137 years of Sparrows Point

Newsletter for June 24, 2024

As the cargo ship Dali finally heads out of Baltimore — and the weather finally cools off a bit after a great AFRAM weekend — we bring you a history of Sparrows Point, from its steelmaking heyday to its more recent role in the Key Bridge cleanup. Also, if you've used the city's 311 services in the past 35 years, your personal information could have been compromised. Get all the details below.

— Sameer, Technical.ly editor for Baltimore and DC

Researchers from a cybersecurity-focused news site in Lithuania discovered an unprotected City of Baltimore database that listed the personal information of people making 13.5 million city service requests going back to 1989. “This is one of the largest data leaks discovered by Cybernews,” researcher Aras Nazarovas told Technical.ly.

The database is no longer accessible, but the city hasn't responded to questions from us or from Cybernews about why it was out there and what precautions they're taking to ensure it doesn't happen again.

➡️ The breach reportedly included names, phone numbers and email addresses

The handling of debris from the Key Bridge collapse in Sparrows Point underscored just how much the area, southeast of the city limits near where the bridge crossed the Patapsco, matters to Baltimore and the country's history.

Our new story traces the community's highs and lows over more than a century, from its peak under Bethlehem Steel's manufacturing and shipyard prowess through the World Wars, industrial decline, lawsuits and its present-day use by the Tradepoint Atlantic project.

➡️ Read up on the Beast of the East's past, present and future

• Baltimore, grouped together with the DC metro area, ranked third for life sciences R&D talent and 11th for medtech talent in CBRE's new annual report on life sciences talent. [CBRE/Technical.ly]

• The Dali left Baltimore for the first time since it crashed into the Key Bridge. It's en route to Norfolk, Virginia. [Baltimore Sun]

• Under Armour agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit for $434 million. The company maintains its innocence of the allegations in the suit, which was initially filed in 2017 and accused the apparel giant of misleading shareholders during recently returned CEO Kevin Plank's first stint in the position. [Biz Journal]

• Ravens player Sean Ryan visited Greenmount Recreation Center today for a youth-focused event that also served as a groundbreaking for a new AI-focused computer lab. Tech companies Intel and NWN Carousel partnered on the lab, work on which begins this summer. [NWN Carousel]

• Angel St. Jean, CEO of The Equity Brain Trust — which, under its prior name, was one of Technical.ly's 2022 RealLIST Startups — was one of several Black female Reservoir Hill residents who recently critiqued federally funded plans to build an Amtrak tunnel that would run under the neighborhood. [Technical.ly / The 19th]

• Annapolis-based Xona Systems, which works on internet security alternatives to VPNs, raised an $18 million round. [Biz Journal]

• Johns Hopkins researchers put together a simulation to back their conclusion that an east-west Red Line transit option, like the one controversially scrapped by former Gov. Larry Hogan's denial of state funding, could boost job access throughout the city. [Johns Hopkins]