Washington, D.C.

At Howard University in 1967, Muhammad Ali delivered a defiant, electrifying speech—melding sharp critique of the Vietnam War, a fierce defense of his refusal to be drafted, and an unapologetic call for Black pride that echoed across the nation.

Tourists often try to time their visits to Washington to coincide with the annual blooming of its famous cherry blossom trees along the Tidal Basin in April, and inevitably, someone tells them that the trees originally came from Japan as a gesture of international friendship. But the complete story is a bit more complicated, and includes plenty of odd twists and turns.

Years after Marian Anderson was famously barred from performing at D.A.R. Constitution Hall because of her race, she gave a concert at venue. It was an overdue coda to a painful chapter in America’s cultural history.

During World War II, the job market in D.C. exploded; between 1940 and 1945, the number of civilians employed by the government almost quadrupled. The Defense Housing Registry, created by the DC government to help these new employees find housing, processed around 10,000 newcomers every month. The result? A housing crunch.

There was a period, from the late 1940s until the early 1960s, when Washington, D.C. was a veritable Nashville on the Potomac, a mecca that provided country performers a chance to get their records played, and to perform before big audiences. The man who was most responsible for the District's country preeminence was a charismatic impresario who originally hailed from Lizard Lick, N.C. named Connie Barriot Gay.

Director Frank Capra's classic 1939 film, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,  a comedy-drama about an ordinary citizen who ascends to the U.S. Senate, today is widely regarded as an uplifting, if overly sentimental, tribute to the egalitarianism at the heart of American-style democracy. But when it was released, it seemed utterly scandalous to legislators of the day, who vehemently denounced the film and sought to punish Hollywood for daring to make it. 

Elvis Presley made headlines when he showed up at the White House unannounced and offered his services to President Nixon to fight the war on drugs in 1970. It was an odd event, which led to an even odder photo. But the Elvis-Nixon meeting was memorable for another reason: It was one of only four public appearances that Elvis made in the Washington, D.C. area.

In 1959 a bungled art theft at Washington's Corcoran Gallery of Art left a rare Rembrandt slashed and hurriedly restored, revealing as much mystery about the painting’s past as about the unknown thief who tried to steal it.

On March 10, 1977, twelve armed Hanafi militants seized three Washington buildings and nearly 150 hostages to protest against the release of the film, Mohammed, Messenger of God and law enforcement's investigation into the murders of seven Hanafis four years earlier. The standoff that followed reverberated for years.

When architect Thomas Franklin Schneider built a 12-story building called The Cairo in 1894, it dazzled and infuriated Washington—so much that neighbors and Congress moved to ban skyscrapers, forever changing the city’s skyline.

One of the big challenges to writing a history blog is finding good images. Well, things just got a lot easier with Getty's announcement that it is making up to 35 million images available for bloggers to embed in their sites for free. The company has created a new embed tool that allows images to be shared and includes proper photo credit information. 

Director Steve McQueen's Oscar-winning film, 12 Years a Slave, serves to highlight a horrific and shameful part of local history — the area's role as a transit depot and resale market for humans held in involuntary servitude. The acclaimed film tells the true story of Solomon Northup, a free African-American violinist who in 1841 traveled from his home in New York to Washington, DC, with the promise of a high-paying job as a circus musician. He didn't know that his prospective employers actually were slave traders.