The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum serves as a memorial to the thousands of people murdered during the Holocaust, and to teach about the need to prevent genocide worldwide. Suggested by the President’s Commission on the Holocaust in 1979,…

Charles Guiteau shot President Garfield on July 2, 1881 at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station on the National Mall. Guiteau shot Garfield because he had been denied a political appointment that he believed he deserved. Garfield eventually…

William Hushka, an immigrant from Lithuania, was a World War I US Army veteran who joined the 1932 Bonus Marchers in their campaign to secure early payment of veterans' pensions from the government. Along with fellow veteran and marcher Eric Carlson,…

President Adams' diary entries from June 1827 detail his regular visits to the White House garden. In this entry he describes the variety of plants in the garden, from fruit trees to common weeds. The President relied on his gardener, John Ousley, to…

The 2009 Presidential Inauguration was the first in which the entire length of the Mall was open to spectators. In previous years, parts of the Mall were used as staging areas for the inaugural parade. In this photo you can see that the crowds…

James Monroe was the first president to take the oath of office outdoors after the government moved to Washington. Previous inaugurations were held indoors, which limited the number of people who could attend. The inauguration was originally going to…

The 1949 Inauguration of President Harry S. Truman was the first to be broadcast live on television. This footage from the US Air Force was shot from behind where Truman stood to take the oath of office. As the camera pans, one of the press platforms…

On Easter Sunday, 1939, celebrated African American opera singer Marian Anderson gave a free concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. She had been denied the opportunity to sing at the Daughters of the American Revolution concert hall because of…

In the 1930s, the National Park Service moved forward with a plan to remove trees on the Mall and replace them with rows of American Elms. Katherine Rowland worked in an office near the Mall and wrote to the editors of the Washington Post to protest…

The McMillan Plan was presented to Congress and the public by its authors, the Senate Park Commission, in 1902. It described a comprehensive plan redesigning not only the National Mall but the entire system of parks in Washington, DC. Their proposed…