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

For 60 years, the academy had no permanent location until members voted Washington D.C. as its forever home.

Before Nixon, "watergate" meant canals.

Architecture lovers won’t stop touching the National Gallery's 19.5 degree marble prow.

This unacceptably tall building was the real reason for Washington, D.C.'s skyscraper ban.

Go take a picture with the inventor of the daguerreotype photographic process.

This sandwich shop has a century-old elevator behind a sheet of plexiglass.

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

One of the largest artillery pieces in the world sits in a Washington D.C. parking lot.

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.

Once the supplier for noteworthy projects like the National Cathedral, this old brickworks now lies abandoned.

The most accurate timepiece in the world.

Perhaps the most scandalous statue of America's first president.

D.C.'s first central library was born out of a chance encounter with the philanthropist whose name it bears.

Home to a vast and influential collection of Shakespeareana.

A museum cafe showcases Native American dishes and indigenous ingredients from across the Western Hemisphere.

There's a crumbling old mansion inside the Smithsonian National Zoo.

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

Government testing at the asylum briefly explored using marijuana as a "truth serum" on Nazi prisoners of war.

The oldest continuously operating fish market in the United States.

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

A nostalgic bibliographic gem.

There’s a hidden military meme engraved on the World War II Memorial.