Military History

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  • Burial of unknown soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, November 11, 1921. (Source: U.S. Army)

    Dedication of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

    On November 11, 1921, three years to the day after the armistice that ended World War I, President Warren G. Harding presided over the dedication of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery. It was an emotional affair for Washington and the nation.

    By Will Hughes

Popular Content

  • George Washington portrait (Source: Wikipedia)

    George Washington’s Overdue Books

    Was the father of our country a deadbeat book borrower? Apparently so. In April of 2010, a New York Society Library employee stumbled across the long lost fourteen-volume collection, Common Debates...

    By Will Hughes

  • “Daguerreotype of Edgar Allan Poe, known as the "Annie" Daguerreotype,” 1849, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe#/media/File:Edgar_Allan_Poe_daguerreotype_crop.png

    Poe's Washington Excursion

    The celebrated, yet ever tormented, writer Edgar Allan Poe, famously spent much of his life living in Baltimore and Richmond, but he surprisingly spent very little time in D.C. despite residing in...

    By Emily Robinson

  • The Snallygaster depicted as a spotted dinosaur with wings and riding a bicycle.

    The Maryland Snallygaster: Devil of Racist Politics

    Legend tells of a beast that flies over Middletown, Maryland looking for prey to drag back to its lair on Catoctin Mountain. The creature, a half-bird half-reptile, had “huge wings, a long pointed...

    By Jake Seboe

  • Jan Rose Kasmire, confronts National Guard troops during Vietnam War protest outside Pentagon on October 21, 1967 (Photo by Marc Riboud, licensed from Magnum Photos)

    Whatever Happened to the Flower Girl?

    The Vietnam War left a number of indelible images burned in our collective psyche, but few encapsulated the anti-war movement here at home more than Marc Riboud's 1967 photograph of a flower girl...

    By Richard Brownell

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