On Maryland’s Eastern Shore and in a handful of other ports around the country, there is a sailors’ tradition of burning your socks on the vernal equinox, the first day of Spring. If you have been wearing the same woolen stockings all winter, this may be a good time to commit them to the flames.
As ancient traditions go, this one is pretty new. According to Preservation Maryland, after a particularly snowy winter in 1978, Annapolitan Bob Tuner was anxious to shed his socks with the arrival of spring. He invited his colleagues to celebrate the end of winter by burning their socks after work, a symbolic goodbye to winter as the group of boat builders, sailors, and watermen intended to forgo wearing socks until the cold weather returned; and so a tradition was born.
If a science fiction writer wanted to create a really bizarre alien space creature, using an octopus as a model would not be a bad place to start. After all, an
While most icebergs are whiteish-blue, they can be a range of colors, including emerald green. Indeed, in Samuel Coleridge’s 
The disappearance of the Capesize bulk carrier 
During Women’s History Month it is a worthwhile remembering 
In February 1869, one hundred and fifty years ago, construction of the composite clipper ship 
Another container fire has claimed another ship. On Sunday, a fire broke out in a weather-deck container on the roll on/roll off container ship 
Recently, an official with the Trump administration testified repeatedly at a hearing of the House Natural Resources subcommittee that the firing of commercial air guns under water every 10 seconds over a period of months in search of oil and gas deposits would have next to no effect on endangered right whales. Right whales use echolocation to communicate, feed, mate and keep track of their babies.
Congratulations to Lt. Ronaqua Russell, the first African-American female aviator in the Coast Guard to receive the Air Medal. From the Coast Guard