This massive tea kettle was once a promotional stunt for the Oriental Teashop.

The site where Charles Dickens gave his first public reading of "A Christmas Carol" in the US.

Macabre headstones carved with winged skulls, dancing skeletons, and pithy reminders of impending death.

This funeral home had the honor, if that is the correct word, of hosting the funeral of the famous Sacco and Vanzetti.

The oldest playground in America.

On the Fourth of July this area will transform into a Pompeii-like storm of falling embers and ash.

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

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

The oldest continuously operating fish market in the United States.

The rooster who crossed the road lives on forever in Takoma Park, Maryland.

The stone marker that Mason and Dixon placed at the eastern end of the famous north-south border they surveyed.

The little-known, 300-year history of the area includes former lives as a bustling tobacco port, parking lot, and industrial dump.

An Industrial Revolution-era public work that purified water using nothing but sand.

When it comes to handsignals (and colonialism) rock always beats scissors.

The Pentagon sits on a former island that was in Virginia at low tide and D.C. at high tide.

Historic home of America's sweetheart sharpshooter, Annie Oakley.

This dig site outside D.C. is known for its exceptionally high density of baby dinosaur fossils and dinosaur eggs.

Tiny observatory made big contributions to the study of the Earth's motion.

The 320-year-old tree that greeted General Lafayette and rerouted an interstate highway.

Washington's iconic carousel has a nice piece of Civil Rights history.

A memorial in coal country commemorates the victims of an all-too-preventable mining disaster.

This tiny man looms large over downtown Charleston.

A humble plaque marks the site where the country music legend was found dead in his Cadillac.

One day a year it is legal to jump off of this astoundingly tall bridge that spans an Appalachian gorge.