Readers: Think you know your Baltimore? Try answering our weekly trivia question. Some weeks will be ridiculously easy, some weeks a bit more challenging. Put your best guess in the “answer” field and hit “submit.” Or comment on Instagram: @retrobaltimore. If you’d like to be recognized for a correct...
Baltimoreans, it seems, were serious about their Valentine’s Day cards back in the 1890s — serious enough to spend as much as a third of their weekly salary on one. In an “I Remember...” column that ran in The Sun of Feb. 12, 1956 (just two days before Valentine’s Day), August M. Roth recalled...
The Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 is one of those city tales in which the reality is greater than the myth. The blaze began innocently enough, Sunday morning, Feb. 7, 1904, at the John E. Hurst warehouse, a structure that stood on the site of what is now the Baltimore Arena, at Liberty near Baltimore...
Baltimore and the surrounding area sure has changed a lot in its centuries-long history. But many traditions and landmarks from decades ago are still around today, give or take a few variations.More
Readers: Think you know your Baltimore? Try answering our weekly trivia question. Some weeks will be ridiculously easy, some weeks a bit more challenging. Here’s last week’s trivia: QUESTION: MLB Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson played one season for the Orioles in 1976, but he also played on an amateur...
Sometimes it pays to be short, even for a building. The 1901 Alex. Brown & Sons building at 135 East Baltimore Street was at the center of the conflagration that erupted in downtown Baltimore on February 7, 1904. Despite temperatures estimated to be 2,500 degrees at the southwest corner of Baltimore...
Readers: Think you know your Baltimore? Try answering our weekly trivia question. Some weeks will be ridiculously easy, some weeks a bit more challenging. Put your best guess in the “answer” field and hit “submit.” Or comment on Instagram: @retrobaltimore. If you’d like to be recognized for a correct...
Bowie Race Course seldom bowed to the elements. In its 28 years of winter racing, until the track closed in 1985, hard-core (and sometimes frost-bitten) railbirds braved snow, sleet and hail to bet on the nags that ran at the stark, no-frills oval. Jockeys steered their mounts around 4-foot snowbanks...
It’s Friday in Turner Station, which means Speed’s Barber and Beauty Shop on Main Street is packed and tales of the good old days are flowing as freely as the gray trimmings from Rudy Dews’ head. Dews, 68, grew up in this historically African-American neighborhood south of Dundalk. He recalls a...
Readers: Think you know your Baltimore? Try answering our weekly trivia question. Some weeks will be ridiculously easy, some weeks a bit more challenging. Here’s last week’s trivia: QUESTION: Beginning in 1919, Abe Sherman owned a Baltimore newsstand (and later kiosk), which sold numerous domestic...
Diners walked up a flight of steps to reach Mee Jun Low, the Chinese restaurant whose regular patrons loved its seedy bohemian atmosphere and its affordable prices. Its fame crested in the 1960s and early 1970s when lines formed outside the door at 219 W. Mulberry St., above the Brass Towne antiques...
It was a hot summer day in May 1827, and Johann Maelzel’s robot exhibition was not going well. Crowds had gathered inside Baltimore’s Fountain Inn on Light Street to see the star of the show, a European chess-playing robot (or “automaton,” in the language of the era) that had impressed the likes...
Readers: Think you know your Baltimore? Try answering our weekly trivia question. Some weeks will be ridiculously easy, some weeks a bit more challenging. Here’s last week’s trivia: QUESTION: There have only been two Republican governors in Maryland elected to two terms. Larry Hogan was the second....
Shelley Howell has undertaken a brave mission. She has written a 107-page book that revisits the mostly closed Baltimore restaurants of the past 50 years. She includes recipes and suggests that home cooks could duplicate the storied dishes of another time. “I can’t be the only one who misses these...
Readers: Think you know your Baltimore? Try answering our weekly trivia question. Some weeks will be ridiculously easy, some weeks a bit more challenging. Here’s last week’s trivia: QUESTION: World TeamTennis, founded in 1973, featured 16 teams, including the Philadelphia Freedoms, the Detroit...
In early 1979, The Evening Sun ran a full-page ad announcing a new columnist lineup, including a promised thrice-weekly offering from a puppy-faced young reporter by the name of Dan Rodricks. “Dan Rodricks will slice bits and pieces of Baltimore and serve them up in a reporter’s stew. The column...
In Super Bowl V, Baltimore Colts defensive end Roy Hilton played the game of his life: four tackles, two sacks and a fearsome fourth-quarter rush of the Dallas Cowboys quarterback that forced a hurried pass, a Colts interception and the tying touchdown. After the game, celebrating a 16-13 victory...
Readers: Think you know your Baltimore? Try answering our weekly trivia question. Some weeks will be ridiculously easy, some weeks a bit more challenging. Here’s last week’s trivia: QUESTION: What presidential candidate, who would end up winning the election, delivered a campaign speech on the...
Thousands of Marylanders have died from opioid overdoses in recent years, with a surge in deaths from fentanyl. But our present-day opiate epidemic has a Victorian precursor. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, hundreds, if not thousands, of Marylanders died by overdosing on laudanum, a mixture...