Yesterday Tom shared a somewhat jarring photo of the Capitol dome — colored red. It wasn’t something we had seen before, dating roughly to the late 1950s. Unfortunately, we just didn’t have much information. After a bit of digging, we now know that the Capitol’s re-painting (and temporary red coloring) happened in April 1960. The photo spotted on Twitter came ... Read More »
Plenty of Washingtonians will spend inaugural weekend re-learning how to tie a bow tie or remembering to stash comfortable shoes for late-night post-Ball hijinks. What to wear? It’s always a question — for those shelling out big bucks for balls and for the junior staffers whose hard work on the campaign trail will be rewarded with the expense of tuxedo rentals and ... Read More »
James Brown performed ”Say It Loud – I’m Black And I’m Proud“ at Richard Nixon’s 1969 inauguration. Wait. What? Believe it. The Godfather of Soul chose that particular song to celebrate the Republican president’s transition to power. Confusingly, James Brown actually backed Democrat Hubert H. Humphrey during the 1968 campaign. But when the victorious Nixon team called and offered him the inauguration gig, ... Read More »
An atheltic-themed statue outside of the State Department is marked with few words — but it has an interesting history. Discobolus is a bronze copy of a fifth century B.C. Greek sculpture by Myron. You’ll see similar copies around the world. Adolf Hitler even acquired one. And that’s where the story gets interesting. Washington’s version of the ancient discus-throwing jock arrived ... Read More »
Here’s a weird image from the early archives of WMATA. It depicts “Halloween In Washington” but clearly stretches the bounds of reality — and Metro’s rules. Let’s face it… there’s no way a guy riding a giraffe could ever board a Metro train. We really don’t know much about this image. It was included among dozens of unlabeled pages of ... Read More »
On the morning of President Nixon’s 1969 inauguration, several local businesses ran newspaper ads congratulating the new chief executive. Furniture stores, department stores, grocers… few are immune to inaugural excitement. But one local business had — in hindsight — a remarkable ad in the Washington Poston January 20, 1969. Check out this ad placed by the Watergate complex. (You can ... Read More »
A Washington doctor with an interesting name was among the first to suggest a link between mosquitos and malaria. Meet Albert Freeman Africanus King. Dr. A.F.A. King was a professor of obstetrics at Columbian University, precursor to the present-day George Washington University. The malaria-mosquito connection was his top scientific acheivement. But history remembers his presence at another key American moment ... Read More »
Happy belated Columbus Day! D.C. has its own Christopher Columbus memorial prominently positioned in front of Union Station. Here’s a fascinating set of images from the Washington Times on April 29, 1912 – as workers move a veiled statue of Columbus into place. Text from the article: Throngs of people at all hours of the day, and up until 12 ... Read More »
This is D.C.’s original statue of Rear Admiral Samuel Francis Dupont, installed in 1884. Here you see it – clearly sitting at the center of Dupont Circle. We see the namesake admiral but we don’t see the well-known Dupont Circle fountain. Why did Washingtonians remove Dupont from his circle? The answer is a simple one. People Hated This Statue Here’s ... Read More »
Who tossed Washington’s first pizza pie? Was it “jumbo”? Deep-dish? Square? Turns out, these are tough questions to answer. Several attempts at D.C. historical pizza research have been made (some incorrectly) in recent years. Here we’ll introduce the District’s pizza pioneers and tell you about their claims to be the first — rightly and wrongly. The Post tackled these questions in ... Read More »
This photo from 1912 shows a Weather Bureau kiosk at E Street and Pennsylvania Ave., NW. It’s a high-resolution image, so feel free to click to see some extra details. Large cities around the country had similar small weather stations installed at street level – but Washington’s was the first. (Here’s a photo of a kiosk still standing in Knoxville, ... Read More »
Workers were digging a sewer trench beneath a Capitol Hill street in 1898. They came upon a few fossil fragments — among them, a 6-inch bone that now represents the largest piece of the District’s controversial “official dinosaur,” the Capitalsaurus. The contractor on that sewer project, J. K. Murphy, presented his workers’ discovery to Smithsonian scientists on January 28, 1898. Here’s how ... Read More »
About 5,500 weekends ago, Washingtonians woke up and lazily flipped through their newspapers. It was Sunday, November, 11, 1906 and something bold and new was described for the first time in The Post: New Portmanteau Words. Have you received any invitations to “brunch”? [...] “Brunch” is the latest Park Lane for a midday refection that includes breakfast and lunch. And ... Read More »
This is a guest post by Aaron. He also wrote a really popular post on red metro trains. It must have made a splash. But nobody saw anything. An overturned taxi lay atop the rocky shore of the Potomac. There it was. No driver and perhaps no obvious clues within. But it didn’t take long for police to grab a suspect. It ... Read More »
This is a guest post by Aaron. He also wrote a really popular post on red metro trains. At first glance, this looks like a mundane promotional photo from the early days of Metro’s Judiciary Square station. It isn’t. You’re looking at a full-scale “experimental” station built in 1968 to practice underground building techniques. It wasn’t underground. And it wasn’t at ... Read More »
Ghosts of DC The lost and untold history of Washington
