Baltimore's NFL teams, the Colts and Ravens have played in five league title games and won four of them.

The Baltimore Colts played in what is known as the "Greatest Game Ever Played," the NFL Championship Game of 1958 against the New York Giants. They repeated in 1959, with the title game played in Memorial Stadium, again against the Giants.

Who could forget the 1969 Super Bowl III heartbreak against the Jets and Joe Namath? Or Super Bowl V in 1971, when Jim O'Brien kicked the game-winning field goal against Dallas?

That brings us to 2001, when the Ravens won Super Bowl XXXV in that magical season.

I chose the picture of Johnny Unitas running in for the score in the 1959 NFL Championship Game because Unitas symbolizes the spirit of Baltimore football. This photo was taken by Joe DiPaola, who himself had the determination to become a photographer. He bought himself a camera while a copy boy at The Sun and taught himself how to take pictures. He proved capable and earned a spot on The Sun's photo staff.

Our Website has a page devoted to the Colts' 1958 "Greatest Game." The page has a link to a gallery of photos from that game, plus from last year's 50th reunion of that championship team.

And here's a link to more photos of our Colts, including shots from their two Super Bowl appearances.

Finally, here's the link to the gallery from the Ravens win in Super Bowl XXXV.

Posted by Paul McCardell at 2:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Winter snowstorm memories remain with us long after the last snowflake melts. We are entering that part of winter calendar when we get our biggest storms.

Baltimore has weathered several major storms, the biggest of all being the Presidents’ Day blizzard in 2003, when 28.2 inches fell between Feb. 15 and 18. The photo above is from an 1899 storm that dumped 21 inches on the city.

This link takes you to a gallery of photos from that storm, plus several others to blanket Baltimore over the past 100 years or so.

Also, here are some links to more information about some of the storms.

Baltimore Sun weather blogger Frank Roylance's post about mid-February storms.

The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration list of the biggest snowstorms on record for Baltimore and Washington, DC.

The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration article about Maryland Winters.

Posted by Paul McCardell at 7:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Chinese New Year begins January 26. This is year 4707 according to the Chinese calendar. The festival starts on the first day of the first lunar month of the year and each year is represented by one of 12 animals. This year's animal is the ox.

The Chinese have a long, proud history in this city. I have posted photos of past Chinese New Year celebrations and other scenes from Chinatown in Baltimore. The photo above was taken by Irving Phillips, a longtime Sun Staff Photographer and it ran in The Sun February 28, 1977. The caption reads:

"For the city's 6,000 member Chinese community, the Year of the Serpent officially began February 18, but most of the actual celebrating took place on two Sundays - February 13 and 27th. "That's the only day the Chinese have off,"explained Lillian Lee Kim, co-ordinator of the festivities. Park Avenue was closed off and the 300 block was jammed with spectators for the 1 p.m. start of a colorful parade and dragon dance. The event was sponsored by the Chinese Merchants Association."

Sun reporter Julie Scharper wrote a story last March that talks about recent efforts to revitalize Chinatown.

You can find out more about our local Chinese-American community from the University of Maryland School of Law's Baltimore Chinatown Project.

And if you're looking for something to do this weekend, here's a link to an event Sunday at the Walters Art Museum that looks at the traditional Lion Dance, which consecrates the Chinese New Year.

Posted by Paul McCardell at 5:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Andrew Wyeth, one of America's best loved and popular artists died on January 16th at the age of 91. The Baltimore Museum of Art held at least two major exhibits of his works.

The first one was titled "Andrew Wyeth - Temperas, Watercolors, Dry Brush Drawings 1938-1966." The exhibit included more than 200 of Wyeth's paintings and ran from December 11,1966 until January 29,1967, after being extended for a week.

The BMA again exhibited Wyeth between September 25,1996 and February 16,1997. That exhibit, titled "Andrew Wyeth - America's Painter," contained 50 paintings.

The photo above, which ran in The Sun on January 23, 1967, was taken by William Laforce Jr., a prize-winning photographer and one-time director of the photo department. The caption read:

"ONLY ONE WEEK LEFT -- Waiting sometimes as much as three one half hours, was made almost nice by yesterday's balmy weather and an estimated 600 persons per hour filed through Baltimore Museum's Andrew Wyeth exhibit. During this exhibit Baltimore expierienced three snow storms and it still attracted 130,000 people."

Here's a link to an appreciation of Wyeth that ran in The Sun on January 18.

You can read more about Andrew Wyeth on the Brandywine River Museum site.

Posted by Paul McCardell at 9:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

On Tuesday, January 20, the torch will be passed again as it has been since 1789. Inauguration Day is a new beginning, a renewal of democracy.

This link will take you to a gallery of more than 100 photos of inaugurations past, shot by Sun staff and wire services. Our inaugural photos date back to Franklin Roosevelt's first swearing in. But for the record, the first known inauguration photo was of James Buchanan on March 4, 1857.

I hope you will spend some time looking at the photos in our gallery, and that they will inspire new hope in the future, just as presidents have in their inaugural addresses. You can read past inaugural addresses at this link.

The photo above shows President Carter and his family as they walked the inaugural route. It was taken by Richard Childress who took many wonderful photos for the Sun.

Sun Washington Bureau writer Carl Leubsdorf described the event in his January 21, 1977, story:

“In a dramatic display of his hopes of bringing back to the people, President Carter broke with tradition yesterday and walked the entire inaugural parade route from the Capitol to the White house.

Despite brisk winds and chilly, subfreezing temperatures that offset a bright but weak January sun, the newly inaugurated 39th President appeared to be enjoying himself. So did the thousands who lined Pennsylvania Avenue to cheer him."

Posted by Paul McCardell at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

With President-elect Barack Obama stopping in Baltimore on his train journey to Washington, I was reminded of photo I discovered in our files years ago. That shot is of President Harry S Truman, whose train stopped in Baltimore for 15 minutes on his return from a 15-day transcontinental journey of 9,054 miles.

This photo was taken by Robert Kniesche, a former director of The Sun's photographic department. Among the crowd that day was my father with his speed graphic camera.

You can read more about President-elect Obama's Baltimore visit here.

Posted by Paul McCardell at 4:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

We’re lucky to have so many reminders of Poe around Baltimore. The Poe Home & Museum on Amity Street, the Westminster Church and graveyard, the Poe Room at the Pratt Library, and the Poe statue at the University of Baltimore Law School. There are also other institutions that hold his works.

We’re also lucky that photography was invented during Poe’s lifetime. While there are several Daguerreotypes that exist, The Sun has mostly photos of various commemorations at his grave at Westminster Burying Ground at Fayette and Greene streets, and the Poe Home and Museum. We also have copies of photos and engravings, and photographs of paintings of Poe that people have given us for stories over the years .

When you look at Poe you do get an eerie feeling because I think you connect his image to his works.

The photo posted above is what I believe was an unpublished photo of Baltimore poet Lizette Woodworth Reese paying tribute to Poe on his birthday in 1934. She likewise honored him on his centennial in 1909 with a poem titled, “Westminster Churchyard,” which can be found on the Edgar Allan Poe Society website.

This link takes you to a gallery of Poe-related photos from The Sun's archive.

And here are links to some local Poe events and to additional Poe stories and photos.

Posted by Paul McCardell at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was born January 15, 1929. While Thursday is the 80th anniversary of the birth of this champion of civil and human rights and non-violence, the official observance of the birthday comes Monday, January 19, on Martin Luther King Day.

Dr. King visited Baltimore several times and was scheduled to speak at Morgan State just days before his life was cut short. He canceled that visit so he could return to Memphis to support a strike by garbage workers.

The photo above is from his visit of October 31, 1964 taken by Baltimore Sun Photographer George Cook. This picture was published in The Evening Sun on October 31, 1964 with the caption

“GETTING OUT THE VOTE – The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King , civil rights leader and Nobel Prize winner, greets thousands of admirers on a motorcade tour up North Gay Street today.”

I do like this photo of Dr. King. You can see his broad smile as he greets thousands of admirers . This is the only photo The Sun has in its archives of the visit that day. Back then the newspaper’s library usually only received the photo that was published, instead of prints from all the frames shot on a particular assignment. I’m also sad to say that the negatives are long gone. The process was much more labor intensive then -- the photographer had to print each photo by hand, running it through the different chemical processes in the darkroom, unlike today when photographs are downloaded.

There was another photographer, Leonard Freed, who I think captured the mood and spirit of Martin Luther King’s baltimore visit, showing him reaching out and touching hands with the people. Mr. Freed did not work for The Sun. He was a prominent photojournalist who chronicled the civil-rights movement. He said, “photography is a visual language, ” and you can see it in his photos here.

You can also see more Sun photos of Dr. King’s Baltimore visits at this link.

Posted by Paul McCardell at 7:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

This is my first blog post so I thought I would start with the first photo published in The Baltimore Sun. That photo, which you can see above, ran in the paper on September 30, 1901. Before then, The Sun used pen-and-ink illustrations. The photo was a head shot of noted Chief Judge James McSherry of the Court of Appeals of Maryland. The accompanying story, which you can read at the end of this post, announced the start of the fall term on October 7.

The Sun didn’t announce about this technological event despite the significant changes it brought about in the newspaper. With each passing day there was an increasing number of photographs used in all sections of the paper. This also led to the creation of The Sun’s photographic department, which has been bringing picture stories to our readers ever since.

This blog will bring back some of those great photographs and stories and I hope will spark memories about events and people from Baltimore’s past. And I encourage you to share your memories with us in the comments following each post.

Here’s the item that ran in the September 30, 1901 Sun with Judge McSherry’s photo: “The fall term of the Court of Appeals of Maryland will begin Monday, October 7, one week from today. The docket for the term includes some 66 cases. No court of last resort in any State in the Union has a better record for prompt dispatch of business than the Maryland Court of Appeals, in which it is a rule never to permit appeals to go over from one term to another. At the end of each term, of which there are three every year -- January, April and October -- the docket is clear. This has notably been the case ever since Judge James McSherry, whose picture is printed in this issue of The Sun, was designated as the chief or presiding justice of the court. The proverbial delays of the law do not attach to the Court of Appeals of Maryland. Not only this with regard to the work of the judges, but the clerical force is so well organized that it must keep pace with the pace set by the court. The reports come out promptly and in a shape creditable in the highest degree.”

Posted by Paul McCardell at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (20)