January 18, 2019

Tomorrow, January 19, marks 210 years since the birth of American poet, short-story writer, and literary critic Edgar Allan Poe in 1809. Poe’s stormy personal life and his haunting poems and stories combined to make him one of the most famous figures in American literary history.

Edgar Allan Poe was born 210 years ago on Jan. 19, 1809. Credit: © Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Poe’s influence on literature was immense. His short story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) is considered the first modern detective story. His reviews of American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne mark him as the first significant theorist of the modern short story. His poetry and his stories of terror are among the most influential in modern literature. Writers as diverse as the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson and Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky have used Poe’s stories to launch their own fictional experiments.

Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site in Philadelphia includes the house where the American author lived in 1843 and 1844. Credit: National Park Service

Poe worked as an editor and contributor to several magazines. He unsuccessfully tried to found and edit his own magazine, which would have granted him financial security and artistic control in what he considered a hostile literary marketplace. His famous works include the short stories “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Gold Bug,” and “The Cask of Amontillado.” His poem “The Raven” is one of the most famous works in American literature.

Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He lived parts of his life there and in Richmond, Virginia; the United Kingdom; New York City; Philadelphia; and in Baltimore, Maryland, where he died on Oct. 3, 1849. The cause of his death was listed as “congestion of the brain,” though the precise circumstances of his death have never been fully explained.

April 30, 2015

Normally, an April baseball game does not generate much publicity. However, yesterday, the Baltimore Orioles and the Chicago White Sox played the first major league baseball game at an empty stadium. Violent protests had erupted in Baltimore on Monday, following the funeral of a young black man who received a deadly injury while in police custody. The protests became unmanageable for local police, and Maryland Governor Larry Hogan called in the National Guard, declaring a state of emergency in the city.

After postponing Monday’s and Tuesday’s games, baseball officials decided to play Wednesday’s game with the stadium closed to fans so as not to use police and national guard resources that are already stretched thin. The game had an official attendance of zero. However, not including the media members in the press box, there were actually 3 spectators—all baseball professionals—at the game. The Orioles had been averaging over 33,000 fans a game so far this season. According to Major League Baseball’s historian, the previous record for lowest attendance was 6 for a game played in 1882. Wednesday’s game was so quiet that the players down on the field and in the dugout and the media up in the press box could hear one another talking.

On the field, the Orioles scored 6 runs in the first inning and coasted to an 8-2 victory over the White Sox. The games postponed earlier this week are scheduled to be played as a double-header next month. The Orioles were scheduled to have games Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at home against the Tampa Bay Rays, but these games have been moved to the Rays’s home stadium in St. Petersburg, Florida.

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