Did you know …
✽ Maryland was named after Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of King Charles I of England. Annapolis is named after Queen Anne, making Maryland the only state named after a woman whose capital is also named in honor of a woman.
✽ All of Maryland’s lakes are manmade.
✽ Annapolis served as the U.S. capital from November of 1783 to August of 1784. It was the nation’s first peacetime capital.
✽ A resident of the Garrett County town of Accident (population 338) is called an “Accidental.”
✽ Maryland has more than 2,000 miles of shoreline.
✽ The state feline is the calico cat.
✽ The Point Lookout Lighthouse is considered by some to be the most haunted site in Maryland. Built in 1830 and located in the St. Mary’s County community of Scotland, the lighthouse reportedly has experienced numerous tragedies, deaths and paranormal sightings.
✽ The National Fire Academy is located in Emmitsburg. The campus is also the home of the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial.
✽ Maryland is the only state with an official state motto in Italian — “Fatti Maschi, Parole Femine,” officially translated as “Strong Deeds, Gentle Words.”
✽ The first umbrella factory in the United States was built in Baltimore in 1828.
✽ Havre de Grace is known as “the decoy capital of the world” and home of the Havre de Grace Decoy Museum.
✽ The Appalachian Trail passes through 41 miles of Maryland wilderness.
✽ The National Electronics Museum is located in Hunt Valley.
✽ Gathland State Park in Washington and Frederick counties is the home of the National War Correspondents Memorial, reportedly the only monument in the world dedicated to the memory of journalists killed in battle.
✽ The official state insect is the Baltimore Checkerspot Butterfly.
✽ Acclaimed American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald is buried in St. Mary’s Cemetery in Rockville.
✽ The nation’s first dental school, the University of Maryland School of Dentistry, was established in 1840.
✽ Maryland’s official state sport is jousting. Lacrosse was named the second official state sport in 2004.
✽ The nation’s first recorded manned balloon ascent took place in Baltimore in 1784.
✽ The National Lacrosse Hall of Fame and Museum is located in the northern Baltimore County community of Sparks.
✽ Walking is Maryland’s official state exercise.
✽ During the Civil War, Hagerstown was held ransom by the Confederate army. In July of 1864, Brig. Gen. John “Tiger John” McCausland Jr. and his troops threatened to torch the town unless residents paid a sum of $20,000, as well as provided 1,500 suits for the troops. The townsfolk reluctantly paid the ransom, and the Rebels marched onwards.
✽ The oldest continuously operating community theater in the U.S. is Vagabond Players in Fells Point.
✽ No, Maryland’s official state beverage is not Natty Boh but … milk. The Orange Crush was designated the official state cocktail last April.
✽ The Allegany County town of Zihlman is named after Frederick Nicholas Zihlman, a local businessman and congressman who represented Maryland’s 6th District from 1917 to 1931. Zihlman (population 362) is near Frostburg and part of Maryland’s Coal Heritage Trail.
✽ Famous for her iconic roles on “Maude” and “The Golden Girls,” the late actress Bea Arthur partially grew up in the Eastern Shore town of Cambridge. The New York-born actress — the daughter of Jewish immigrants whose original name was Bernice Frankel — served in the U.S. Marine Corps Women’s Reserve during World War II and rose to the rank of staff sergeant.
✽ The Garrett County seat of Oakland is considered to be the snowiest place in Maryland.
✽ The Ouija board was first patented in Maryland by Baltimore attorney and inventor Elijah Bond. Bond is buried in Baltimore’s Green Mount Cemetery beneath a customized headstone resembling a Ouija board.
✽ Established in 1933, the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge near Cambridge is a critical habitat for migratory birds on the north-south Atlantic Flyway.
✽ Baseball Hall of Famer Richard William “Rube” Marquard is buried in Baltimore Hebrew Congregation’s cemetery on Belair Road. Marquard was not Jewish but married into a prominent Jewish Baltimore family. He is buried next to his third wife, Jeannette “Jane” Hecht Guggenheimer Marquard.
✽ Around 1845, Baltimore-based drum maker and musical instrument dealer William Boucher became the first commercial manufacturer of banjos.
✽ In 1902, Maryland became the first state to enact workers’ compensation legislation.
✽ John Denver’s 1971 classic “Take Me Home, Country Roads” was written not in West Virginia but in Montgomery County, near Gaithersburg.
✽ David “The Hoff” Hasselhoff, star of TV’s “Knight Rider” and “Baywatch,” is a Baltimore native.
✽ The lowest point in Maryland is a depression in Queen Anne’s County called Bloody Point Hole, which is 174 feet below sea level. The state’s highest point is Hoye-Crest, on Backbone Mountain in Garrett County.
✽ The American flag has flown continuously over the monument of Francis Scott Key’s birthplace in the Carroll County community of Keymar since May 30, 1849.
✽ Fred Gwynne, the New York-born actor best known for his endearing portrayal of Herman Munster on the “The Munsters” TV show, is buried in an unmarked grave in Carroll County, near Finksburg.
✽ The first American-born canonized saint, Elizabeth Ann Seton, lived in Maryland from 1809 until her death in 1821. She is buried in Emmitsburg.
✽ Baltimore was the birthplace of abolitionist, suffragette, poet and temperance advocate Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, one of the first African American women to be published in the U.S.
✽ The Caroline County town of Denton was originally known as Eden Town, named after Sir Robert Eden, the last royal governor of Maryland. The name was eventually shortened to Denton and the town was incorporated in 1802.
✽ One of the world’s most respected guitar and amplifier manufacturers, PRS, is based in the Queen Anne’s County community of Stevensville. It was founded in Annapolis in 1985 by Bethesda-born luthier Paul Reed Smith. Among the famous guitarists who play PRS products are Carlos Santana, John Mayer and Al Di Meola.
✽ The 1999 horror cult classic “The Blair Witch Project” was filmed in the historic Frederick County village of of Burkittsville and in Seneca Creek State Park in Montgomery County.
✽ Elkton, the Cecil County seat, was once known as the “Marriage Capital of the East Coast.”
✽ In the early 20th century, Ocean City billed itself as “the Ladies Resort to the Ocean” because of its high volume of women entrepreneurs and hoteliers.
✽ Allegany County’s B’er Chayim Temple is the oldest building in continuous use as a synagogue in Maryland. The shul, at 107 W. Union Street in the heart of Cumberland, was completed in 1866.
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