When it opened during the final years of the embargo, all the drinks and cigars were free.

A painfully obvious spy house sits right across the street from the Russian Embassy.

One of Chicago's last seafood smokehouses perfects a dying breed of fishcraft.

A three-story tower of books about Abraham Lincoln is one of the more unusual monuments to the president.

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

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.

A gorgeous mural outside a beloved D.C. restaurant pays homage to famous Black Americans.

Before Metro, Washington had a robust streetcar network—and you see the remains of this infrastructure if you know where to look.

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

They sort through millions of dollars worth of diplomatic gifts on behalf of the government.

A tiny monument to the unsuccessful attempt by Thomas Jefferson to place the prime meridian in Washington.

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

100 years later, they're still down there.

This restaurant has been a haven for D.C.'s LGBTQ community since the 1950s.

A heroic pigeon that, through a barrage of gunfire, delivered a message that saved over 100 lives in World War I.

Seemingly unremarkable items like empty sushi trays, chef hats, and freshness stickers are being preserved so future generations can look back on this beloved cultural import.

There's a 12-foot-tall replica of the Washington Monument hidden under a manhole nearby.

Franciscan monks created a facsimile of the Holy Land for North Americans who couldn’t afford the trip overseas.

Cold War intelligence agents monitored communist embassies from an attic in a former pigeon coop.

This imposing Masonic temple a mile from the White House was the first public library in Washington, D.C.

The national park was once a plantation estate.

People escaping slavery may have hidden inside a corpse vault.

A cavernous three-story, 43,800-square-foot basement that was forgotten about for 60 years.