Eastern Market has been a place of social gathering in Capitol Hill since its construction in 1873. Despite many efforts to shutter the market and a devastating fire in 2007, the market endures as a Southeast institution.
It's pretty common for historical societies or universities to sponsor history conferences. They generally have budgets (albeit small ones) and staffs to put on events. But, the annual D.C. Baseball History Meeting is something different. Each February, almost all by himself, Mark Hornbaker creates a unique event for local baseball history enthusiasts.
On his own dime, Hornbaker brings different speakers — including former Washington Senators and Nationals players, authors and journalists — to town for a discussion of the history of the national pasttime in Washington. A packed room of 80 attendees come (for free!) to enjoy stories and share some of their own. We recently sat down with Mark to discuss this year's meeting, how he got interested in D.C. baseball history, and how he pulls off the event.
The Butt-Millet Memorial Fountain honors Major Archibald Butt and artist Francis Millet, two men who died together on the ship of dreams. Close friends and housemates in Washington, D.C., these men would be mourned by most of Washington, including President William Howard Taft.
On October 4, 1989, a primate quarantine unit in Reston received a shipment of 100 monkeys from a Philippine facility. By November, nearly one-third of the animals had died – a much higher percentage than normal – of mysterious causes. Dan Dalgard, the consulting veterinarian of the unit, was alarmed and contacted the US Army Medical Research Institute (USAMRIID). Dalgard talked to Peter Jahrling, a virologist at USAMRIID, who told him to send a few samples of the dead monkeys. Neither one of them was prepared for what they found.
At 10:30 a.m. on October 25, 1972, two workers stepped out of a C&P Telephone van and into the Crystal City branch of the Arlington Trust Company. The bank’s phones had been down for nearly half an hour and manager Henry “Bud” Candee was eager to resume normal business. He met the repairmen in the lobby and led them to a service panel at the back of the bank. Unbeknownst to Candee, the technicians were frauds. They stole the uniforms and the van and caused the phone outage by climbing down a nearby manhole and severing the bank’s phone lines. But what was meant to be a relatively simple robbery, turned out to be the first act in one of the most dramatic — and bizarre — crime sprees in U.S. history.
On March 3, 1913, one day before the inauguration of President Woodrow Wilson, 5,000 women marched on Pennsylvania Avenue to demand women's suffrage. Though their parade was met with violence from the crowd, the suffragettes kept marching toward the vote.
As we’ve discussed previously on this blog, President Abraham Lincoln wasn’t the only victim when he was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865. There were several others who were victimized that night – some hauntingly so. What sometimes gets lost, though, is the impact of the assassination on the theater itself.
Deep in the basement of the U.S. Capitol Building, used to stand six bathtubs, hand-carved from Italian Carrara marble. These tubs were installed initially as a practical bathing option for Congressmen living in D.C. boarding houses with primitive bathing facilities. Although mostly forgotten by the 1890s once the new Washington Aqueduct provided running water to most homes in the area, these exquisite tubs were once a popular attraction for Congressmen and their visitors alike.
Is it possible for a man to play Major League Baseball with one leg? Not for most men, but most men aren't Bert Shepard who played for the Washington Senators in 1945 after losing his right leg in World War II.
Sarah Pryor (1830-1912), the daughter of a wealthy Virginian family, lived in Washington from 1859 until the outbreak of the Civil War. In her memoirs written in 1909, she recounts the grand society of antebellum D.C. and the shift to war tensions.
At first sight, the old wrought iron fence on the corner of P and 28th streets appears indistinct from the many other railings that skirt Georgetown’s redbrick sidewalks. Upon closer inspection, however, it’s clear this fence is unique. Cracks in some of the pickets reveal that although each upright is hollow, the walls of the pickets are far thicker than is structurally necessary for a perimeter fence. Plus, a number of the pickets feature small nubs just below the attached spikes, which, even to the untrained eye, resemble gun sights. While the Gun Barrel Fence has long been a Georgetown landmark, the fence’s origins remain shrouded in mystery and misconception. Let’s bust some myths, shall we?
Dumbarton Bridge is nestled between Georgetown and Dupont Circle. Bronze Buffalo guard the approaches and 56 identical sculptures of a Native American man line the base of the bridge’s second tier of arches. Chosen to provide a distinctly “American character,” these design features are reflective of an artistic movement that idealized European settlement and western expansion. Ironically, the man depicted by the replicate busts spent his entire life fighting European settlement.
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