Search

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.

April 1922 was a busy time for Washington socialites and the newspapers that followed them, as the city hosted no less than five national and international women’s groups in the span of a few short weeks.

Ezra Pound was an acclaimed writer who was a central figure in the modernist movement, editing T.S. Eliot’s landmark poem The Waste Land and helping to get other modern writers published, including Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce. When Pound lived in D.C.

John F. Kennedy quietly championed a tense Cold War thriller about a military coup, using his influence to push Hollywood into making Seven Days in May—only to be assassinated before the film's chilling warning reached audiences.

In the 1950s, Washington seems to have been a popular destination for UFOs.

From the late 1940s until 1969, the U.S. Air Force kept a record of all of its investigations into supposed alien activity in a report called Project Blue Book. Until 2015, the project archive had been accessible only by visiting the National Archives in downtown D.C.

Between 1830 and the 1970s, clerks in Washington sorted thousands of undeliverable letters a day, reuniting lost messages, uncovering bizarre packages, and sometimes finding stories more haunting than the mail itself.

For about 10 years following the fall of Saigon in April 1975, Arlington, Virginia became a destination for Vietnamese immigrants fleeing communist rule. Then, almost as quickly as it had developed, Arlington's so called "Little Saigon" faded away. 

In 1911, the Washington Monument faced a bizarre diagnosis: “geological tuberculosis.” Crumbling masonry, oozing lime, and alarming headlines sparked fears of its collapse. Dive into the strange saga of how nature, construction, and sensational journalism threatened D.C.’s iconic obelisk.

If a local architect and a couple of U.S. Senators had been able to get their way, instead of the Lincoln Memorial, Washington might have honored the 16th President with a grandiose stadium patterned after the Roman Colosseum.