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At noon on March 4, 1849, James K. Polk writes in his diary that his presidential term has ended. But his successor, Zachary Taylor, doesn't take up office until noon on March 5. So who was president for those twenty-four hours? According to some people, our eleventh-and-a-half President: David Rice Atchison.

You know Neoclassical architecture.  But do you know why Brutalism came to D.C.?  Discover how a time of changing architectural styles paved the way for Brutalism to dominate D.C.'s federal buildings.   

Washington based artist Inez M. Demonet specialized in etchings and watercolors of District landmarks and people, but she spent most of her time in an office at the National Institute of Health, where she worked as a medical illustrator.

What was the first message telegraphed to the Capitol in 1844? If you answered "What hath God wrought?" you're wrong! Read about the long road to Samuel Morse's most famous telegraphed words, and the messages that preceded it.

War is hell, so they say.  But nobody told Washington's elite in July 1861, when politicians armed with picnic baskets and champagne came to watch the first battle of the Civil War, and nearly got killed as a result.

After serving as Martha Washington's ladies' maid for most of her life, Ona Judge escaped from slavery in 1796. While with the family in Philadelphia, she boarded a ship headed north to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. For years she would evade efforts by President Washington to return her to bondage at Mount Vernon.

From 1971 to 72, a serial killer abducted and murdered six African-American girls in D.C.  But over 50 years later, the "Freeway Phantom" has never been caught.      

Today, Washington has a lively drag scene, from brunches to balls. But the roots of that culture extend past Stonewall. In the 1880s, a freed slave named William Dorsey Swann crowned himself the first drag "queen" at gatherings in and around the Dupont Circle neighborhood.

Funk band Parliament-Funkadelic has been in a long-term relationship with their African American fans from Washington, D.C. since the early 1970s.

From Emperor Hirohito to Nikita Khrushchev, D.C. has received adversaries with open arms.  But it's not everyday when the defeated foe of a war against the United States becomes a hero, and the Army general who defeated him becomes a villain in the eyes of the nation.