Washington, D.C.

As the presidential election of 1828 approached, the nation’s emotions were running high. Andrew Jackson, the former Governor of Tennessee, was to challenge incumbent president John Quincy Adams. This was a partial rematch of the controversial four-way contest of 1824. Jackson won the most popular and electoral votes, but because no candidate won a majority, the election went to the House of Representatives, who chose second-place finisher John Quincy Adams. Jackson and his supporters were furious. Calling it the “Corrupt Bargain,” Jackson’s supporters accused fourth-place candidate Henry Clay of selling his supporters to Adams for the job of Secretary of State. This set the stage for the most vicious campaign ever seen at that point in American history.

When Thomas Jefferson took office in 1801, he decided he was going to do away with all the courtly nonsense of his predecessors, George Washington and John Adams. No longer would there be rules and regulations dictating behavior in social situations; not a single whiff of pomp or circumstance would be found in his administration. It was a rude awakening for visiting dignitaries including British minister Anthony Merry.

On August 4, 1976 cowboys from the American Southwest section of the Smithsonian’s annual Festival of American Folklife were in the middle of demonstrating a calf roping technique when a 400-pound bull calf "made him a hole" in the corral fence and took-off from the Festival site into lunch-hour traffic.

In the fall of 1918, a deadly influenza epidemic raged in Washington, D.C. Entire families were wiped out; some people died within a day of showing symptoms. City officials, meanwhile, had a difficult job: figuring out what to do with the bodies.

At approximately the same time the Redskins took the field at Griffith Stadium on December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. As Washington Post columnist Shirley Povich put it, “With America at war and lives already lost, a football game had lost its importance.” That was undoubtedly true... for everyone outside of the stadium. But on the inside, most fans didn’t know anything about the attack – at least for a while – as the team declined to make an official announcement. 75 years later, it remains one of the most peculiar scenes in local history.

When word came from Paris that Charles Lindbergh successfully completed the first trans-Atlantic flight on May 21, 1927, the world celebrated. Overnight the young pilot became a household name and hero. Cities around the globe prepared to fete him. But to Lindbergh, one greeting stood out in particular, “Paris was marvelous and London and Brussels as well, and I wouldn’t for the world draw any comparisons, but I will say this, the Washington reception was the best handled of all.”

Mike Tyson, the so-called "Baddest Man on the Planet," was known for his antics, in and out of the ring, as much as he was known for his boxing ability. While Tyson's sole fight in the nation's capital isn't his most well-known fight, the bout was certainly historic.

Prior to 1909, Harry Bradford had almost never landed himself in the paper. He appeared in The Washington Post once, when it announced that the Kensington Orchestra was going to be performing in the near future. (Bradford played violin.) But other than that, nothing. And yet, in 1910, Bradford’s name was in all caps on the front page of the Post. “Bradford told to quit,” the headline read.

In January 1967, after just a few months on the job as the Smithsonian's Director of Museum Services, Jim Morris had an idea. What if the Smithsonian were to put on an outdoor festival in Washington to exhibit and celebrate folk traditions from around the nation? 

In 1871, the city of Washington was taken up in a scandal of police brutality, perhaps one of the earliest in the city. At the center of the storm was an Irish policeman, a toddler, and Walt Whitman.

In 1910, the Howard Theater was founded in Washington's Shaw neighborhood, and it soon became the premier black theater in the country, helping launch the careers of many African American performers. But for Duke Ellington, who was a fixture in the neighborhood as a kid, the pool hall next door to the theatre did more to shape his musical sensibilities.

Washington in the 1910s was apparently the place for sheep. Over the decade, at least two herds were brought into the capital to graze in the shadow of the nation’s most treasured monuments.