Charles County, MD Trivia Quiz

Answer: 1658

On April 13, 1658, the governor's council established Charles County, Maryland's fifth county. It is named in honor of Charles Calvert.

Answer: La Plata

La Plata wasn't always the county seat; Port Tobacco was. When Port Tobacco Creek became unnavigable, that town's usefulness as a port ended.

Answer: 8

Three of bordering counties are Maryland counties (Prince George's, Calvert, & St. Mary's); five are Virginia counties (Westmoreland, King George, Stafford, Prince William, and Fairfax).

Answer: Good Charlotte

The band's name is from the title "Good Charlotte: The Girls of Good Day Orphanage", a book by Carol Beach York.

Answer: La Plata

The tornado damaged the La Plata area the most, killing four people. A previous F4 tornado 76 years earlier killed 17 people, including 14 people at the town's elementary school.

Answer: Dr Samuel Mudd

There's an apocryphal story that the expression "his name is mud" derives from Dr. Samuel Mudd, who unwisely took pity on Abraham Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth. Mudd treated the broken ankle Booth suffered in his leap to the stage of Ford's Theater; for his trouble, he was sentenced to life in a federal prison. But Mudd isn't being commemorated in "his name is mud." The phrase first appeared in print in 1820, 45 years before Lincoln's assassination.

Answer: 5

Adjacent St. Mary's County extends to the southeast of Charles County. Also, on the Delmarva Peninsula, the counties of Dorchester, Worcester, Wicomico, and Somerset extend to latitudes further south that the southern-most point of Charles County, Cobb Island.

Answer: True

RADM Robert Peary, Sr. (b. Philadelphia, PA) was initially given the singular honor of being the first man to reach the North Pole. But it was actually his long-time colleague and navigator, Matthew Henson (b. Nanjemoy, MD), who Peary sent ahead as a scout when they were very close to the pole. Henson overshot the North Pole, then traced his steps back, where he saw that his scout party's tracks had indeed made it to the pole.

Henson, an African-American, was victim of the racism of the early 20th century, and not given credit for being party of the team that had reached the North Pole (much less being the first one actually there).

Finally, in 1944 Congress awarded Henson a silver medal, identical to that which was awarded to Peary years before. Additionally, Presidents Truman and Eisenhower honored him.

Answer: 0

No Eisenhower Interstate System highways serve Charles County. The closest access to an Interstate highway is I-95, about 13 miles north of Charles County, which is reached by taking MD Rt. 5 north out of Charles County (into Prince George's County) and past Andrews Air Force Base.

Answer: 4

It's within 150 miles of these four US state capitals: Annapolis, MD (49 miles), Richmond, VA (87 miles), Dover, DE (111 miles), and Harrisburg, PA (143 miles).