#DYK the Octagon House on 18th St and NY Ave NW only has 6 sides, not 8? But that isn’t the only oddity the historic home boosts. It is also said to be the site of multiple hauntings of the paranormal variety. https://t.co/0BSHTV3kdM #DYK the Octagon House on 18th St and NY …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 13, 2022
During the 1938 broadcast of “War of the Worlds,” DMV switchboards lit up as Federal, State and municipal officials struggled to calm thousands of frightened listeners. https://t.co/0DFOtrdCHi During the 1938 broadcast of “War of the Worlds,” DMV switchboards lit up as Feder…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 13, 2022
During the height of the colonial revival movement, Alexandria, VA, took advantage of the new highway running through their city and crafted Old Town to draw in tourists... but urban renewal proposals set up a clash between preservation and redevelopment. …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 13, 2022
#DYK the campus of American University was used for chemical warfare testing during WWI? At the time, the new school (est. 1914) was thought to be an ideal location but the ghosts of what happened there lingered for decades. https://t.co/1S4JE01oB6 #DYK the campus of America…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 13, 2022
Today in History - August 13 https://t.co/VBRvzjrZwE On August 13, 1942, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin drafted a memorandum to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt opposing their decision not to invade Western Europe at that time. Con…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 13, 2022
Quote of the Day: "Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth." - George Washington
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 13, 2022
Hubble Peers at Celestial Cloudscape via NASA https://t.co/IaNtEnzQo6 https://t.co/rMpMi1wDTC
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 12, 2022
This 1776 map of Dominica, published 13 years after Britain took control of the island, includes a detailed description of the legal status of Crown lands - and where forts or batteries could be erected without compensating the landowner. Check it out: https://t.co/JTZsM4muzj …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 12, 2022
The GAR complained that this location was remote and undesirable, and the statue was moved several times, ending up near 9th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW. In 1930, it was finally moved back to its original location when work began on construction of the Archives buildin…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 12, 2022
19th century stereoview of the statue of Maj. Gen. John A. Rawlins, in Rawlins Park at 18th and E Streets NW. Sculpted by Joseph A. Bailly, the statue was cast from captured Confederate cannon and erected in 1874. https://t.co/5XeC1KJ5M7 19th century stereoview of the statue o…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 12, 2022
What existed on the site of the Pentagon before its construction in the 1940s? East Arlington was a tight-knit, but largely poor African American community that was pushed out. https://t.co/7LgpwKDFOz What existed on the site of the Pentagon before its construction in the 19…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 12, 2022
Today in History - August 12 https://t.co/sdcsvRyARL August 12, 1877, is the date popularly given for Thomas Alva Edison’s completion of the model for the first phonograph, a device that recorded sound onto tinfoil cylinders. Continue reading. Click here to search Today in …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 12, 2022
Here are five standout pieces we read this week. You can always visit our editors’ picks or our Twitter feed to see what other recommendations you may have missed.
Sign up to receive this list free every Friday in your inbox.
Caitlin Dickerson | The Atlantic | August 8th, 2022 | 28,600 words
Go ahead and give Caitlin Dickerson a Pulitzer. Her examination of the Trump administration’s family separation policy is a reporting tour de force and an American horror story that should be read and studied as long as the republic stands. I could only read it in pieces. One go was too much — my heart couldn’t take it. Dickerson shows that some elected officials and bureaucrats acted out of a toxic combination of malice and ambition, while even more did nothing because they were too cowardly or navel-gazing. She holds them all to account, particularly those with children of their own. “‘Can you hold on? My daughter is about to get in her car to leave and I need to kiss her goodbye,’ one government official said as she was in the middle of describing a spreadsheet of hundreds of complaints from parents searching for their children,” Dickerson writes. A single phrase came to mind when I finished reading: “willing executioners.” —SD
Samira Shackle | The Guardian | June 9th, 2022 | 5,925 words
Samira Shackle’s investigation is a gripping lesson in not taking things at face value. Exploring the story of “a heroic mission to defeat a hijacking in the Channel,” instead of finding “marauding Nigerian pirates,” she discovers scared and lonely men, still coming to terms with what happened to them after being brought ashore in the U.K. Any threat is dubious at best. The crew of the Nave Andromeda was likely just desperate to find a way to dock — perhaps even through a feigned distress call — having been turned away from Spain and France for having seven stowaways aboard. Shackle offers tremendous reporting on both this one event and the broader immigration issue of which it is part — while managing to keep humanity at the forefront. Her words paint an all too vivid picture of the rudder stock — the space around a pole that links the rudder to the steering room inside the ship — where the seven men clung on for nine days before being discovered, too scared to fall asleep in case they fell into the swirling sea below. Shackle focuses on Michael, fleeing from a gang in Lagos that killed his mother, and his bewilderment at being put into detention is heartbreaking. It is Shackle who helps clarify what has happened: “[H]e handed me a crumpled bail notice from the police and asked me to explain it. When I said that the case had been dropped, pulling up a BBC report from the previous January on my phone, he began to cry. ‘I didn’t know that,’ he said.” —CW
Mitchell S. Jackson | Esquire | August 8th, 2022 | 6,500 words
“My god, dude, what the hell happened to you?” That’s the central question of Pulitzer Prize winner Mitchell S. Jackson’s new profile of Clarence Thomas. Except it’s not a profile in the traditional sense. It’s a rumination, a scream, a plea. Jackson, whose writing always seems to pour from his veins as much as it unspools from his brain, visits Thomas’ boyhood home in low country Georgia, where he was nicknamed “Boy” and grew up speaking Gullah, and his current home in Fairfax, Virginia, where Thomas “retires to on days he and his colleagues announce the usurping of more rights.” Jackson is seeking clues for how a Black man could come to make his life’s work the subjugation of his own people, among many other long-marginalized groups. I was moved by the honest desperation of this piece. Jackson’s work shimmers with pain. —SD
Roberto José Andrade Franco | ESPN | July 27th, 2022 | 7,314 words
Two weeks ago, I read Roberto José Andrade Franco’s piece on the devastating loss of one Uvalde family, and I’m still thinking about it. Franco traces a history of Texas shaped by guns, violence, and segregation, but also comes in close to share the story of 10-year-old Tess Mata, one of the children murdered in the Robb Elementary School shooting, who loved softball and dancing — and had her entire life ahead of her. The photographs by Verónica G. Cárdenas are haunting — snapshots of Tess, her family, her bedroom and belongings — but so are the scenes from Tess’ life conjured from Franco’s words. I can’t stop imagining, for instance, a determined Tess throwing a softball in her family’s backyard, aiming practice pitches at a sugar maple tree in the Texas heat. A heartbreaking but necessary read. —CLR
Ian Dille | Texas Monthly | August 10th, 2022 | 3,938 words
Recent years have seen an explosion of discussion around racial gaps in outdoor recreation — finally. Despite rapidly proliferating groups like Outdoor Afro and the Major Taylor Cycling Club, retail brands and shops seemed almost inertially resistant to reaching beyond their assumed audience. (“I love Patagonia products, but their marketing materials make the luxury of intentionally living in your van seem admirable, even altruistic,” Nicholas Russell wrote in 2020. “The activities that outdoor companies present, whether climbing or running or snowboarding, isn’t correlated to what’s possible; it’s more about who fits the concept of that activity, who is likely to afford to buy into it.”) It’s that pattern that Jahmichah Dawes has sought to disrupt, opening an outdoors shop in small-town Texas. As such, Dawes has found himself a poster child of sorts, a symbol of something far bigger than just a man and his dream — whether he wanted to be or not. But as Ian Dille’s Texas Monthly profile makes clear, it’s a challenge he’s met with perseverance and mission clarity. And outdoor enthusiasts everywhere are better for it. —PR
Today is Presidential Joke Day but rocker Grace Slick was serious when she tried to slip President Nixon LSD at a White House Tea Party. https://t.co/DlX0f7FcVp Today is Presidential Joke Day but rocker Grace Slick was serious when she tried to slip President Nixon LSD at a …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 11, 2022
The Stables Restaurant at 2620 E St NW (the Kennedy Center now covers the site) was a converted former stables operated by restaurateur Jean Richards in the 1940s. Very popular, but unfortunately seized by the government and closed down in 1949 for failure to pay back taxes. …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 11, 2022
Thank goodness at least some of these photos were saved! https://t.co/dKcK5cqQr2 Thank goodness at least some of these photos were saved! https://t.co/dKcK5cqQr2 — Boundary Stones (@BoundaryStones) Aug 11, 2022
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 11, 2022
Artemis I Moonikin Campos Inspection and Install via NASA https://t.co/cKJS34PrF1 https://t.co/lEKs2uZNdx
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 11, 2022
This late 19th-century manuscript map shows the area 200 miles around Staunton, Virginia - approximately from Huntington, WV to Norfolk, VA. Take a closer look: https://t.co/VzbHQATUqO https://t.co/sPDs2WHUEM This late 19th-century manuscript map shows the area 200 miles arou…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 11, 2022
The late actor/comedian Robin Williams came to DC in 1996 for a DNC fundraiser... but patrons at @DCImprov got a special surprise when he crashed the stage there. https://t.co/Ym2mScWMnv The late actor/comedian Robin Williams came to DC in 1996 for a DNC fundraiser... but pa…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 11, 2022
Today in History - August 11 https://t.co/a62lBALyj8 During an Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) swim meet, Duke Paoa Kahinu Mokoe Hulikohola Kahanamoku broke the world record in the 100-yard freestyle swim by 4.6 seconds in Honolulu Harbor on August 11, 1911. Continue reading. …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 11, 2022
Dr. Anna J. Cooper was born into slavery in 1858. Despite her beginnings, Cooper went on to be one of the few African Americans with a graduate degree at the time and directed her love of learning toward African American girls in DC. https://t.co/4vNiS5nXVD Dr. Anna J. Coope…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 10, 2022
NASA’s B377SGT Super Guppy Turbine Cargo Airplane lands at Moffett Field at NASA Ames via NASA https://t.co/LXgFiA0X4m https://t.co/sZUB0d5e44
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 10, 2022
The famous “Levittowns” began popping up in the northeast during the postwar period. When William Levitt brought his operation down to Bowie, MD, trouble ensued due to restrictions placed on the sale of the perfect suburban homes to African Americans. https://t.co/njlpKRL1gf …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 10, 2022
Clift's Automotive Service, at 20th and K Streets NW, was just one of many automobile sales and service stations located in the West End in the 1930s and 1940s. https://t.co/dY2xVXL4jT Clift's Automotive Service, at 20th and K Streets NW, was just one of many automobile sales …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 10, 2022
Individual landowners' names appear on the maps in this plat atlas of Allen County, Indiana, published when the population of Fort Wayne was barely 60,000 people. See who lived here in 1907: https://t.co/lOMzNaGsV9 https://t.co/58hWYsX6XQ Individual landowners' names appear on…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 10, 2022
Today in History - August 10 https://t.co/Kt5kHnA4FJ On August 10, 1821, Missouri entered the Union as the twenty-fourth state. Continue reading. Click here to search Today in History for other historic moments.
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 10, 2022
The National Christmas Tree Lighting of 1973 lacked a certain holiday spirit. The combination of the ghosts of the Vietnam War, the energy crisis, and oh yeah, the Watergate Scandal, turned this white Christmas into a blue one. https://t.co/BU1gUC8g1N The National Christmas …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 9, 2022
📖 Happy #NationalBookLoversDay! Here, Wu Ting-Fang and three other diplomats read in the Chinese Legation room of Stewart Castle on Dupont Circle, ca. 1890. 📷 Legation employees reading in room of Chinese Legation on Dupont Circle. General photograph collection, CHS 03965. …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 9, 2022
In 1948, this map of Beijing was printed by the US Far East Command using confiscated Japanese printing plates. The map, Saishin Pekin shigai chizu, was originally created ten years earlier. Zoom in here: https://t.co/8Af9JPHLbq https://t.co/Zfw4KuiFyA In 1948, this map of Bei…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 9, 2022
What does southern blues-rock and San Francisco psychedelia have in common? RFK stadium, apparently. In 1973, The Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers teamed up for a multi-day rock concert at the DC venue. https://t.co/uL4XyFBkkL What does southern blues-rock and San Franc…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 9, 2022
Today in History - August 9 https://t.co/A5Bznif1RM On August 9, 1814, Major General Andrew Jackson, “Old Hickory,” signed the Treaty of Fort Jackson ending the Creek War. Continue reading. Click here to search Today in History for other historic moments.
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 9, 2022
Jana Meisenholder| The Atavist Magazine | August 2022 | 7 minutes (2,197 words)
This is an excerpt from The Atavist’s issue no. 129, “King of the Hill.”
***
The Atavist Magazine, our sister site, publishes one deeply reported, elegantly designed story each month. Support The Atavist by becoming a member.
Before the arrival of European colonizers, the Columbia Plateau, which forms swaths of present-day Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, was home to several Native tribes, including the Nez Perce, Wenatchi, Palus, and Colville. Foreigners brought with them disease and destruction. They also brought horses. “It was probably the best gift the white man ever gave us,” the late Stampede organizer and horse trainer Eddie Timentwa told author Carol Austin, who wrote a book about the Suicide Race in 1993,
By the 1700s, horsemanship had become an integral part of Native culture. The animals assisted in transportation and territorial expansion. “Mounted war parties could strike enemies at greater distances and with greater force than ever before,” writes anthropologist Deward Walker. Horses also led to larger traditional gatherings, allowing more people from a wider geographical range to come together. During salmon-spawning season, plateau tribes would meet at the confluence of the Sanpoil and Columbia Rivers to harvest and dry the coming winter’s supply of fish. Horses served as entertainment and objects of sporting competition. Riders paraded horses adorned with tribal regalia and beaded stirrups and bridles before running perilous mountain races.
After the plateau tribes were forced onto the Colville Reservation, the tradition of horse racing continued, and people wagered on riders. Stories of these events were most often passed down through oral tradition, but in 1879, Erskine Wood, a U.S. military officer, wrote of one horse race, “It did not take long for the excitement to grow and soon the bets were showering down and the pile swelling visibly with such great rapidity that it was marvelous how account could be kept. Blankets, furs, saddles, knives, traps, tobacco, beads, whips, and a hundred other things were staked.” (Wood wrote positively of many of his encounters with Native tribes, but also participated in the violent removal of the Nez Perce from their ancestral land.)
In the 1920s, Hugh McShane, a white man married to a Colville woman, introduced a mountain race at the rodeo in Keller, Washington. The race, described by Austin as “a half mile, pell-mell down a nearly vertical, boulder-strewn chasm in the face of a mountain,” quickly became a crowd favorite. But it wouldn’t last: The construction of the Grand Coulee Dam in the 1930s flooded Keller, forcing residents to relocate. In Omak, about 60 miles northwest, Claire Pentz, a furniture salesman in charge of publicity for the town’s rodeo, heard about McShane’s event and decided to stage one of his own. Locals brainstormed what to call the starting location, a precipitous incline on the Okanogan’s southern bank. Murder Hill was floated, but organizers settled on Suicide Hill. “The suicide race draws only the most nervy riders,” The Omak Chronicle declared.
In 1942, a jockey named Bev Conners drowned in the river during the race. Since then, according to various sources, no other jockeys have died. But injuries are common, including grievous ones. Larry Peasley, who taught Andres how to ride a mechanical bull, has two adult children who were nearly killed in the race. In 2002, his daughter Naomie—one of only a few women to ever run the race—suffered a skull fracture and flatlined on the way to the hospital. Doctors were able to revive her. A few years later, Peasley’s son Tyler went somersaulting off his horse and was trampled by oncoming riders. He fractured his ribs and suffered a broken pelvis and hip.
It’s not hard to see what makes the race so dangerous. There’s the hill itself, more than 200 feet of earth pitched at a harrowing angle—according to one race organizer’s measurement, it’s steeper than the Great Pyramid of Giza. Riders charge down the slope at full gallop, reaching speeds up to 30 miles per hour by the time they hit the river. Then there’s the lack of any hard-and-fast rules about how the race should be run. Horses aren’t lined up in an orderly fashion at the starting line. What happens on Suicide Hill is a free-for-all, with mounted jockeys jostling each other, fighting for a competitive spot. The aggression only escalates during the race. Riders violently whipping other jockeys in the face with their crops, attempting to throw them off balance or slow them down, is a common tactic, and often a successful one.
The best Suicide Race jockeys are adrenaline junkies, as athletic as they are knowledgeable of the event’s 1,260-foot-long course. They’ve meticulously mapped out the quarter-mile and know what to do when: Lean back before this point, lock your knees here, sit forward just after that section, pull back the reins there. Riders have incredible core and leg strength to help them stay in the saddle, and they know how far their bodies can tilt sideways if need be, to avoid injury or inflict it on a competitor.
In 2002, the race’s all-time reigning champ, Alex Dick, passed away at the age of 83. He had 16 King of the Hill titles to his name; his obituary in a local newspaper noted that Dick, who was Native, “set a record that will probably never be broken.” So far it hasn’t been. Yet if there’s a first family of the Suicide Race today, it’s the Marchands. Three brothers—Loren, Francis, and Edward—have followed in the footsteps of their grandfather, Jim, an endurance racer who died after a horse fell on him in 1990, and an uncle, George, who holds three Suicide Race titles. Loren, now 34, has been crowned King of the Hill seven times, most recently in 2015. Francis and Edward have never won the overall title, but they’ve come close.
As the dominant force in the Suicide Race, the Marchand brothers have a wealth of tips and tricks, and they know all the best places around Omak to practice. But the race is a tradition most often shared among kin, and the Marchands are notoriously wary of letting people who aren’t blood, or at least Native, into their inner circle. They also reject weekend warriors and wannabe jockeys who are in it purely for the exhilaration. “The Marchands don’t fuck with anybody,” said Conner Picking, a Suicide Race jockey and a great-grandson of one of the founders of the Omak Stampede.
That didn’t stop Andres from trying to get their attention.
***
By the summer of 2018, Andres, now 26, had cleaned up his life and was working construction and picking up jobs as a handyman. He was also holding fast to his desire to learn from Suicide Race royalty, looking for a way in to their good graces. One day he accompanied a welder to a small ranch in Eastside owned by Preston Boyd, a Colville elder renowned for breeding and training thoroughbreds for flat-track racing. Boyd needed the men to fix his broken horse walker, a motorized machine that leads horses in a circle. While Andres worked, Boyd took a good look at him. He noticed Andres’s height—just five feet six inches. He probed the young man about his weight.
Boyd was searching for a new rider to exercise his racehorses, because his usual guys were getting too busy. Among them was his great-nephew, Francis Marchand. Francis was helping Boyd break some new horses that summer, but his schedule was increasingly packed with rodeos—a formidable horseman, Francis regularly competed in saddle bronc and bareback riding. Andres’s specs were promising for the kind of rider Boyd needed. Sure, he couldn’t gallop a horse yet, but he could learn. Boyd told Andres he might fit the bill.
Andres knew he was being given a rare opportunity—a chance to get to know Boyd and one of the Marchands, and to show that he had what it took to run the Suicide Race. But months went by and nothing happened. Boyd never followed up with Andres about exercising his horses.
Omak is the kind of place where everybody knows everybody, and sometimes Andres bumped into Francis at social gatherings. He would bring up Boyd’s suggestion that he was rider material as casually as he could, to see if Francis knew anything about his great-uncle’s plans. Andres also asked about going off the hill—what it felt like, what it took to win. Francis recognized Andres’s ambition, and in early 2019 he told him to stop dithering and get to the point: If he wanted to become a rider, he should go to Boyd and say so. “You want to do this? Look him in the eyes,” Francis said. “In any culture, you grab a guy, shake his hand, and tell him you want this.”
Andres took the advice to heart, but he didn’t want to seem desperate. He waited until he ran into Boyd at a gas station one day, then asked if he could help exercise his horses. Boyd said sure, and Andres showed up at 7:30 the next morning to start learning.
Unlike bull riding, which Andres took to easily as a boy, riding racehorses was challenging. Though short, he was stocky and muscular; working construction had made him strong, but he wasn’t nimble or quick to respond to a horse’s stride. Montana Pakootas, a seasoned jockey who helped out on the ranch, had to constantly remind Andres not to yank the reins, but to pull them gently, if he wanted to slow a horse down. “Use your wrist, not your whole arm,” Pakootas said. Otherwise, when a horse was going full speed, Andres risked throwing it off balance.
Andres’s riding improved, and by the summer of 2019 he was exercising Boyd’s newest racehorses for several hours most days of the week. Boyd expected his riders to stick to a routine, for the horses’ sake. “I take Wednesdays and Sundays off to let their muscles, if they get sore, to give them a little rest,” he said. On training days, it was Andres’s job to guide horses to a trot around a local track for a quarter of a mile, getting their blood pumping and helping them build stamina. Eventually he would get them up to a gallop. As a horse became more aerobic, Andres learned to increase its speed against its pulse, maintaining a low heart rate even while the horse worked hard over varying distances. After weeks or months of training, when a horse was comfortable running at top speed around the track in Omak, Andres took the horse to Emerald Downs, a race facility in Seattle, not to compete but to get acquainted with crowds and the whirring sound the starting gates make when they open.
Andres exercised Boyd’s horses for free, and he and Renteria, who was selling Amway products at the time, sometimes struggled to cover the bills. Andres picked up odd jobs where he could, but not anything that took away from his time with Boyd’s horses. The Suicide Race was never far from his mind. He watched videos of past races over and over, studying them. “He’d always say, ‘I hope I go down the hill one day,’ but I never thought he would actually be in it,” Renteria said. Sometimes Andres was surprised he still had a girlfriend at all. “He told me that he thought I’d break up with him since all he did was ride,” Renteria said, smiling.
One day, when Andres had been working with Montana Pakootas for a while, he decided to tell him about his ultimate goal. Pakootas, who had run many Suicide Races and was crowned King of the Hill in 2004, was hosing down a horse at the time. In response to what Andres said, he turned and sprayed him in the face. That’s how the hazing began. Another time Pakootas dumped a boot full of water on Andres’s head. “You scared of getting wet? Because that water fucking feels like it just whips you in the face,” he said, referring to the dive into the Okanogan River. Andres was humiliated, but he kept showing up, kept taking shit.
When Boyd asked him to come along to Emerald Downs for an official racing event, Andres jumped at the chance. At the Downs, Andres awoke every morning at 4:45 to feed the racehorses, then got them ready for the day’s competitions. Francis Marchand and his brother Edward were there, helping care for Boyd’s horses, and they picked up Andres’s hazing where Pakootas had left off. “Edward wasn’t easy on me, that’s for sure,” Andres said. The eldest Marchand brother, known for his success in the extreme sport of Indian relay racing, in which a rider changes his mount mid-competition, seemed to notice every mistake Andres made while warming up the horses. “It’s almost like he waited for me to fuck up,” Andres said, “just so he could go off on me and drive me away.”
Andres persevered, and over margaritas at an Applebee’s one day, he felt bold enough to say it to Edward straight—what he wanted, what he was sure he was capable of. What did he need to do to go off the hill? Edward, who had placed second overall in the 2018 Suicide Race, shook his head in response.
“You don’t have what it takes,” he said.
“What’s it take?” Andres asked.
“It doesn’t matter. You don’t got it.”
Read the full story at The Atavist.
#OTD in 1873, after leaving DC, the passenger steamer, Wawaset, caught fire due to its bone-dry condition. A series of unfortunate circumstances followed, resulting in a mass casualty incident. https://t.co/peNHEax6Yh #OTD in 1873, after leaving DC, the passenger steamer, Wa…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 9, 2022
#DYK there was once a National Aquarium in DC? It was located in the basement of the Department of Commerce building on 14th St NW. https://t.co/5FVPvm5CkQ #DYK there was once a National Aquarium in DC? It was located in the basement of the Department of Commerce building on…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 8, 2022
https://t.co/4OVFRcdQkc https://t.co/4OVFRcdQkc — Streets of Washington (@StreetsOfDC) Aug 8, 2022
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 8, 2022
Moon Mosaic via NASA https://t.co/2XgQG283fa https://t.co/Bmbti4VE3N
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 8, 2022
There's still time to register for our virtual orientation on Sanborn fire insurance maps! Join us at 3pm tomorrow to learn about these fascinating windows into historic America. Register here: https://t.co/60vXq0WHkx https://t.co/Dxtf4I1coN There's still time to register for…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 8, 2022
Today in History - August 8 https://t.co/2ZIQpeVJUc Journalist, short-story writer, and novelist Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was born on August 8, 1896, in Washington, D.C. Continue reading. Click here to search Today in History for other historic moments.
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 8, 2022
You may know Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Namath as "Broadway Joe," but did you know his first professional football game actually took place at George Washington High School in Alexandria, Virginia? https://t.co/owRCRA9CNx You may know Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Namath as…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 7, 2022
Alexander Goode was a D.C.-raised Rabbi and a war hero. He was a part of the Four Chaplains, a heroic group who went down with the ship after saving the lives of all those on board when they noticed a German U-Boat soaring towards their boat. https://t.co/4EHPdbf49I Alexande…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 7, 2022
August 7, 1981 - The Washington Evening Star published its final story. The newspaper had guided D.C. since 1852 and spotlighted many interesting stories throughout its years of journalism. https://t.co/GK9sQXMErQ August 7, 1981 - The Washington Evening Star published its fi…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 7, 2022
Postcard by Willard Ross of the ivy-covered St. Paul's Church in Rock Creek Cemetery--the oldest church building in the District. The first frame church was built here in 1719; this building dates to 1775. Rebuilt with original brick walls after being gutted in a fire in 1921. …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 7, 2022
They say reality can be stranger than fiction, and we have agree. After all, a small section of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini's brain was kept in #DC's St. Elizabeth's Hospital for years before it disappeared without a trace. https://t.co/0MNEULW8Pu They say reality can …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 7, 2022
Today in History - August 7 https://t.co/gwWcmM30yp Revolutionary war hero Nathanael Greene was born on August 7, 1742, at Potowomut in Warwick, Rhode Island. Continue reading. Click here to search Today in History for other historic moments.
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 7, 2022