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1904  -  Feb. 7, Sunday. Baltimore Great Fire. The fire burned for 30 hours,  destroyed 2,500 businesses and left 35,000 workers without jobs. A match or cigarette had been dropped in the Hurst Building. Soon the fire met combustible material and this 5-floor building was ablaze. A wind from the southwest blew embers as far north as Lexington Street. Later the wind rose to 30 mph. A train brought extra fire hoses from Washington which did not fit Baltimore hydrants. The fire spread south to Pratt Street, at the harbor; then turned east toward Charles St. Mayor McLane had an idea that dynamiting some buildings might create a firebreak.

 This strategy failed. Fire Crews came from as far as New York but were delayed by a derailment. By Monday morning the docks had burned along the harbor. Eventually a fire line was established along the Jones Falls. But the fire smoldered for weeks. Eighty-six blocks were in ruin. The financial loss was huge. Five firemen lost their lives.
 
1904 Mayor Robert M. McLane, Mayor of Baltimore, shoots himself (or was shot) to death in his home at 29 W. Preston Street. The death officially was ruled a suicide. The mayor had seemed depressed about the fire's destruction of his  city.  Yet he had just returned with his wife from a pleasant lunch engagement.  Some believe that the mayor's wife shot her husband to death. The young mayor (born 1867)  was a newlywed at the time of his death. He had married Mary Van Bibber on May l4, 1904, two scant weeks before the fatal shot was fired. The shooting occurred May 30, 1904.  Mayor McLane is buried in Greenmount Cemetery.  An ongoing Baltimore mystery.

1939-Armistead Gardens was constructed for people coming to Baltimore to work in war industries. Additions were built in 1941. Many street names are names of airplane parts, e.g. Left Wing Drive.

As a port city along the east coast, Baltimore was vulnerable. Baltimore practiced black outs and brown outs. Dark window shades had to be purchased. Suddenly margarine was taking the place of butter. People bought white chunks of margarine with a dot of red dye in the center, and worked the package with their hands until the dye was dispersed throughout, restoring of customary yellowish color. Small red and blue tokens had monetary value. In 1943 the government minted bluish zinc pennies.

1944 - July 4 - Old Orioles baseball park at Barclay and 29th Streets burned down.

Postwar - A time of change as Baltimore adjusts to postwar economy. Large numbers of African Americans migrated from the south in search of jobs and better living conditions.

1953- African-Americans in Baltimore have sit-ins at downtown lunch counters to integrate them. At the Read's drugstore counter at Howard and Lexington, Black people were given their cola drinks in paper cups. Other customers got glasses. The May Company department store had a luncheonette on Howard Street which it tried to keep pristine white. A sit-in occurred at this luncheonette. The 1950's were the heyday of the large downtown department stores: The May Company, Hochschild's, Hutzlers, Brager-Gutman's, Stewart's. Lexington Street at Howard was the scene.

1954 - Major League Baseball comes to Baltimore; the old St. Louis Browns become the Baltimore Orioles. The Orioles' record that first year was 54-100. Bob Turley was their fastballing ace pitcher. Don Larsen, who went on to fame with the Yankees in his World Series perfect game two years later, compiled a record of 3 wins, 21 loses for the O's in '54. Other players on the l954 roster: Clint Courtney, catcher; Eddie Waitkus, Bob Young, Billy Hunter, Vern Stephens, Cal Abrams, Chuck Deering. Jimmy Dykes was the manager.

1955- September. Schools integrate. Unlike the case in many of the Southern states, the integration itself was without violence. But afterward, nothing constructive happened. De facto segregation remained; white flight occurred;  Baltimore's schools struggled.

1963-"School Prayer" is removed.. Some years earlier, in Baltimore, Madalyn Murray (OHare), a social worker for the Baltimore City Dept. of Social Services, went out with a few friends for drinks. During the course of the evening, Madalyn, I'm told, came up with her course of action to "remove prayer" from schools. Madalyn, a divorcee, lived in a modest Northwood home at the time. She had two sons in the schools. She had two cats named Marx and Engel. The local court judge, J. Gilbert Pendergast, dismissed her original petition, but Madalyn and her lawyer Leonard Kerpelman ran the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court where they prevailed.

What did prayer mean to the public schools? I can only speak for my experience. I was a student in a Baltimore County high school the year of racial integration. One sad looking Black teenager appeared in my homeroom. Even though we had no classes in which this homeroom traveled as a group, the teacher, a Mrs. Bell--whom I do not remember ever being pleasant--told us to elect homeroom officers: president, vice-president, etc. etc. and chaplain! With no kind intentions in mind, the class immediately elected this unknown Black teenager to be chaplain. Mrs. Bell asked the boy to step into the hall and whirled on the class furiously, saying that if this was anyone's idea of a joke, they would pay for it. She demanded a new vote. Same result. The new student got up and attempted a bible reading. Because of discomfort or because of the pitiful school he might have come from, he could barely read. There was no more prayer in the homeroom that year!

1966 - George P. Mahoney campaigns for Governor on the motto "Your Home is Your Castle," which put in context of the times had anti-Black undertones. Mahoney lost the election. Republican Spiro Agnew is elected Governor, in one of his typical giant career leaps (from School Board to Baltimore County Executive to Governor of Maryland to Vice President of U.S. under Richard Nixon, to jail).

1968 - April 4. Riots erupted, first in Washington D.C. and a day later in Baltimore, following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. Shortly after the fires died out, Spiro Agnew, Governor, invited Black civic and religious leaders to a meeting. As usual Agnew put his foot in his mouth, criticizing militant Blacks as "circuit riding, Hanoi visiting, caterwauling, riot inciting, burn American down types of leaders." Large numbers of attendees walked out of the meeting.

1986 (May) Pride of Baltimore, the 137-foot clipper ship, sinks; 4 crew drown.

1987 Clarence (Du) Burns is first Black mayor; Kurt Schmoke, lst elected Black.

1989- March 29. The Baltimore Colts leave town in the middle of the night, moved by team owner Robert Irsay to Indianapolis. The team and all of its records, memorabilia and equipment sneaked out of town while Baltimoreans slept. People remain furious to this day.

1995 - July 3. Death of Charlie Eckman, sports announcer and regular on radio sports shows. Charlie was flamboyant, loud, brash, with a bigger than life personality. The old Baltimore News-American said that he was as Baltimore as beer and crab cakes. Charlie was a man-about-town and could often be found on the once vibrant corner of Charles and 25th Streets.

2000-March 17 - Joseph Palcynski  initiates a 97-hour police standoff, holding hostages. While this item could be on the "haunting murders" part of this site, it seems more of an archetypal Baltimore event. Technically the "action" was in the Bowley's Quarters neighborhood, east of the city line. Palzynski, an unemployed electrician, had a long history of domestic violence and prison. In 1992 he had generated a l6-hour police standoff in Idaho, so the Baltimore County police knew that ferreting out Palzynski  from the house where he was holed up would be no easy chore. He now had even less reason to give himself up since he had proceeded to kill 4 people within the month. (Their "crime" was harboring his estranged girlfriend).

During the incredible standoff, police had moved dozens of neighbors to a shelter. People were forbidden to enter the neighborhood. On March 21 two adult hostages doped Joe with Xanax and sneaked out a window, leaving behind their l2-year-old son. The media talked of little else. Finally the police charged in. Joe took 27 rounds and died at once. The underdog mentality of some people began to show as they questioned the police action. Other ramifications followed. A 48-year-old woman who had purchased Joe's weapons was packed off the prison and was also socked with a civil lawsuit from relatives of the murder victims.  The hostages who escaped filed a lawsuit against the police, claiming that they had been unprotected beforehand. This pair were ostracized for leaving behind the l2-year-old son. The boy did emerge physically unscathed.