A needless debate over honor in the House of Representatives sparked the only fatal duel between two congressmen in American history. The killing of Rep. Jonathan Cilley triggered outrage across America and anti-dueling legislation. But did it end the practice altogether?
In 1942, the USSR sends a young woman, its most effective sniper, to the United States as a member of its delegation to President Roosevelt's International Youth Assembly. But she has a second reason for her trip: to entreat the Allies to open a second front in Europe. American observers, unfortunately, seem less interested in her rhetoric than the unflattering cut of her uniform.
In September 1978, Jimmy Carter brokered a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, which has lasted over 40 years. Over nearly two weeks of tense negotiations, each side threatened to walk away from the table. But Carter used a combination of diplomacy and personal appeals to bring them back.
Despite serving only a single term as President, Jimmy Carter holds the record among sitting presidents for attending shows at the Kennedy Center — 28 in his four years in the District. But that's only the beginning of his love of the theater!
30 years ago, FBI agents descended upon a cozy corner of Arlington to arrest one of the most destructive spy-turned-moles in United States history. For nearly a decade, career CIA officer Aldrich “Rick” Ames fed some of his agency’s most sensitive intelligence to the Soviet Union—a betrayal that compromised dozens of agents and led to the execution of at least ten.
On March 22, 1968, Adrienne Manns, senior editor of Howard University’s official student newspaper, The Hilltop, summed up the lively scene on campus in a bold editorial:
“If this is not revolution, then what is?”
Three days earlier, one thousand students had taken over the university’s main administration building – known as the “A” building – refusing to leave.
Legend tells of a beast that flies over Middletown, Maryland looking for prey to drag back to its lair on Catoctin Mountain. The creature, a half-bird half-reptile, had “huge wings, a long pointed tail, occasionally a horn, one eye in the middle of its forehead and, strangest of all, octopuslike tentacles that trailed behind it like streamers and retracted like a cat’s claws.” It came to be known as the Snallygaster and supposedly, it had a taste for human flesh…and a particular group of people above all others.
In the 1890s, Frances Benjamin Johnston opened a photography studio on V St., NW, in Washington, DC. Defying gender norms, she established herself as a White House portrait photographer, a photo journalist, and historic preservationist. By the end of her life, some called her "the greatest woman photographer in the world," but her most well-known work gained attention decades after her death.
Northwest D.C.'s Dunbar High School transcended humble beginnings in the basement of a church to become, as W.E.B. DuBois' The Crisis put it, the "greatest negro high school in the world." Its commitment to black academic excellence made it the alma mater of many prominent African Americans.
Hercules Posey is considered one of America's first celebrity chefs. He was enslaved to George Washington during his presidency but ultimately able to make his escape. The details of his story haven't always been so clear though.
WWE is globally recognized as a juggernaut in sports and entertainment. However, not many know of the colorful, and often violent, history behind the one of the company's first arenas, Turner's Arena, formerly located at the corner of 14th and W St NW.
"By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes!" Who is the mysterious man who visits Edgar Allan Poe's grave to leave a yearly offering of roses and cognac to the poet Baltimore claims as its own?
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