Maryland

The May 4, 1970 antiwar protest at Kent State University in Ohio, in which National Guard troops fired into a crowd of demonstrators protesting the Nixon Administration's invasion of Cambodia and shot four of them dead, was a traumatic event that burned itself into the American collective memory. A photo of a teenage girl crying out in shock over the body of one of the slain students became, for many, the iconic image that captured a frighteningly turbulent time.

But it's almost forgotten that the University of Maryland's flagship campus in College Park was rocked by a protest that was bigger and possibly more raucous than the one at Kent State.

In January 1943, with World War II raging, Major League Baseball commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis issued a mandate that teams must conduct spring training close to home rather than traveling South. The ruling sent the Washington Senators scrambling to find new digs, but they didn't have to look far.

The American Experience film The Forgotten Plague details the impact of Tuberculosis on American society. TB was a problem everywhere. But, the disease hit few places as hard as it hit Washington, D.C. which had infection rates “higher even than that of Baltimore, where congestion and the economic situation are notoriously unfavorable.” (Sorry, Baltimore, apparently you were the measuring stick for terrible public health in the 1930s.)

It has been called the greatest high school basketball game ever played... On January 30, 1965, DeMatha Catholic High School clashed with the aptly-named Power Memorial Academy out of New York City. Led by 7'1" center Lew Alcindor (who later became the all-time leading scorer in the history of the NBA as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), Power Memorial was riding a 71-game winning streak and had been tabbed as the mythical #1 high school team in the nation.

Coaches are always looking for an edge on the competition but former University of Maryland basketball boss, Charles “Lefty” Driesell may have been the best – or at least the most original. Case and point: October 15, 1971, the official first day of the college basketball season. At 12:03am – when presumably the competition was sleeping… or doing what college kids do in the wee hours of the morning – he blew the whistle to start his team’s first practice. In doing so, he unknowingly created a fad, which took off – first at Maryland and, soon, at other schools.

Today, it's common to see people wearing t-shirts emblazoned with Bob Marley's instantly recognizable likeness, and the reggae classics that he recorded with the Wailers are so iconic that they're used in TV commercials. But back on the afternoon of October 14, 1973, when the then-28-year-old singer with the dreadlocks and wispy beard and his band stepped out onto the stage at the U.S. Naval Academy's Halsey Field House, things were quite different. 

The sudden death of Maryland star Len Bias on June 19, 1986, just two days after the 1986 NBA draft, shocked a campus and the nation, sparking grief, reforms at the university, and a harsh national drug policy debate that still resonates today.

Elvis Presley made headlines when he showed up at the White House unannounced and offered his services to President Nixon to fight the war on drugs in 1970. It was an odd event, which led to an even odder photo. But the Elvis-Nixon meeting was memorable for another reason: It was one of only four public appearances that Elvis made in the Washington, D.C. area.

In 1966 the University of Maryland's Cole Field House hosted the NCAA Final Four where Texas Western’s five-black starters upset all-white Kentucky. It was a watershed victory that helped accelerate the integration of college basketball.

One of the big challenges to writing a history blog is finding good images. Well, things just got a lot easier with Getty's announcement that it is making up to 35 million images available for bloggers to embed in their sites for free. The company has created a new embed tool that allows images to be shared and includes proper photo credit information. 

In 1973,The Exorcist, was a box office smash. Set in D.C., the film chronicles a Roman Catholic priest's struggle to save a 12-year-old girl from demonic possession. But The Exorcist has another, even more unsettling connection to the Washington area. William Peter Blatty, who wrote both the screenplay and the bestselling 1971 novel from which it was derived, was inspired by an actual case in which a 14-year-old Prince George's County boy was purportedly was possessed by the devil.

We look back at the life and vision of Elizabeth Campbell, WETA's founder and a pillar in the Washington, D.C. area community. Thank you for everything, Mrs. Campbell. We still feel your impact today.