Maryland

In the wake of George Washington's death, Americans across the country sought to memorialize our first president. But one small town in Maryland has the distinction of completing the first Washington Monument.

Did you know that gender discrimination in education has only been illegal for just over 50 years? In 1972, Title IX transformed how we think about gender equality in education and required colleges and universities to follow new standards if they wanted to keep receiving federal funding. It was a sea change event, and it all started with Bernice Sandler at the University of Maryland.

In the 1840s, northern abolitionist Charles T. Torrey had had enough of intellectual debates and meetings, so he headed south and teamed up with Thomas Smallwood to free hundreds of slaves in the D.C. area. Following his arrest in 1844, Torrey was imprisoned in the Maryland Penitentiary where he would become a martyr for his cause.

A needless debate over honor in the House of Representatives sparked the only fatal duel between two congressmen in American history. The killing of Rep. Jonathan Cilley triggered outrage across America and anti-dueling legislation. But did it end the practice altogether?

In September 1978, Jimmy Carter brokered a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, which has lasted over 40 years. Over nearly two weeks of tense negotiations, each side threatened to walk away from the table. But Carter used a combination of diplomacy and personal appeals to bring them back.

Legend tells of a beast that flies over Middletown, Maryland looking for prey to drag back to its lair on Catoctin Mountain. The creature, a half-bird half-reptile, had “huge wings, a long pointed tail, occasionally a horn, one eye in the middle of its forehead and, strangest of all, octopuslike tentacles that trailed behind it like streamers and retracted like a cat’s claws.” It came to be known as the Snallygaster and supposedly, it had a taste for human flesh…and a particular group of people above all others.

"By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes!" Who is the mysterious man who visits Edgar Allan Poe's grave to leave a yearly offering of roses and cognac to the poet Baltimore claims as its own?

During the Great Depression, the Federal Writers Project commissioned several initiatives designed to aid thousands of struggling American writers and journalists. But perhaps their most interesting project is also one of their most important: a collection of oral histories known as the “Slave Narratives Project.” And within that collection, one narrative in particular stands out: the story of Rezin Williams.

Weeks after the bloodiest day of the American Civil War, a remarkably preserved human arm was allegedly discovered near the Antietam Battlefield. After several decades and a series of owners, the arm was anonymously donated to a Frederick, Maryland museum. The identity of the person who lost the arm remains a mystery, but cutting edge research into the arm has a lot to say about the experience of Civil War soldiers.

What was the first message telegraphed to the Capitol in 1844? If you answered "What hath God wrought?" you're wrong! Read about the long road to Samuel Morse's most famous telegraphed words, and the messages that preceded it.