If Cupid strikes you in the heart today, you might decide to take a trip to a Las Vegas wedding chapel or your local courthouse for a quick wedding. If you wanted to get married in a hurry in the 1930s, however, there was only one place to go: Elkton, Maryland just inside the Delaware border.
Led Zeppelin's first live show in the DC area may have been at the Wheaton Youth Center — a nondescript gymnasium in a Maryland suburb on January 20, 1969, in front of 50 confused teens. But there are no photos, articles or a paper trail of any sort to prove it.
Surely this must be an urban legend. Or is it?
Local filmmaker Jeff Krulik has spent 5 years trying to find out if this concert ever really happened. The result of this investigation is his new film, Led Zeppelin Played Here. We caught up with Jeff after a recent screening to ask about this intriguing project.
So we beat on, boat against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
And with those beautiful words, one of the greatest American novels comes to a close. Most of you probably read The Great Gatsby at some point in school, but did you know that F. Scott Fitzgerald has a local connection?
Indeed he did -- and a somewhat controversial one at that!
Today marks the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773. Over 200 years after it happened, the incident remains one of the most popular images of the Revolutionary period. That’s no surprise. After all, there’s a certain romanticism to the story of costumed colonists dumping crates of valuable tea into Boston Harbor.
But, while the Boston protest remains the most famous demonstration against the British taxation measures, it was not the only one. There were protests throughout the colonies and one of the most dramatic played out in our own backyard — Annapolis, Maryland — in 1774.
Yarrow Mamout was the most prominent African American in early Washington. He was a Muslim, educated in West Africa to read and write in Arabic. He and a sister arrived in America from on a slave ship in 1752. After forty-five years as a slave of the Beall family of Maryland, Yarrow (his last name) gained his freedom and settled in Georgetown. In 1800, he acquired the property at what is now 3324 Dent Place and lived there the rest of his life.
The house on Yarrow Mamout’s old lot in Georgetown was scheduled for demolition in 2012, but efforts were made to save any artifacts from his occupancy as well as his mortal remains from the bulldozer.
On November 17, 1927 one of the fiercest storms our area has ever seen touched down near Old Town Alexandria. With winds estimated at 125 mph, it ripped through Alexandria, D.C. and Prince Georges County within minutes, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.
It's one of the eternal questions argued by classic rock aficionados — which of these virtuoso power trios could rock the hardest? Perhaps the only people qualified to make that call were those lucky enough to be at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Md. on the night of Sunday, May 25, 1969, when Led Zeppelin opened for The Who in one of the most epic double bills in rock history. It was a pairing of hall of fame live acts that would never be seen again on the same stage.
If you’re passing through Brookeville, Maryland these days the town might not seem too different from the other suburban stops along Georgia Avenue. But don’t be fooled. Brookeville has a unique claim to fame. For one day during the War of 1812, it was the capital of the United States.
But if a couple of residents would've had their way, it wouldn't have happened!
Amish horses and buggies in the Washington, D.C. Metro area? Yep. It's true. Over 200 Amish families live and work in St. Mary’s and Charles counties in Maryland, less than 40 miles from downtown D.C. The settlement, which is centered around the town of Charlotte Hall, dates to 1939 when seven families migrated to the area from Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania for the cheap Maryland land(!) and to escape pressure from the Pennsylvania state government.
