In March 1935, the sky went dark over Washington, DC as a dust storm from the midwest blanketed the city. As this offshoot of the Dust Bowl moved over the nation's capitol, Hugh Bennett, head of the Soil Erosion Service in the Department of…

The Smithsonian Museum of History and Technology (now the National Museum of American History) hosted one of the five Inaugural Balls for Richard Nixon's second Presidential Inauguration in January 1973. During the party, a rooster escaped from an…

In 1894, economic depression brought more than forty different armies of unemployed workers to Washington, DC. Jacob S. Coxey, a wealthy Populist, led the most well known of these groups. Publicity of the march worried the authorities and 1,500…

James McGirk, also spelled McGurk, was hanged on October 28, 1802, near the Capitol in the same area today occupied by the statues of Presidents Garfield and Grant. He was the first person executed in the District of Columbia. In April 1802, McGirk…

After defeating American troops at the Battle of Bladensburg in 1814, British troops under the command of Rear Admiral George Cockburn and Major General Robert Ross entered Washington, intent on destroying government property. First Lady Dolley…

The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial was dedicated on the 48th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. King's college fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha originally proposed a memorial to…

Over 5,000 marchers, mostly women, came to Washington, DC, from around the country to participate in the Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913. They marched down Pennsylvania Avenue from near the Capital to the Treasury Building. The mostly male crowd lining…

Sylvester was the Chief of Police in Washington, DC, during the Woman Suffrage Parade of 1913. The women were harassed by a large crowd of mostly male onlookers. Instead of protecting the marchers, the police failed to intervene and at times joined…

Cleve Jones is a human rights activist who created the idea of a memorial quilt commemorating people who have died of AIDS. The first time the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt was displayed was October 11, 1987, when it was laid out in full on the…

James Farmer was one of the leaders of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. As one of the founders of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), an interracial civil rights organization, and its National Director in the early 1960s, Farmer…