A brazen daylight assassination attempt against President Truman took place right on Pennsylvania Avenue with a shootout in front of Blair House. It was carried out by militant Puerto Rican pro-independence activists. White House Police officer Leslie Coffelt, was killed protecting the President.

Check out this great footage out. This is from 1949, sent in by GoDCer Eric.

Here’s a cool documentary from YouTube on Thompson’s Dairy, formerly on 11th St. near U St. Thanks to GoDCers Alex and Richard, U St. residents and local history buffs, for sending this in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MIYvPo0xLQ

This is some great old footage of FDR dedicating the NIH back in 1940. Thanks to GoDCer Jeff for sending this in a while ago. It was originally posted on an NIH blog, Circulating Now, and below is an excerpt from the post. On October 31, 1940, just days before President Franklin Delano Roosevelt would […]

I never thought about looking into the origin of REO Speedwagon’s band name, but alas, coming across this old advertisement in The Washington Post from November 1919 answered the question that I never asked. And now, you have some great trivia to impress your friends when you’ve had a few too many beers next weekend. So […]

It’s that time of year, again. Commencement speakers address graduating college and university classes, and inevitably their speeches are ranked, assessed, complimented, and criticized. This year, both NPR and Vox.com have compiled the best commencement speeches ever. From the lists they created, we’ve found all the commencement addresses that happened in Washington, DC and posted them […]

We found this great old film footage at the Moving Image Research Collection at the University of South Carolina. It shows Italian Army General Armando Diaz and Italian Ambassador Rolando Ricci in front of the White House entrance during their visit in 1921. We dug up an article from The New York Times, printed on October […]

Check out this great film footage from 1931 showing the Washington Senators during spring training. We found these at the Moving Image Research Collection at the University of South Carolina. And, here’s another great one of them during 1934 spring training.

Here’s a great film of Washington in the 1930s.

Here is an old film that we dug up at the National Archives. It’s from 1968, showing the devastation of the riots following MLK’s assassination.

Like most of D.C., probably the country, we’re obsessed with House of Cards. It’s a little over the top, but sometimes that’s the beauty of it. Unfortunately, we don’t often expect movies about Washington to be largely filmed in the District or even have accurate portrayals of our fair city. But, House of Cards is […]

What a cool video! This was a find on the Library of Congress website. Below is the description from the site. “This most excellent picture was secured at the junction of Pennsylvania Avenue and Fifteenth Street. The parade is headed by a platoon of mounted police; next comes the Grand Marshal, Major- General Francis V. […]

This is a really interesting film that we found at the National Archives. It was made by the Ford Motor Company in 1922. Source: U.S. National Archives

Many of you will be familiar with these images from the Knickerbocker Theater disaster. We haven’t yet written about it, but there’s an excellent write-up on it at here and at Greater Greater Washington.

Here’s a cool find from YouTube. The Senators lost the World Series to the Pirates, after having won the year before. Can you tell Ghosts of DC is getting excited for the 2014 baseball season?

Now this is an interesting old film we found on YouTube. It’s a bit long, but if you’re from Alexandria, you’ll find it entertaining and recognize quite a few of the old buildings. What do you think? Did you recognize any of the old buildings?

This is a really cool old film that we dug up at the U.S. National Archives. Check it out and see what landmarks you can identify, then add them to the comments below.

The airport was dedicated by President Kennedy and former President Eisenhower, a $110 million federal project, largely driven during the latter's administration.

Sweet concert! This is an ad in The Washington Post on February 11th, 1979 for a Kenny Rogers concert. Almost 35 years ago, this was a Sunday, and while Washingtonians were heading to Landover for the concert, the Shah in Iran fell and Ayatollah Khomeini took power. Below is a video that we dug up on […]

Now this is a really cool old video that we uncovered on YouTube. It shows a home run derby between Mickey Mantle and Harmon Killebrew. From our Wikipedia research, it looks like this was filmed in 1960, just before the team moved to Minnesota to become the Twins.