DELMARVA - Happy New Year, Delmarva! With the start of 2025, WBOC invites you to look back on the ten most popular online stories of the past year. Based on pageviews on WBOC.com, these were the most widely-read stories on our website in 2024.
To see what other stories were popular online in 2024, check out our Year In Review by quarter:
10. Ocean City Fireworks Frustration
4th of July Celebrations didn’t go as planned in Ocean City when an “unexpected high tide” delayed the downtown fireworks show. Fireworks set up on the beach were inundated with water, pushing the scheduled display back. Luckily, the delay was only half an hour and the display was rescheduled to 10 p.m. The Northside Park fireworks show was unaffected.
The Town of Ridgely was thrown into confusion after their entire police force was abruptly placed on leave in March 2024. Neighbors and business owners were left stunned and with concerns of being left unprotected without the police department, but the Caroline County Sheriff’s Office assured residents they were committed to maintaining law enforcement in Ridgely.
An fire early in the year saw a Sussex County community’s clubhouse destroyed. On January 12, 2024, multiple firefighting agencies responded to the clubhouse in the Plantations community for a structural fire. One firefighter was treated for heat exhaustion, but no other injuries were reported. The damage to the clubhouse was estimated to be a total loss at $275,000.
7. Ocean Gateway Motorcycle Crash
Bike Week in Ocean City stories held numerous top spots on the headline list in September, but none so much as a serious crash involving two motorcycles and a truck on Ocean Gateway on September 6, just before Bikefest kicked off. The crash required aviation response to take two victims to trauma centers, while a third victim was also transported to a local hospital.
The arrest of an Anne Arundel County man over a month after a June 2024 shooting incident on the Bay Bridge became July’s top headline. On June 8, police say 41-year-old Melvin Clark, of Severn, shot multiple rounds at another car from his Jeep on the westbound span of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Clark then stopped and exited his vehicle, pointing the gun at the other driver, according to investigators. Police announced Clark’s arrest on July 17.
Ocean City’s newest music festival had the Peninsula buzzing with the announcement of Boardwalk Rock’s inaugural lineup. Slated for May 2025, Boardwalk Rock joins Oceans Calling and Country Calling as C3 Presents’ third music event in the coastal resort town. Boardwalk Walk’s lineup includes well-known rock acts such as Def Leppard, Nickelback, Motley Crue, Alice Cooper, and 3 Doors Down
4. Fatal Tram Collision in Ocean City
Tragedy struck over the summer when a two-year-old child was hit and killed by one of Ocean City’s boardwalk trams in August. The toddler’s death was widely mourned, with a memorial of stuffed animals erected on the boardwalk in the wake of his loss. Ocean City officials immediately ceased all tram operations and would later announce they would be out of operation for the remainder of 2024.
One of WBOC’s first stories of 2024 was also one of our most popular. On January 4, we reported on an over-14-foot wooden fragment that had washed up on the sands of Assateague State Park. The Maryland Historical Trust said the relic was believed to be from a ship dating back to the mid to late 1800s. Logged in the Assateague State Park’s Shipwreck Tagging Archaeological Management Program, the artifact was left to wash back into the sea and be reburied in the sand.
2. Chesapeake Bay Ferry Service
In August, Maryland officials unveiled the newest plans to introduce a ferry service spanning the Chesapeake Bay and further linking the Eastern Shore to the mainland. Possible stops for the proposed passenger ferries include Crisfield, Easton, Oxford, St. Michaels, and Kent Narrows. The ferry service plan, still in its infancy stages, is hoped to bring new tourism opportunities to both the Western and Eastern Shores and offer scenic cruises across the Chesapeake - a hope that clearly resonated with WBOC viewers and readers on Delmarva.
With an immense amount of pageviews in 2024, the official renaming of the Northern Snakehead to the Chesapeake Channa in Maryland was by far WBOC’s most read story of the year. The name change became official in Maryland on October 1 under a new Maryland law. Officials hope the name change will make the fish sound more appetizing and encourage more local restaurants to offer it and thus help combat the invasive species’ spread in Maryland waterways. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources began changing their rhetoric about the fish from Northern Snakehead to Chesapeake Channa and as of today, January 1, 2025, would no longer be using the old reptilian-sounding moniker.
