Virginia

When one thinks about George Washington they probably think of the general that led America to victory in the Revolutionary War or the first president of the United States. What they may not think about is someone with a sometimes complicated relationship with his mother. 

As the British marched on Washington during the War of 1812, government clerks scrambled to hide the nation's precious documents. According to legend, the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights ended up in the cellar of Rokeby, a mansion outside of Leesburg, Virginia where they were guarded by a local minister. But is the legend true?

In the spring of 1936, three torrential rainstorms, caused floodwaters to run straight off the Appalachian Mountains and into the Potomac. The swollen river rose over 30 feet in some places, submerging towns, and tearing bridges off their foundations. As reports of the devastation come from all across the Northeast, Washington, D.C. scrambled to defend itself.

In the fall of 2000, D.C. resident Mark Meinke was working on a book about drag performers when he ran into a huge roadblock: there were no archives covering the history of his research subject or the District’s large and vibrant LGBTQIA+ community. “D.C., unlike other Gay centers, has no available and accessible community memory or archives,” he wrote in the Washington Blade. So, he did something about it.

Before Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard, there was Ham. America's first "astrochimp" rocketed into space and paved the way for the Moon landing before retiring to the National Zoo. His impact was undeniable but it also raised questions. 

You've heard of the Freemasons.  You may have heard of the Illuminati.  Secret societies are finding it harder to stay secret in our surveillance-saturated world.  In 1864, a former schoolteacher from middle-of-nowhere Michigan arrived in the nation's capital.  Justus Henry Rathbone sought to create a secret society that would heal the nation's divisions after the Civil War.  There was just one thing: His not-so-secret society glowed in the national spotlight once presidents from Lincoln to FDR found out about it.

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.

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.

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.

After serving as Martha Washington's ladies' maid for most of her life, Ona Judge escaped from slavery in 1796. While with the family in Philadelphia, she boarded a ship headed north to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. For years she would evade efforts by President Washington to return her to bondage at Mount Vernon.

For decades, the land on the western bank of the Potomac River that is currently home to the Pentagon, Ronald Reagan National Airport, Roache’s Run Bird Sanctuary, and part of the George Washington Memorial Parkway was disputed territory. Did it belong to Virginia? The District? No one seemed quite sure.

Walking through DC, you may notice faded fallout shelter signs marking buildings.  They are some of the last clues of a historic past when the federal government designated thousands of shelters throughout DC to save Washingtonians from a nuclear apocalypse. But would they have worked?