Court justice?

Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice, could not attend the University of Maryland's whites-only law school; in 1935 he came back as a lawyer and won the case that forced it to admit a Black student.

Which Maryland governor turned vice president resigned in 1973 after pleading no contest to tax evasion?

Spiro Agnew had taken payments from contractors as Baltimore County executive and as governor, and prosecutors found they kept coming after he became vice president; Gerald Ford took his place.

Which Triple Crown race was first run at Baltimore's Pimlico track in 1873?

Preakness Stakes is the Triple Crown's middle leg yet older than its first: Pimlico staged it two years before the Kentucky Derby was ever run.

Which crossing, opened in 1952, replaced the ferries between Maryland's Eastern and Western Shores?

The Chesapeake Bay Bridge ended centuries of ferry crossings, and Ocean City grew fast once the Atlantic beaches were a direct drive from Baltimore and Washington.

What kind of animals roam wild on Assateague Island off Maryland's coast?

Horses there are said in local legend to have swum ashore from a shipwreck, but the Park Service finds no record of it and thinks 17th-century owners grazed them on the island to dodge fencing laws and livestock taxes.

Which 1862 battle near Sharpsburg, Maryland, remains the bloodiest single day in American history?

Antietam left about 23,000 men killed, wounded or missing in twelve hours. It ended Lee's first invasion of the North and prompted the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation days later.

Which Maryland railroad, the first steam-operated common carrier in the US, opened its first stretch in 1830?

The B&O was Baltimore's answer to the Erie Canal: merchants founded it in 1827 so that western trade would not all flow to New York, and it later earned a square on the Monopoly board.

In 2015, Maryland led all US states in which economic measure?

Median household income is lifted by Washington next door: federal agencies, defence contractors and biotech labs fill Maryland's suburbs with well-paid jobs.

Which enormous white oak, Maryland's most famous tree, stood on the Eastern Shore until a storm felled it in 2002?

The Wye Oak, then the largest white oak in the country, was not wasted: a section of its trunk became a desk for the governor's office, and a clone was planted in the old stump.

Maryland's flag combines the arms of the Calvert family with those of which other family?

Crossland red and white became the 'secession colours' of Marylanders who sided with the South, while Unionists kept Calvert black and gold; a flag joining the two appeared as the state reconciled after the war.

By law, the only ornament allowed on top of a flagstaff flying the Maryland flag is what?

A gold cross bottony, the bud-tipped cross from the flag's own red-and-white quarters, has been the only legal topper since 1945, so the eagle found on flagpoles elsewhere is not allowed here.

Which spooky parlour game was named in 1890 in Maryland by medium Helen Peters Nosworthy?

Ouija is said to have named itself: asked at a Baltimore sitting what it should be called, the board spelled out the word, then told the group that it meant 'good luck'.

Which breed was declared Maryland's official state dog in 1964?

Chesapeake Bay Retriever lines are traced by tradition to Sailor and Canton, two pups said to have been taken off a sinking English brig in 1807 and bought from its captain for a guinea apiece.

Which seasoning was created in Baltimore in 1939 by a spice maker who had fled Nazi Germany?

Old Bay borrowed its name from the Old Bay Line, steamships that ran overnight between Baltimore and Norfolk; Gustav Brunn had first sold the mix as Delicious Brand Shrimp and Crab Seasoning.

Which baseball legend was born in Baltimore in 1895 and first turned professional with the minor-league Orioles?

Babe Ruth probably got his nickname there too: most accounts say older players teased the 19-year-old as one of owner Jack Dunn's 'babes' after Dunn signed him in 1914.

The presidential retreat Camp David lies in the wooded hills of which Maryland mountain?

Catoctin Mountain Park still surrounds the camp, which was built in the 1930s by the Works Progress Administration as a holiday spot for federal employees and their families before the White House took it over in 1942.

What did Franklin Roosevelt name the Maryland retreat that Eisenhower later renamed Camp David?

Shangri-La was already Roosevelt's running joke: asked where the bombers that had just raided Tokyo took off, he named the hidden valley of the novel Lost Horizon, then gave his new retreat the same name.

Fort McHenry holds what unique double designation in the US park system?

National Monument and Historic Shrine is a title no other site holds, and the fort keeps a custom to match: new designs of the US flag are flown there first, as the 49- and 50-star flags were in 1959 and 1960.

Betsy Ross gets the fame, but which Baltimore flagmaker was paid to sew the huge Star-Spangled Banner for Fort McHenry?

Mary Pickersgill sewed it with her daughter, two nieces and a 13-year-old indentured servant, Grace Wisher; the 30-by-42-foot flag outgrew her house, so they laid it out in a brewery across the street.

The Star-Spangled Banner's 15 stripes added Kentucky and which other new state?

Vermont and Kentucky each got a star and a stripe under a 1794 law. Congress went back to thirteen stripes in 1818, which leaves this the only official US flag design with more.

Which layered cake is Maryland's official state dessert?

Smith Island cake comes from a Chesapeake island that can be reached only by boat. Its bakers are said to have settled on cooked fudge icing because it kept far longer than buttercream when cakes went out with the oyster boats.

Which underdog beat Triple Crown winner War Admiral in a famous 1938 match race at Baltimore's Pimlico?

Seabiscuit liked to run with the pack, so his trainer secretly drilled him with a bell to bolt from the start; he broke in front of the favourite War Admiral and won by four lengths.

Which service academy has trained officers in Maryland's capital since 1845?

The US Naval Academy began as a school of 50 midshipmen and seven professors on a ten-acre Army post; Navy Secretary George Bancroft set it up without waiting for Congress to fund it.

What did George Washington do before Congress in the Maryland State House in December 1783?

He resigned his army commission and went home to Mount Vernon, a voluntary step that helped set the rule of civilian control over the military; Congress was sitting there because the town was then the temporary capital.

What distinction does Maryland's capitol building hold among American statehouses?

Oldest in continuous legislative use: Maryland lawmakers have met in it since the 1770s, and for nine months in 1783-84 Congress borrowed it, making it the only statehouse to have served as the nation's capitol.

What created Ocean City's inlet, separating it from Assateague Island, in August 1933?

A hurricane cut the gap, and instead of letting the sand close it again, engineers pinned it open with jetties within two years, giving the resort a harbour with direct access to the ocean.

Ocean City bills itself as the world capital of fishing for which billfish?

White marlin are the prize at the White Marlin Open each August, billed as the world's largest and richest billfish tournament: landing the heaviest one can be worth several million dollars to a single boat.

Which container ship struck and collapsed Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge on March 26, 2024?

MV Dali lost power and sent a mayday that gave police about 90 seconds to stop traffic, which is why the only people on the span were a road maintenance crew; six of them died.

What failed to fit when other cities' crews reached the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904?

Hose couplings on engines rushed in by train from Washington would not fit Baltimore's hydrants, and many crews from other cities had the same trouble as over 1,500 buildings burned; some 600 coupling sizes were then in use nationwide.

The Baltimore Ravens' name, chosen by fans in 1996, honours a poem by which writer buried in the city?

Edgar Allan Poe's poem won out when fans were polled on a shortlist of Ravens, Marauders and Americans, and the team later named its three mascots Edgar, Allan and Poe.

Before moving to Baltimore in 1954, the Orioles franchise played as which team?

St. Louis Browns teams won a single pennant in 52 seasons and no World Series; twelve years after the move, the renamed club swept the Dodgers for its first title in 1966.

Cal Ripken Jr., born in Havre de Grace, played 2,632 straight games to break whose record?

Lou Gehrig's 2,130 had stood for 56 years when Ripken passed it in 1995. He kept going for three more seasons, then ended the streak himself by taking his name out of the lineup.

Which Olympic champion grew up in Towson and trained at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club?

Michael Phelps started at seven, following his sisters to the pool partly as an outlet for his energy; at 15 he was the youngest male to make a US Olympic swim team in 68 years.

A mystery visitor long toasted the author of 'The Raven' at his Baltimore grave, leaving three of what?

Roses, always three, were left with an unfinished bottle, usually cognac, every January 19, the writer's birthday, for decades; the visits stopped after 2009 and the visitor was never identified.

Maryland's original capital, founded in 1634, was which settlement?

St. Mary's City lost its reason to exist when the government left in the 1690s: the town emptied into farmland, and the buried capital is now one of the country's leading colonial archaeology sites.

Maryland's first settlers sailed from England in 1633 aboard the Ark and which smaller ship?

The Dove, the smaller of the pair, reached Maryland with the Ark about four months after leaving England, and the day the settlers landed, March 25, 1634, is still marked each year as Maryland Day.

The Maryland Toleration Act of 1649 granted freedom of worship to whom?

Trinitarian Christians alone were covered: the act shielded anyone 'professing to believe in Jesus Christ', but denying the Trinity carried death and the loss of all property, and the law was repealed five years later.

Mason and Dixon surveyed their famous line in the 1760s to settle Maryland's border dispute with which colony?

Pennsylvania and Maryland settlers had fought a running border feud, Cresap's War, before the surveyors came; decades later their line became shorthand for the divide between free and slave states.

Maryland's state song, dropped in 2021, calls which president a 'tyrant'?

Abraham Lincoln is the tyrant of 'Maryland, My Maryland', written in 1861 by a Confederate sympathiser angry at Union troops marching through Baltimore; it still became the state song in 1939 and lasted 82 years.

Which Baltimore university, opened in 1876, is considered America's first research university?

Johns Hopkins University was endowed by a Baltimore merchant's $7 million bequest and built on the German model, where professors were expected to do research as well as teach.

Fort Meade, Maryland, is home to US Cyber Command and which intelligence organisation?

The NSA was created by a classified presidential memo in 1952 and kept so quiet for decades that people in intelligence joked its initials stood for 'No Such Agency'.

Baltimore's mayor jumped into the seal pool because which 1981 attraction opened late?

The National Aquarium missed its promised opening date, so Mayor William Donald Schaefer kept his word and jumped into the seal pool in a striped Victorian swimsuit, clutching a rubber duck.

What nickname did Cumberland earn as Maryland's second-largest city in the 1800s?

The Queen City ranked second only to Baltimore because the routes west met at Cumberland: the National Road began there and the canal from Washington ended there, with the railroad running through.

America's oldest surviving passenger rail station stands 13 miles from Baltimore in which mill town?

Ellicott City, then Ellicott's Mills, was the end of the line when the railroad's first 13 miles opened in 1830; the earliest cars were drawn along the rails by animals, and steam took over within two years.

Maryland won its first men's basketball national title in 2002 by beating which team in the final?

Indiana led only once, 44-42 midway through the second half; Maryland answered with a 22-8 run to win 64-52, a year after falling short in its first Final Four.

Which David Simon HBO drama examined a different Baltimore institution each season?

Simon set it there because he knew the city from the Baltimore Sun; Hairspray and Homicide are Baltimore stories too.

Which director set his 1988 film Hairspray in the Baltimore of his teenage years?

John Waters based its Corny Collins Show on The Buddy Deane Show, a real Baltimore teen dance programme that left the air in 1964 amid a fight over integrating its dancers.

Under Maryland's 1851 constitution, Baltimore gained which status that it still holds?

Independent city: Baltimore left Baltimore County in 1851, so Maryland treats it as a 24th jurisdiction on a par with its 23 counties.

Which Baltimore nickname comes from a toast President John Quincy Adams gave there in 1827?

The Monumental City: Baltimore had begun two great landmarks in 1815, the Battle Monument to the men who died defending the city in 1814 and a towering column to George Washington.

What do geologists credit with fixing the Chesapeake Bay's location about 35 million years ago?

A bolide impact: an asteroid or comet blasted a crater about 85 km wide, and the lasting dip it left steered the region's rivers to the spot where rising seas later drowned them into a bay.

Which river's drowned valley became the Chesapeake Bay as seas rose after the last ice age?

Susquehanna: rising seas flooded the river's lower valley about 10,000 years ago, and the river still delivers about half of the fresh water flowing into the bay.

Which Chesapeake oyster boat, Maryland's state boat, is the last American working boat still under sail?

Skipjack: the fleet survived because Maryland long restricted dredging for oysters under engine power, though only a few dozen remain of roughly 2,000 once built.

What kind of animal was 'Chessie', a stray visitor to the Chesapeake Bay between 1994 and 2011?

A manatee: rescuers caught him in 1994 and flew him home to Florida before winter, but the next year he swam even farther north, all the way to New England.

Which fleet beat the Royal Navy at the 1781 Battle of the Chesapeake, enabling Yorktown?

The French under Admiral de Grasse drove off the British relief fleet, so Cornwallis, cut off by sea at Yorktown, surrendered six weeks later.

Which Jamestown leader explored and mapped the Chesapeake Bay in the summer of 1608?

John Smith was looking for gold and a sea route to the Pacific; in two voyages in an open boat that summer he found neither, and came back instead with the makings of his map of the bay.

On which Chesapeake island did the British build Fort Albion in 1814, their base for attacking Baltimore?

Tangier Island's Fort Albion was also a refuge for people escaping slavery, and men who enlisted there as Colonial Marines went on to fight in the British campaigns against Washington and Baltimore.

Which activity did Maryland choose in 2008 as the first official state exercise in the US?

Walking got the title because lawmakers wanted to promote physical fitness for all ages, and no other state had named an official exercise before.

Maryland is the only US state whose motto, carried on its Great Seal, is in which language?

Italian is used because the saying was the founding family's own motto, adopted by the first Baron Baltimore in 1622, before the colony existed.

Because glaciers never reached it, Maryland has no natural examples of which feature, so even Deep Creek is man-made?

Lakes in Maryland are all man-made: Deep Creek, the best known, was created in the 1920s when a power company dammed a mountain stream for hydroelectricity.

Which baseball legend was born in 1895 in a Baltimore row house that is now a museum to him?

Babe Ruth was sent at seven to a Baltimore reform school, where Brother Matthias became his baseball mentor, and he turned professional with the minor-league Orioles.

The world's first college devoted to which profession opened in Baltimore in 1840?

Dentistry gained its first school with the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery, which also created the Doctor of Dental Surgery degree and survives within the University of Maryland.

A life-size statue at the University of Maryland shows alumnus Jim Henson beside which of his characters?

Kermit the Frog dates from Henson's student days: he created the character in 1955 for a local Washington TV show while still a Maryland freshman.

Which found-footage horror film follows three student filmmakers into the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland?

The Blair Witch Project is set around the real town of Burkittsville, but most of it was actually shot in Seneca Creek State Park in Montgomery County.

The title Baron Baltimore, which gave Maryland's biggest city its name, came from a place in which country?

Ireland gave the colony's founders their title: Baron Baltimore, created in 1625, was a peerage of Ireland named for Baltimore in County Longford.

Which Civil War battle, fought along a creek in western Maryland, remains the bloodiest single day in American history?

Antietam left about 22,700 soldiers dead, wounded or missing, and the outcome gave Lincoln the confidence to issue his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.

Which sport, the oldest known to be played in America, became Maryland's official team sport in 2004?

Lacrosse has deep Maryland roots: the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame sits in Sparks, and a Baltimore school fielded America's first women's team in 1926.

Cal Ripken Jr. of the Baltimore Orioles broke which Yankee's 56-year-old record for consecutive games played in 1995?

Lou Gehrig's run of 2,130 straight games was widely thought unbreakable; Ripken passed it in September 1995 and kept going for three more seasons before choosing to sit one out.

Which Maryland nickname honours the steadfast regiments George Washington relied on during the Revolutionary War?

The Old Line State recalls the Maryland Line, regular troops whose long, reliable service is said to have led Washington to call them his 'Old Line'.

Which inventor sent the first message over the 1844 telegraph line linking Washington with Baltimore?

Samuel Morse tapped it out from the Capitol to a Baltimore railroad station, after Congress had granted him $30,000 to build the experimental line.

Which small state shares a peninsula with Maryland's Eastern Shore and two counties of Virginia?

Delaware supplies the first syllable of Delmarva, a name clipped together from the three states that share the peninsula.

Which sportswear brand was founded in 1996 by Kevin Plank, a former University of Maryland football player?

Under Armour grew out of Plank's dislike of the sweat-soaked T-shirts he wore beneath his jersey, and he started the business in his grandmother's basement.

Which hotel giant, grown from a 1927 root beer stand in Washington, has its headquarters in Maryland?

Marriott began with J. Willard Marriott and his wife Alice selling root beer, and the family did not open a hotel until 1957, thirty years later.

Which landmark book about pesticides did Rachel Carson write at her home in Montgomery County, Maryland?

Silent Spring was written at Carson's house in Colesville, which was named a National Historic Landmark in 1991.

Which Jazz Age novelist is buried beside his wife Zelda in the family plot in Rockville, Maryland?

Fitzgerald was named for a distant cousin, Francis Scott Key, yet was at first refused burial in the family's Rockville plot because he had lapsed from the church.

Clara Barton's last home in Glen Echo, Maryland, doubled as an early headquarters of which organisation she founded?

American Red Cross relief work even supplied the timber: the house was partly built from lumber salvaged from shelters put up after the Johnstown Flood.

In December 1783, what did George Washington famously do before Congress inside the Maryland State House?

Washington resigned his army commission as commander-in-chief and went home to Mount Vernon, a voluntary exit that helped set the precedent of civilian control of the military.

Which early highway, authorised under Thomas Jefferson in 1806, began at Cumberland, Maryland, and headed west?

The National Road, America's first great federally financed highway, reached Vandalia, Illinois, by 1839, some 591 miles from its Maryland starting point.

Which river, entering at Havre de Grace, supplies about half of the Chesapeake Bay's fresh water?

The Susquehanna rises at Cooperstown, New York, and runs 444 miles, making it the longest river on the East Coast before it meets the bay in Maryland.

Which space telescope, launched in 1990, has its science operations run from the Johns Hopkins campus in Baltimore?

Hubble's observing programme is chosen and scheduled at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which later took on the James Webb telescope too.

NASA's first space flight center, opened in 1959 at Greenbelt, Maryland, is named after which rocketry pioneer?

Robert Goddard built and launched the world's first liquid-fuelled rocket in 1926, more than thirty years before NASA opened the centre that carries his name.

Which animal is the live mascot of the United States Naval Academy, a favourite kidnap target before the Army-Navy game?

A goat has been Navy's mascot since the 1890s, and West Point cadets pulled off the first recorded modern kidnapping in 1953, hiding him in the back seat of a convertible.

Which self-taught Maryland astronomer published almanacs and helped survey the District of Columbia's original borders?

Benjamin Banneker, born free in Baltimore County with little formal schooling, also exchanged letters with Thomas Jefferson about slavery and racial equality.

Which cat became Maryland's state cat in 2001 because its coat matches the colours of the state bird?

Calico cats wear the same orange, black and white as the Baltimore oriole and the Baltimore checkerspot butterfly, the state bird and the state insect.

Which founder of a sisterhood at Emmitsburg, Maryland, became the first US-born person to be canonised, in 1975?

Elizabeth Ann Seton, a widowed convert from New York, opened a girls' school in Emmitsburg and founded the Sisters of Charity, America's first congregation of religious sisters.

Which sloop-of-war, the last sail-only warship built by the US Navy, is moored as a museum in Baltimore's Inner Harbor?

USS Constellation was launched in 1854 and served as flagship of the Africa Squadron, patrolling against the slave trade, long before becoming a floating museum.

Which westernmost Maryland county, the last of the 23 to be formed, lies wholly within the Appalachian Mountains?

Garrett County was split off from its neighbour in 1872, and in winter skiers head for the slopes of its Wisp resort.

Which Maryland county seat, north-east of Baltimore, shares its name with a wealthy Los Angeles neighbourhood?

Bel Air, first written 'Belle Aire', became a county seat in 1782, just two years after the town was founded.

Which county, the only one in Maryland on the Atlantic Ocean, contains both Ocean City and Assateague Island?

Worcester County holds the state's entire ocean coast, yet its county seat is Snow Hill rather than the famous resort.

Which central Maryland county, home to the planned city of Columbia, has its seat at Ellicott City?

Howard County has no incorporated towns at all, so both Columbia, with about 100,000 people, and the seat itself are governed directly by the county.

Which city, the largest on Maryland's Eastern Shore, is the seat of Wicomico County?

Salisbury had 33,050 residents at the 2020 census; its county is named for the Wicomico River, from Algonquian words for a place where houses are built.

Which Eastern Shore county, home to Washington College, has the smallest population of any county in Maryland?

Kent County counted just 19,198 residents at the 2020 census; its college, chartered in 1782, took George Washington's name with his consent, and he served on its board.

Montgomery County, Maryland, honours Richard Montgomery, a general killed in 1775 while attacking which Canadian city?

Quebec was where Montgomery fell on the last day of 1775, weeks after he had captured Montreal; Maryland named its new county for him the following year.

Which Southern Maryland county, the state's smallest by land area, is famous for its fossil-rich bayside cliffs?

Calvert County fills a peninsula between the bay and the Patuxent River, and its cliffs give up Miocene shark teeth, turtles and other fossils to collectors.

Which western Maryland county contains both the city of Cumberland and Frostburg State University?

Allegany County climbs steeply: Frostburg sits at nearly 2,100 feet, while Cumberland, the county seat only eight miles away, is at just 627 feet.

Which city, nicknamed the Hub City for the railroads that met there, is the seat of Washington County, Maryland?

Hagerstown was founded in 1762 by Jonathan Hager, who first named it Elizabethtown after his wife and is remembered as the father of Washington County.

Which county, the largest in Maryland by land area, shares its name with the city that serves as its seat?

Frederick County's namesake is uncertain: it was probably either Frederick, heir to King George II, or the sixth and last Baron Baltimore.

Which Choptank River city, sharing its name with an English university town, is the seat of Dorchester County?

Cambridge stands on land that was once part of a reservation granted to the Choptank people, whose name the river still carries.

Which Cecil County seat was once called the Gretna Green of the East for its quick weddings of eloping couples?

Elkton, then a town of about 3,300 people, issued 16,054 marriage licences in the year before Maryland's 48-hour waiting period took effect in 1938.

Which is the only county on Maryland's Eastern Shore that touches neither the Chesapeake Bay nor the Atlantic?

Caroline County takes its name from Lady Caroline Eden, who was the wife of Maryland's last colonial governor.

Which Maryland county, with Centreville as its seat, faces the state capital from the far side of the Chesapeake Bay?

Queen Anne's County was named in 1706 for the British monarch then on the throne, and it has 265 miles of waterfront.

Which town, the seat of Talbot County, was known as Talbot Court House before it took its present name?

Easton grew up around the county courthouse, and its neighbourhood called The Hill may be the oldest surviving free Black community in the country.

Which town, the seat of Somerset County, is home to the University of Maryland Eastern Shore?

Princess Anne, established in 1733, was named for a daughter of King George II, and the county it leads is the southernmost in the state.

Which Maryland county is home to Aberdeen Proving Ground, the US Army's oldest active proving ground, opened in 1917?

Harford County's largest municipality, Aberdeen, is where Cal Ripken Jr. grew up, and the Army post beside it was set up six months after America entered the First World War.

Which town, the seat of Charles County, was devastated by a powerful tornado in April 2002?

La Plata was struck by a fast-moving F4 tornado that injured 122 people and left most of its downtown heavily damaged or destroyed.

Carroll County, Maryland, is named for Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the last surviving signer of which document?

The Declaration of Independence had no longer-lived signer than Carroll, who died in 1832 at the age of 95, 56 years after adding his name.

Which spice maker, started in a Baltimore room and cellar in 1889, is headquartered in Hunt Valley, Maryland?

McCormick's founder was 25 when he began selling root beer, flavouring extracts and fruit syrup door to door; spices came seven years later, when he bought a spice company.