Articles

It’s a casual Sunday in April 1934 and you’re looking for something to do. How about a hike in the great outdoors? Lucky for you, there’s a new hiking club in town — the Wanderbirds — and they are preparing for their very first hike!

No doubt you are familiar with D.C.’s most prominent tributes to history -- the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, possibly even that unique sculpture of Einstein lounging on Constitution Avenue. But have you ever heard of the Zero Milestone?

In the 1850s, Georgetown’s Fourth of July celebration was a neighborhood pageant of marching Sunday schools, bands, banners, barrels of lemonade, and speeches at Parrott’s Woods, now the site of Oak Hill Cemetery.

Women’s fashion is a complicated subject, but one doesn’t usually think of it as deadly. However, the fatal dance between health and beauty was a reality for Washington women wearing corsets in the 19^th century.

Even Washington D.C. couldn’t hold Harry Houdini, the original handcuff king. On New Years Day in 1906, the infamous Houdini broke out of what was said to be the strongest and toughest jail in the city.

Washington, D.C., has had its fair share of scandals, political pandemonium, and secret trysts over the years. But it’s not every day that a Congressman commits cold-blooded murder in broad daylight on a city street.

Understanding the history of local government in the District of Columbia is tricky business. The governance structure has changed several times since the city was founded in 1791 and, sometimes, these changes were quite dramatic... which brings us to the 1870s.

Here’s a fun piece of trivia: America’s most famous newspaper publisher, Joseph Pulitzer, than man who is often credited for rise of modern journalism, was married here in Washington on June 19, 1878.

On June 13, 1902, Mary Custis Lee was arrested on a streetcar in Alexandria after refusing to move from a seat reserved for Black passengers. Was she taking a principled stand against segregation? 

On August 18, 1967, the Doors played a D.C. area double-header: a 7:30pm show at the National Guard Armory in Annapolis, Maryland, and a late night show at the Alexandria Roller Rink Arena in Alexandria, Virginia. It was a homecoming of sorts for front man Jim Morrison but the night would end poorly. 

On July 23, 1942, Washingtonians packed Griffith Stadium to the gills for a special “Battle of Music” between African American jazz legend Louis Armstrong and white saxophonist Charlie Barnet. In segregated Washington of the 1940s, such an organized interracial competition was a big event and few people — especially in the black community that surrounded the stadium — wanted to miss the “musical fisticuffs.”

For decades Georgetown University students have plotted daring night raids on Healy Hall, removing the clock’s hands as a prank that spawned nicknamed crews, secret hideouts, and tall tales. Administration fines and alarms haven’t stopped the tradition. Every few years, it seems, the clock goes quiet and a new heist becomes campus legend.