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Long before selfies and social media, the Scurlock family captured the elegance, ambition, and pride of Washington’s Black middle class. Their photography studio became a cultural cornerstone, documenting a “secret city” invisible to the white majority—but radiant in its dignity and style.

In May of 1996, the Democratic National Committee invited Williams to D.C. to perform at a party fundraiser at the old Washington Convention Center. The event was scheduled for Wednesday, May 8, but Mork came to town a day early.

The annual D.C. Beer Week celebrates "good beer in the National Capital Region from conception to consumption and everyone and everything in between." The fact that (1) such a celebration exists and (2) there are events all over town; is an indication of Washington's growing reputation for quality suds.

In 1932, amid the Great Depression, thousands of WWI veterans marched on Washington demanding early pension payments. Their encampment near the Anacostia River and protests on Pennsylvania Avenue alarmed President Hoover, who ordered their forcible removal after Congress rejected their demands.

Today, it's common to see people wearing t-shirts emblazoned with Bob Marley's instantly recognizable likeness, and the reggae classics that he recorded with the Wailers are so iconic that they're used in TV commercials.

It's a foreign concept now but for many years, Arlington County did not have its own fire department. Instead, the county was served by a number of independent volunteer fire departments.

The Peacock Room at the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery was first designed by architect Thomas Jekyll in 1876 to serve as a dining room for the wealthy British shipping magnate Frederick Leyland, who planned to make James Whistler’s painting, Princesse du pays de la porcelaine the centerpiece of the room.

The Roosevelt family's roots are in New York, but they clearly had a strong connection to Washington, D.C. Having two presidents and a first lady in the ranks will do that. In that sense, it's fitting that D.C. is home to one of the largest Roosevelt archives today.

As you might remember from Nathanial Hawthorne’s impressions of Washington, the D.C. area was full of soldiers during the Civil War.

When Abigail Adams came to Washington, D.C. on November 16, 1800, she arrived at an infant city, sparse and not fully formed. Having just left the comforts of old Philadelphia, this must have been quite a shock. To make matters worse, her trip south had seen been rough.