#jean stapleton
In 1987, just shy of her 85th birthday, Baltimore heroine, baseball enthusiast and volunteer “Aunt” Mary Dobkin passed away. Crippled by frostbite at a young age, Aunt Mary was a pioneer in working with children and developing baseball teams around the city to create safe havens for the children to stay out of trouble. Her activism was brought to national attention in 1979 when Jean Stapleton starred in the movie about her life entitled “Aunt Mary.” (Irving H. Phillips Jr., Baltimore Sun photo, 1979)
1762: Ann Franklin became the first female editor of an American newspaper, the Newport, R.I., Mercury.
1787: Inventor John Fitch demonstrated his steamboat on the Delaware River to delegates of the Continental Congress.
1902: President Theodore Roosevelt became the first U.S. chief executive to ride in an automobile, in Hartford, Conn.
1911: It was announced in Paris that Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” had been stolen from the Louvre Museum the night before. (The painting turned up two years later, in Italy.)
Compiled by Carly Heideger and Paul McCardell.
