The site where Poe "in great distress, and ... in need of immediate assistance" likely died.

This cannonball stands as a reminder of the final act of a fleeting governor amidst a revolution.

This recreation of a 19th-century dime museum is full of oddities.

A dramatic, 360-degree recreation of Pickett's Charge in the Civil War.

This scenic Maryland park was the site of one of the worst prison camps of the Civil War.

Captain John Smith thought these cliffs were amazing in 1608 but sharks thought so 20 million years before him.

The maritime museum that boasts the largest nautical library in the western hemisphere.

The 15-foot-wide, 2-ton pan fries hundreds of chickens once a year.

Largest Roman Catholic church in North America.

The tallest The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints temple in the world soars above the Beltway.

The famous abolitionist’s preserved estate is one of Washington's finest monuments to its great Black citizens.

A 1,100-ton train fell through the floor in 1953. Workers got it patched up in just 72 hours.

A Civil War fort in the middle of Washington, D.C. has been swallowed by a forest.

The 5.5-mile ring of steel posts around the Capitol Building is one of the largest (and most uniform) of its kind in the world.

This statue of the "father of television" stands prominently in the United States Capitol.

Corn-inthian columns with a uniquely American take on neoclassical architecture.

Members of Congress have traveled between the buildings on Capitol Hill for a century hidden from tourists, press, and storm clouds.

A little marble compass above George Washington's (empty) tomb in the Capitol marks where D.C.'s four quadrants intersect.

An ear-piercing buzzer calls lawmakers to a vote with a series of long and short rings to form coded messages.

A hidden gem on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol Building designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.

One critic described it as "middle Mussolini, early Ramses, and late Neiman-Marcus." Another called it an architectural "natural disaster."

The "lovely red Vega" of the legendary record-settling pilot.

The actual model from the original "Star Trek" series is now on display at the National Air and Space Museum.

D.C. once had its own tiny rival to the New York Stock Exchange.