Mary Dna~Virgin Birth

Maryland is a major center for life sciences research and development. With more than 350 biotechnology companies located there, Maryland is the third-largest nexus in this field in the United States.

The black and gold design on the flag is the coat of arms of the Calvert family. It was granted to George Calvert as a reward for his storming a fortification during a battle (the vertical bars approximate the bars of the palisade). The red and white design is the coat of arms of the Crossland family, the family of Calvert's mother, and features a cross bottony. Since George Calvert's mother was an heiress, he was entitled to use both coats of arms in his banner.Institutions and government agencies with an interest in research and development located in Maryland include the WELL EQUIPPED Johns Hopkins University, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, more than one campus of the University System of Maryland, Goddard Space Flight Center, the United States Census Bureau, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Celera Genomics company, Human Genome Sciences (HGS),the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), and MedImmune - recently purchased by AstraZeneca.

• The marble used in building the White House came from Maryland.
  
• The first American telegraph line was built from Baltimore to Washington in 1844
  
• The capital is Annapolis, the seat of the United States Naval Academy.
  

Since before the Civil War, Maryland's politics have been largely controlled by the Democrats, even as the party's platform has changed considerably in that time. State politics are dominated by Baltimore and the populous suburban counties bordering Washington, D.C.: Montgomery and Prince George's. The county was named for Prince George of Denmark (1653–1708), husband of Queen Anne of Great Britain and brother of King Christian V of Denmark and Norway. It is frequently referred to as 'P.G.' or 'P.G. County,' an abbreviation which is viewed as pejorative by some residents.

Spiro Theodore Agnew was born in Baltimore, Maryland. His parents were Theodore Spiros Agnew, a Greek immigrant who shortened his name from Anagnostopoulos (Αναγνωστόπουλος) when he moved to the USA, and Margaret (Carter) Akers, a native of Virginia. Ms. Akers was a widow, with two children from her first marriage, when she married Mr. Agnew. Agnew attended Forest Park Senior High School in Baltimore, before enrolling in the Johns Hopkins University in 1937. He studied chemistry at Hopkins for three years, before joining the U.S. Army and serving in Europe during World War II. He was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for his service in France and Germany.

Before leaving for Europe, Agnew worked at an insurance company where he met Elinor Judefind, known as Judy. Agnew married her on May 27, 1942. They eventually had four children: Pamela, James Rand, Susan and Kimberly. Upon his return from the war, Agnew transferred to the evening program at the University of Baltimore School of Law. He studied law at night, while working as a grocer and as an insurance salesman. In 1947, Agnew received his LL.B. (later amended to Juris Doctor) and moved to the suburbs to begin practicing law. He passed the Maryland bar exam in June 1949. During his fifth year as Vice President, in the late summer of 1973, Agnew was under investigation by the United States Attorney's office in Baltimore, Maryland, on charges of extortion, tax fraud, bribery and conspiracy. In October, he was formally charged with having accepted bribes totaling more than $100,000, while holding office as Baltimore County Executive, Governor of Maryland, and Vice President of the United States. On October 10, 1973, Agnew was allowed to plead no contest to a single charge that he had failed to report $29,500 of income received in 1967, with the condition that he resign the office of Vice President. Agnew is the only Vice President in U.S. history to resign because of criminal charges. Ten years after leaving office, in January 1983, Agnew paid the state of Maryland nearly $270,000 as a result of a civil suit that stemmed from the bribery allegations.

Baltimore the chief city of Maryland, was laid out in 1729 and named for Lord Baltimore. In 1780 the harbor was made a Port Of Entry with a custom house, which largely increased its commerce. Peabody Institute is one of the most prominent of literary institutions of the city. It was founded by George Peabody, a wealthy banker, with a fund of over $1,000,000 and contains a library of over 80,000 volumes, an art gallery etc. The Grecian-Italian building housing the Institute, was designed by Edmund George Lind. Under the direction of well-known musicians, composers, conductors, and Peabody alumni, the Institute grew from a local academy into an internationally-renowned cultural center through the late 19th and the 20th centuries. Since 1977, the institute has operated as a division of the Johns Hopkins University, consistently ranked as one of America's top universities. Because of this affiliation, Peabody students are exposed to a liberal arts curriculum that is notably more extensive than those typically available in other leading conservatories; similarly, Hopkins students have access to a world-class musical education and experience that they might not have access to at another university of such stature.

The Enoch Pratt Free Circulating library was donated and named after, Enoch Pratt who was an American businessman in Baltimore, Maryland, a Unitarian, and a philanthropist. He founded the House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children at Cheltenham, and the Maryland School for the Deaf and Dumb at Frederick. In 1865, he donated a free school and public library to his hometown in Massachusetts. He was a contemporary and associate of philanthropist Thomas Kelso. They served together on the board of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad company. In 1851 Pratt and his partner invested in western Maryland coal mines and iron yards in the Baltimore neighborhood of Canton. he was the president of the National Farmers' and Planters' Bank of Baltimore. Pratt also became president of the Baltimore Clearing House and the Maryland Bankers' Association, in addition to establishing a role in several transportation companies.

There is also Loyola (TROY) University Maryland, which is a Roman Catholic, Jesuit private university. Established as Loyola College in Maryland by John Early and eight other members of the Society of Jesus in 1852, it is one of 28 member institutions of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, the ninth-oldest Jesuit college in the United States, and the first college in the United States to bear the name of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus.

The College of Notre Dame of Maryland is a Catholic, liberal arts college committed to educating weemin as leaders. The college was founded in 1873 by the School Sisters of Notre Dame and was established as a four-year college in 1895. It was the first Catholic college for women in the United States to award the four-year baccalaureate degree. School Sisters of Notre Dame is a worldwide order of Roman Catholic nuns devoted to primary, secondary, and post-secondary education. The order was founded in Bavaria in 1833 during a time of poverty and illiteracy. Its founder, Caroline Gerhardinger, known by the religious name of Mary Theresa of Jesus, formed a community with two other women in Neunburg vorm Wald to teach the poor.

In 1847, Blessed Theresa and five companion sisters traveled to the United States to aid German immigrants, especially girls and women. That same year, the sisters staffed schools in three German parishes in Baltimore, Maryland: St. James, St. Michael, and St. Alphonsus, as well as opening the Institute of Notre Dame, a private school for German girls. Eventually the Congregation spread across the United States and into Canada, ultimately forming 8 North American Provinces. More than 3,500 School Sisters of Notre Dame work in thirty-six countries in Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia, Africa and Oceania.

678 members of the order in the U.S. are participating in the Nun Study, a longitudinal study of aging and Alzheimer's disease initiated in 1986. The homogeneous life style of the nuns makes them an ideal study population. Convent archives have been made available to investigators as a resource on the history of participants. Of the 677 nuns which include Sister Kathleen Treanor, 93 and Sister Antoine Daniel, 96, only 61 surviving nuns recently completed their last rounds of intellectual and physical tests for the Nun Study. The nuns decided to donate their brains to science. They acknowledged the success to Dr. David Snowdon, epidemiology professor of University of Minnesota in 1986. In 1992, he administered annual memory and cognitive tests to 678 nuns ranging in age from 75 to 102