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On the eve of the American Bicentennial, bonsai master Masaru Yamaki donated his 350-year-old Japanese white pine to the U.S. National Arboretum.  No American knew of its true history until in 2001, when two brothers flew from Japan to find the tree their family had nurtured for generations.

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.

In 1860, a 21 year old man named Edward Payson Weston made a wild bet: if Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election, he would walk the nearly 500 miles from Boston to Washington, D.C.

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.

Jerry Smith was a record setting tight end for the (then) Washington Redskins from 1965 - 1977. In 1986, Smith also became the first professional athlete to announce he was suffering from acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, better known as AIDS.

Though the AIDS epidemic had been raging for nearly a decade, by 1988, the FDA had only cleared a single drug to treat it.

A nefarious plot against one of Washington's most beloved landmarks was unfolding in the spring of 1999. On April 1st, an attacker moved quickly when no one was around, and chopped down one of the Cherry Trees along the Tidal Basin. This was no April Fools Day joke.

In 1982, as federal funding for the arts faced cuts, a multiracial women's coalition in D.C. created Sisterfire, a women's festival. What began as a one-day event quickly grew into an annual celebration of women artists. 

Long before D.C. baseball fans started cheering for the Nationals, D.C.