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Should the National Mall really be a National Lake? Leon Krier thought so! The Luxembourgish architect came to D.C. in the 1970s and saw Washington as an unfinished sketch waiting to be painted in full. Read about his fantastical plans to "finish" our capital city.

The Senate has adjourned for the day, and the legislators, journalists, and visitors that had filled the chamber file out into the warm evening. Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, a well-known abolitionist, remains at his desk, scribbling notes among his spread of papers. A stranger approaches him from the aisle.

During the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, The ClubHouse and other LGBTQ+ nightclubs in DC provided a space for political activism and social support for the gay Black community.  

In the wake of George Washington's death, Americans across the country sought to memorialize our first president. But one small town in Maryland has the distinction of completing the first Washington Monument.

On the eve of the American Bicentennial, bonsai master Masaru Yamaki donated his 350-year-old Japanese white pine to the U.S. National Arboretum.  No American knew of its true history until in 2001, when two brothers flew from Japan to find the tree their family had nurtured for generations.

In the spring of 1936, three torrential rainstorms, caused floodwaters to run straight off the Appalachian Mountains and into the Potomac. The swollen river rose over 30 feet in some places, submerging towns, and tearing bridges off their foundations. As reports of the devastation come from all across the Northeast, Washington, D.C.

In 1860, a 21 year old man named Edward Payson Weston made a wild bet: if Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election, he would walk the nearly 500 miles from Boston to Washington, D.C.

In the fall of 2000, D.C. resident Mark Meinke was working on a book about drag performers when he ran into a huge roadblock: there were no archives covering the history of his research subject or the District’s large and vibrant LGBTQIA+ community.

Jerry Smith was a record setting tight end for the (then) Washington Redskins from 1965 - 1977. In 1986, Smith also became the first professional athlete to announce he was suffering from acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, better known as AIDS.