War

In the early 1990s, the Smithsonian found itself embroiled in national controversy over one of its planned exhibitions, making enemies of newspapers, veterans groups, and even Congress. What was the right way to display the plane that dropped the atomic bomb?

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.

The only time a sitting U.S. President came under enemy fire happened right here in Washington -- at Fort Stevens -- when Confederates under Lt. Gen. Jubal Early advanced on the fort while President Lincoln was there.

Friend of the Blog and Tenleytown, D.C. native Jim Corbley recounts the harrowing incident -- which included some terse words for the President from his aide-de-camp, future Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes -- in this special guest post.

In January 1943, with World War II raging, Major League Baseball commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis issued a mandate that teams must conduct spring training close to home rather than traveling South. The ruling sent the Washington Senators scrambling to find new digs, but they didn't have to look far.

All we know for sure is that Stonewall Jackson's left arm was buried at Ellwood plantation in 1863. What has happened to it since is anyone's guess.