Each year, the United States Marine Corps Reserve puts on a toy drive to collect and distribute toys to less fortunate children in local communities. Since its founding in 1947, the annual Toys for Tots toy drive has distributed more than 500 million toys to children across the United States. In 2015, the Fire Museum of Maryland joined the long list of organizations that help in this effort, becoming a toy drop-off location. We are pleased to do so again this year, and will even be hosting several Marines on Saturday, November 26, in connection with our annual visit from Santa. We would like to encourage all of our followers, friends, readers, Museum members, and everyone else to consider bu
Did you know that many companies, including Microsoft, Verizon, General Electric, and many others match donations (view more examples at https://doublethedonation.com/matching-grant-resources/list-matching-gifts-companies/) from employees to nonprofits? Many companies offer matching gift programs in which they match donations from their employees to nonprofits of the employees’ choosing. We hope you choo-choo-choose us... What this means is that your donation can go twice as far! From now until December 13th, 2016, you can go to https://doublethedonation.com/giving-tuesday/ to find out if your company will match your donation. Not only will we get a donation - without which we could not oper
Each year around Halloween, the Fire Museum of Maryland hosts a special evening event called “Lantern Night.” We turn down most of the lighting, and supplement it with period lamps and lanterns. One of our board members spends several hours wiring up various colored lights inside the cabs and under the hoods of the apparatus, creating some very interesting effects. In addition to the lights, there are also numerous staff and volunteers in period costume who talk with the public and help to liven up the museum atmosphere for the evening. In past years, we have had 18th and 19th century townsfolk, buffalo soldiers (seen above), American Revolutionary War soldiers, firefighters (no surprise the
