Mrs. Mary E. Surratt was a Confederate sympathizer living in the heart of the Union during the Civil War. Her boardinghouse served as the meeting place for the group of conspirators who plotted to assassinate Lincoln. According to the military commission who tried her, she was part of plot. But how much did she really know?
President Lyndon B. Johnson had a secret weapon that he kept in his kitchen for more than 20 years: Chef Zephyr Wright. Famous at the time for her Southern cooking and later for her impact on the Civil Rights Movement, Zephyr Wright quietly held sway over one of the most powerful men in the world.
In the early 19th-century, Washington, D.C. had a problem: what to do with their population of the mentally ill. Dorothea Dix, a healthcare reform crusader from Massachusetts, came to their aid and, with a team of politicians and doctors, catalyzed the construction of what would come to be known as St. Elizabeths.
In the 1840s, northern abolitionist Charles T. Torrey had had enough of intellectual debates and meetings, so he headed south and teamed up with Thomas Smallwood to free hundreds of slaves in the D.C. area. Following his arrest in 1844, Torrey was imprisoned in the Maryland Penitentiary where he would become a martyr for his cause.
As Washington, D.C. has become more gentrified, leaving much of its former history and culture behind, mumbo sauce is one aspect of D.C.'s homegrown culture that has managed to stick around. However, even mumbo sauce's place in the shifting scene of D.C. has been challenged in recent years.
In 1949, a shocking mid-air crash near National Airport killed more people than any previous air disaster in U.S. history. It did not take long for investigators to place the blame on one unlucky pilot. But was Capt. Erick Rios Bridoux really at fault?
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