History

Chloe A. Gudmundsson is a senior at Eastern Technical High School in Essex, and at the suggestion of her English teacher, she decided to research a paper on Maximilian Godefroy, the quirky architect who designed Baltimore's Battle Monument to commemorate the battle for the city in 1814. She also decided to submit her paper to the annual History Day competition this month on the Dundalk campus of the Community College of Baltimore County. The competition, which has been held for the last 12 years at Dundalk, features both city and Baltimore County public school students.

100 Years Ago 'Refined' burlesque An ad in the Times: "Gayety Theatre - A Big Event in Local Theatricals - An announcement will soon be made of the coming to Baltimore of one stellar aggregation of stars, that will surprise even the regular theatre patrons. In the last few years we have had several All Star Revivals, the Lambs and Friars Star Gambols, etc., but the first and only Burlesque Jubilee will be seen at the Gayety theatre, Baltimore, Md. "The signal honor was tendered Al Reeves, who will head this big organization as Mr. Reeves is considered without a peer in his line.

Mutter Museum may leave you shocked and horrified or amazed and fascinated. Either way, its collections of bones, bodies, body parts, plus tumors and other terrors, are unforgettable. The nation's finest and oldest medical museum - celebrating its 150th anniversary this month - bills itself as "disturbingly informative," and that is absolutely true. Specimens lining its wood-and-glass display cases reveal the effects of epidemics and diseases on the body, as well as an amazing array of human curiosities and anomalies.

From 1909 until 1939, marathons were run from Laurel to Washington or Baltimore. After the first few marathons, they not only became AAU-sanctioned, but the race was one of the qualifying marathons for the U.S. Olympic team. There was one constant in all those years: The starting line was in front of the Laurel Hotel on the corner of Main Street and Washington Pike (Route 1southbound). When the modern Olympic Games were started in 1896, the marathon was included. The following year, the Boston Marathon was inaugurated.

The Ed Reed era is officially over in Baltimore, though the safety will always be considered one of the greatest Ravens players of all-time -- and arguably the most entertaining, as my colleague Childs Walker wrote today. In this excellent piece on Reed , Childs explained why he can't help but feel a little sadness now that Reed has joined the Houston Texans, because, in his words, Reed didn't want to just be “ordinary great.” Reed did it his way, especially when he had the ball in his hands -- a common occurrence -- making him fun for us to cover.

Loyola men's basketball coach Jimmy Patsos minced no words when leading scorer Dylon Cormier was shut out in the first half Tuesday against Boston University. "I said 'Dylon, they're wearing your jersey [in the stands] and you have no points,'" Patsos said. "He said 'I got it.'" Did he ever. Cormier scored all 16 of his points in the last 11 minutes as the Greyhounds rallied past Boston University, 70-63, before an announced 984 at Reitz Arena in the first round of the CollegeInsider.com Tournament.

Edmondson guard Darius Walker learned from something that happened earlier this season, and that lesson helped the Red Storm win its first state title Saturday night. Walker snaked through traffic and made a driving left-handed bank shot as time expired to give No. 5 Edmondson a 56-54 victory over Wicomico in the Class 2A state title game at the University of Maryland's Comcast Center, the school's first championship in basketball. Fresh in Walker's mind was his choice at the end of regulation in the Baltimore City title game against No. 1 Dunbar last month.

The most improbable aspect of the Orioles winning 93 games last season was their ridiculous record in one-run games. The O's went 29-9 in those games, giving them the highest winning percentage in MLB history. Is that kind of excellence in tight games sustainable? Well, you're not going to like where this post is heading. History and common sense suggest that the Orioles are likely to fall back towards .500 in one-run games this season, but Blake Murphy of Beyond the Box Score spent some time crunching the numbers to confirm.

Bruce Reynolds nearly got away with it — and for a time he did. As the brains behind England's 1963 "Great Train Robbery," Reynolds netted some $7 million in small bills for himself and his confederates. Robbing stagecoaches and, later, trains became a fashionable and lucrative pursuit for such 19th-century outlaws as Jesse James, Bill Miner, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and it once had been part of life in the rugged Old West, where travelers boarding steam cars did so at their own risk.

A few years ago, the History Channel was best known to some as a punch line on HBO's “The Sopranos.” Remember mobster Tony Soprano sitting alone late at night in his New Jersey McMansion eating ice cream and watching World War II documentaries about Adolph Hitler and Winston Churchill? These days, no one is laughing at the History Channel - not with audiences like the 13.1 million viewers who tuned in last Sunday for the first two hours of “The Bible,” a 10-hour miniseries that runs through Easter Sunday.