January 1970
Social news: "Calvin Isaac, Robert Kenworthy, Mr. and Mrs. John Ward Rine and daughters Gail and Nancy, Mrs. Mark Hissey, Mrs. Ella Olnguez, Miss Sherry Olaguez and Miss Lucille Isaac were visitors on Sunday at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Ollie Miles.
"Congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Radcliffe of Burntwoods Road who celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary on Sunday, January 18. They were given a surprise reception by their daughter, Debbie.
"Mr. and Mrs. John Mullinix were visitors on Sunday afternoon at the home of Mr. and Mrs. John Dorcus.
"Mr. and Mrs. Clyde Seibert and Clark Linthicum were dinner guests on Sunday the home of Mr. and Mrs. Murat Seibert and family.
"Mrs. Harold Stromberg has been a patient at the Montgomery General Hospital has returned to her home. Visitors at the Stromberg home on Sunday were: Mr. and Mrs. Carville Howard, Mrs. Milford Howard, Mrs. Ridgely Jones, Mrs. Dora Grimes and Kenneth Cook."
January 1940
Displaced persons abroad
"Red Cross Making Contacts Abroad For Local People
"Since September 1, 1939, 213 persons living in Baltimore city and Baltimore and Howard counties have been in touch with the Baltimore chapter of the American Red Cross concerning friends and relatives abroad, the local office has announced. These inquiries have made it necessary for the Baltimore chapter to make inquiry with the following ten countries through the American Red Cross: Czechoslovakia, England, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Nigeria, Poland, Rumania and Switzerland.
"The American Red Cross, through the International Red Cross Committee office and the State Department is endeavoring to obtain as quickly as possible the information. When secured, it is relayed to the Baltimore chapter office. In making these inquiries, it is naturally necessary for some time to elapse because of the removal of persons from their original dwelling places. To date, 29 replies have been received by the Baltimore Chapter and this information has been relayed to inquirers.
"Red Cross volunteer workers in Howard county have made 97 warm woolen dresses for the relief of sufferers abroad, chapter officials declared."
Citizens were displaced from "their original dwelling places" as World War II was taking hold of Europe. Poland was invaded by the German military on Sept. 1, 1939. Hitler annexed Austria in 1938 and that same year, in an effort to appease Hitler, Britain's Prime Minister Neville Chamberlin signed the Munich Agreement, which gave Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland to Germany.
January 1915
Epic phone call
"Direct Telephone Line completed from New York To 'Frisco': The Inventor of the Telephone and His Associate Converse Across Continent
"Less than forty years ago, Alexander Graham Bell, standing in a little attic at No. 5 Exeter Place, Boston, sent through a crude telephone, his own invention, the first spoken words ever carried over a wire, and the words were heard and understood by hi associate Thomas A. Watson, who was at the receiver in an adjacent room. On that day, March 10th, 1876, the telephone was born, and the first message went over the only telephone line in the world — a line less than a hundred feet long.
"In New York on January 25th, 1915, the same voice was talking and in San Francisco, the same ear was listening, as on that spring day thirty-eight years ago, but under what different conditions! Then the struggling young inventor and his associate had just succeeded in producing the only telephone in the world and in talking over a few feet of wire. Ahead of them were years of ridicule for their invention, indifference to their plans and opposition to their efforts.
"On this other great day they saw their simple contrivance as part of a vast system joining together the country's greatest and most distant cities and service the users of 100,000,000 people. Not many men have been so great a fulfillment of their early ambitions, no other invention has ever taken so great a stride in so brief a time."