Baltimore, Maryland

Downtown Baltimore.

Baltimore is the biggest city in the U.S. state of Maryland. In 2006 it had about 631,366 people living there[1]. It is not in any county, so it is called an independent city. It is next to the Chesapeake Bay and used to be an important port for trade by ships. There is still some shipping but the Inner Harbor is now mostly famous for shopping and restaurants, and also for the Baltimore Aquarium[2], which is one of the best in the United States. Other museums in Baltimore are the Walters Art Museum[3], the Baltimore Museum of Art[4], and the American Visionary Art Museum[5].

Baltimore is home to the Ravens[6] (football) and Orioles[7] (baseball), both professional sports teams. Its main newspaper is the Baltimore Sun[8]. There is a place for horse races in the city called Pimlico[9]. There are many colleges and universitys in Baltimore, like Johns Hopkins University[10], Goucher College[11], Loyola College[12], Maryland Institute College of Art[13], and Morgan State University[14].

The city was made in 1729 and is named after the British Lord Baltimore who started the colony of Maryland. The mayor of this city is Sheila Dixon. She is the first woman to be the mayor of Baltimore. Many governors of Maryland were mayor of Baltimore first. One famous thing that happened in Baltimore was in the War of 1812, when the British attacked the city and Francis Scott Key wrote a song about it called "The Star-Spangled Banner". It is now the national song of the United States.

Some famous people from Baltimore are the Supreme Court judge Thurgood Marshall, the poet and writer Edgar Allen Poe, the baseball player Babe Ruth, the singer Billie Holliday, and the movie director John Waters. Some famous neighborhoods are Fells Point, Canton, Little Italy, Federal Hill, Mount Vernon, Bolton Hill, Hampden, and Charles Village.

In 2008 the four most important people in the city government are African American women: the mayor Sheila Dixon, the city council president Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, the comptroller (treasurer) Joan Pratt, and the state attorney (lawyer) for Baltimore Patricia Coats Jessamy.

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