Today marks the first installment of a new series to Bmore Interested, called On This Day in Baltimore… From time to time we thought it would be fun to look at forgotten events that happened over the years in our city, making it what it has become today.
Courtesy of The Baltimore Sun Historical Records and Pratt Library
August 9, 1958 marked the final day of “the season,” an eight week contest in which children from all over the city joined in an annual contest run by Johns Hopkins to see who could catch the most fireflies. On clear evenings (apparently it was also a rainy summer that year as well), kids would run all over the Homewood campus with jars and nets, bagging as many blinking bugs as possible. They were paid 30 cents per hundred captured and managed to collect a grand total of 217,000 fireflies (worth $620 at the time, $5,012 in today's money). The lightning bugs went on to help with research and the children used their winnings to fund fun for their remaining weeks of summer.
