95 Fun Facts About Washington DC

Which major river flows along the southwestern border of Washington D.C.?

The Potomac River forms Washington D.C.'s southwestern and southern border with the U.S. state of Virginia.

Which iconic obelisk monument stands prominently on the National Mall in Washington D.C.?

The Washington Monument is a prominent obelisk on the National Mall, built to commemorate George Washington, the first U.S. President.

Whom did George Washington commission in 1791 to lay out the new federal city?

Pierre Charles L'Enfant, a French-born military engineer, drew the 1791 plan of grand avenues and ceremonial spaces; Andrew Ellicott finished the survey after L'Enfant was dismissed in 1792.

The Residence Act, which fixed the capital on the Potomac and counts as Washington's founding date, was adopted in which year?

July 16, 1790: the Residence Act approved a capital district along the Potomac, and that date is counted as the city's founding.

What is the name of the building that houses the U.S. Congress?

The United States Capitol Building is where the U.S. Congress convenes, comprising the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Which President's memorial seats him in marble beside the texts of two of his speeches?

The Lincoln Memorial seats Abraham Lincoln in Georgia marble; the chamber walls carry the Gettysburg Address and his Second Inaugural Address, and the memorial was dedicated in 1922.

What type of animal is Screech, the official mascot of the Washington Nationals baseball team?

Screech is a bald eagle, 'hatched' at RFK Stadium on Kids Opening Day in April 2005, the Nationals' first season in Washington.

What is the highest natural point in Washington D.C.?

Fort Reno Park in Tenleytown holds Point Reno, the District's highest natural elevation at 409 feet (125 m) above sea level.

Which of these is not one of the three branches of the US federal government headquartered in Washington?

Diplomatic is the odd one out; the federal government is composed of three branches: legislative, executive and judicial.

The Tidal Basin in Washington D.C. is ringed by what flowering trees, gifted from Japan?

The cherry blossom trees were a 1912 gift from Japan; the first two were planted on March 27, 1912, and the blossoms draw crowds each spring for the National Cherry Blossom Festival.

What is the official residence and principal workplace of the President of the United States?

The White House, located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, serves as the official residence and principal workplace of the President of the United States.

Which institution, founded in 1800 and the oldest federal cultural body in the US, fills three buildings next to the Capitol?

The Library of Congress is the research library of Congress itself, and the largest library of its kind in the world.

The J. Edgar Hoover Building opened in 1975 as the headquarters of which agency?

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) moved into the J. Edgar Hoover Building at 935 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in 1975, named for the director who ran the bureau from 1924 to 1972.

At which Washington theatre did John Wilkes Booth shoot President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865?

Ford's Theatre on 10th Street NW was the scene; Booth shot Lincoln during a performance of Our American Cousin, and the president died the next morning at the Petersen House across the street.

What is the professional NBA team based in Washington D.C.?

The Washington Wizards are the professional basketball team representing Washington D.C. in the National Basketball Association (NBA).

The Washington National Cathedral is officially known by what longer, formal name?

The Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, seat of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, was begun in 1907 and completed in 1990; almost everyone just says National Cathedral.

Which document is not one of the three 'Charters of Freedom' displayed in the Rotunda of the National Archives in Washington?

The Emancipation Proclamation is in the Archives' collection but not in the Rotunda's three bronze-framed, bulletproof cases, which hold the Declaration, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

What name did the commissioners give the federal district in 1791, before it was Washington, D.C.?

In September 1791, the three commissioners overseeing the capital's construction named the federal district the Territory of Columbia, while the city within it was named the City of Washington.

Which Washington river, long called the city's 'forgotten river', is named for an Indigenous people?

The Anacostia takes its name from the Nacotchtank people who lived along it; the roughly 8.7-mile river, polluted for decades, has drawn decades of cleanup work.

In what year did the first stretch of the Washington Metro open?

Metro's first segment opened on March 27, 1976: 4.6 miles of Red Line with five stations, from Rhode Island Avenue to Farragut North.

Which Metro station, 196 feet below ground, is the deepest in the system?

Forest Glen, on the Red Line in Montgomery County, sits about 196 feet below ground, so riders use high-speed elevators rather than escalators to reach the platform.

Which Metro station has the longest single-tier escalator in the Western Hemisphere?

Wheaton, on the Red Line, has a 230-foot (70 m) escalator, the longest single-span escalator in the Western Hemisphere; the ride takes close to three minutes.

Which Chicago architect designed many of Metro's early vaulted stations?

Harry Weese, a Chicago architect, designed Metro's signature coffered concrete vaults; the station design won the American Institute of Architects' Twenty-five Year Award in 2014.

The obelisk on the Mall was the world's tallest structure until what overtook it in 1889?

The Eiffel Tower, completed in 1889, overtook the 555-foot Washington Monument, which had held the record only since its 1884 completion; the monument is the world's tallest obelisk.

A small pyramid of which metal caps the apex of the obelisk on the Mall?

The apex is a 100-ounce pyramid of aluminum, set in December 1884 when the metal was still a costly rarity; the capstone carries inscriptions on all four sides.

Which nativist party destroyed the Pope's Stone donated to the obelisk in 1854?

Members of the anti-Catholic Know-Nothings stole and smashed the Pope's Stone in March 1854; a replacement was finally installed in 1982, inscribed 'A Roma Americae'.

Whose original design for the obelisk included a colonnade that was never built?

Robert Mills's winning design ringed the shaft with a circular colonnade; lack of funds meant the bare obelisk went up alone, and work stalled from 1854 until the late 1870s.

Who designed the seated marble statue of Lincoln inside his memorial?

Daniel Chester French designed the seated Lincoln; the Piccirilli brothers carved it from Georgia marble, and the figure was enlarged from a planned 10 feet to 19 feet to suit the chamber.

Which contralto sang from the Lincoln Memorial steps on Easter 1939 after the DAR barred her?

Marian Anderson sang to 75,000 people on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939, after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused her Constitution Hall; Interior Secretary Harold Ickes arranged the open-air concert.

Who designed the Jefferson Memorial, drawing on the Roman Pantheon?

Pope also designed the National Archives and the National Gallery's West Building, and died in 1937 before the memorial was built.

In 1938, women protesting the Jefferson Memorial chained themselves to what?

Revised plans that preserved the surrounding trees eventually quieted the opposition.

The 1912 gift of 3,020 Japanese trees to Washington came from the mayor of which city?

Tokyo mayor Yukio Ozaki sent the 3,020 trees in 1912; in 1957 Yokohama's mayor added a stone pagoda beside the Tidal Basin as a second token of friendship.

Which amateur architect's late entry won the 1793 competition to design the Capitol?

William Thornton, a physician with no formal training, submitted his design after the deadline and won; George Washington praised its grandeur and simplicity, and Thornton is counted as the first Architect of the Capitol.

In the Capitol, the Senate chamber sits in which wing?

The Senate sits in the Capitol's north wing and the House in the south wing; the building's east and west sides are both formally called fronts.

Hoban modeled the executive mansion on which Dublin landmark?

Leinster House, built in the 1740s for the Earl of Kildare, later Duke of Leinster, inspired Hoban's design; since 1922 it has housed the Oireachtas, Ireland's parliament.

Which president created the first Oval Office in 1909?

William Howard Taft expanded the West Wing that Theodore Roosevelt had built in 1902 and added the first Oval Office in 1909; Franklin Roosevelt moved it to its present corner in 1934.

Where did the Trumans live from 1948 to 1952 while the Executive Mansion was gutted and rebuilt?

Blair House, across Pennsylvania Avenue, housed the Trumans during the 1948-1952 reconstruction; Truman survived a November 1950 assassination attempt there, and it serves as the President's Guest House.

After the British burned the executive mansion in 1814, Madison's administration moved where?

The Octagon House, built for Virginia planter John Tayloe III, housed the Madisons from 1814 to 1815; it is now a museum run by the American Institute of Architects' foundation.

British troops marched on Washington in August 1814 after winning which battle?

The rout of the American militia became known as the 'Bladensburg Races'; Major-General Robert Ross then led his army into the capital.

What extinguished the fires a day after the British began burning Washington in 1814?

A heavy thunderstorm, possibly a hurricane spawning a tornado, swept in on the afternoon of August 25, 1814, dousing the fires; the British withdrew that evening after about a day in the city.

The Nationals franchise began play in 1969 in which city?

The Montreal Expos debuted in 1969 as MLB's first Canadian franchise; league-owned and struggling, they moved to Washington for 2005, the first relocation since the Senators left for Texas after 1971.

The Nationals won their first World Series in 2019 by beating which team in seven games?

The Houston Astros lost Game 7 at home on October 30, 2019; Stephen Strasburg was series MVP, and the road team won all seven games for the first time in World Series history.

The Capitals won their first Stanley Cup in 2018 by beating which team?

The Vegas Golden Knights, an expansion team in their first season, lost the 2018 final in five games; Alexander Ovechkin was named playoff MVP.

The downtown arena that opened in December 1997 was first named for which company?

Its first event was a Wizards game against Seattle with President Clinton in the stands; the name changed when Verizon bought MCI in 2006.

Washington's NFL franchise was founded in 1932 in which city?

George Preston Marshall's team began as the Boston Braves, became the Redskins a year later, and moved to Washington in 1937.

Which head coach led Washington to three Super Bowl wins between 1982 and 1991?

Gibbs won with three different starting quarterbacks, and later returned for a second stint in 2004.

D.C. United left RFK Stadium in 2018 for which soccer-specific stadium?

Audi Field opened at Buzzard Point in July 2018; D.C. United had played at RFK since MLS's first season in 1996, winning four MLS Cups while based there.

Which two-time WNBA MVP starred for the Mystics?

Delle Donne led the franchise to its first title and is one of the few players in the league's 50-40-90 club.

Howard University is named for a Civil War general who led which agency?

General Oliver Otis Howard ran the Freedmen's Bureau, which aided formerly enslaved people after the Civil War, and helped found the university named for him in 1867.

Which bishop founded Georgetown University in 1789?

John Carroll, later the first Catholic bishop in the United States, founded Georgetown in 1789; it is the oldest Catholic university in the country and received a federal charter in 1815.

Bao Li and which other giant panda made their National Zoo debut in January 2025?

Qing Bao, a female, and male Bao Li arrived from China in October 2024, nearly a year after Mei Xiang, Tian Tian and Xiao Qi Ji went back; both debuted in January 2025.

In which year was the Smithsonian's National Zoo founded?

Congress created the National Zoo in 1889 and it opened in Rock Creek Park in 1891; it became part of the Smithsonian in 1890 and charges no admission.

Ben Ali, founder of Ben's Chili Bowl, was born in which country?

Ben Ali was born in Trinidad to a family of Indian descent; he studied dentistry at Howard before opening Ben's Chili Bowl on U Street in 1958 with his fiancée Virginia Rollins.

Which percussion-driven music genre native to DC was popularized by Chuck Brown?

Go-go, a post-funk style built on percussion breakdowns and call-and-response, took off in the late 1970s under Chuck Brown and was named the District's official music in February 2020.

Which jazz giant was born and raised in Washington and began his career there?

The city's Jazz Age scene centered on the Lincoln and Howard theatres, and the Ellington Bridge now carries his name.

What is DC's signature sausage, served in a bun under chili and onions?

The half-smoke, a coarse smoked pork-and-beef sausage, is served in a hot-dog bun under chili, onions and mustard and is the signature item at Ben's Chili Bowl on U Street.

Which sweet, barbecue-like sauce is a staple of Washington carry-outs?

Mumbo sauce, a sweet, tangy sauce poured over wings and fries at Washington carry-outs, has origins hotly disputed with Chicago, where the Argia B's brand trademarked the name.

The DC flag's three stars and two bars come from whose family coat of arms?

The Washington family arms, two bars and three mullets, were borne by George Washington's English ancestors; the 1938 flag topped a 2004 vexillological survey of 150 US city flags.

In which presidential election did DC residents first cast electoral votes?

The 23rd Amendment, ratified in 1961, gave the District three electors, so residents first voted for president in 1964, backing Lyndon Johnson.

Who became DC's first elected mayor in 1975?

Walter Washington, appointed Mayor-Commissioner in 1967, won the first election under Home Rule in November 1974 and took office in January 1975.

The Washington City Paper gave Marion Barry what nickname?

The City Paper's 'Mayor for Life' tag stuck to Marion Barry, who served four terms, the last beginning in 1995 after a six-month federal prison sentence for cocaine possession.

The Home Rule Act that gave DC an elected mayor and council passed in which year?

The District of Columbia Home Rule Act was signed on December 24, 1973; Congress kept a review period over every council law and control of the district's budget.

Which self-taught astronomer and almanac author helped Andrew Ellicott survey DC's borders?

Banneker, a free Black landowner from Maryland, later sent Thomas Jefferson an almanac with a letter challenging slavery.

Cedar Hill, a 14-room Victorian home east of the river, was whose residence from 1877 to 1895?

Douglass bought the house with a loan from fellow abolitionist Robert Purvis; it is now a National Historic Site.

The Old Post Office's 315-foot clock tower houses what?

The Bells of Congress, ten change-ringing bells replicating those of Westminster Abbey, were a 1976 bicentennial gift from Britain's Ditchley Foundation; the tower is the city's third-tallest structure.

Reagan National Airport sits in which Virginia county?

Reagan National lies in Arlington County, just across the Potomac from the city; it opened in June 1941 as Washington National Airport and was renamed for Reagan in 1998.

Which Chicago architect designed Union Station, opened in 1907?

Daniel Burnham, who led the 1902 McMillan Plan for the Mall, designed the Beaux-Arts station; at its WWII peak as many as 200,000 passengers passed through in a single day.

Union Station even has an IATA airport code; what is it?

Union Station's code is ZWU; airline-style codes let Amtrak trips be booked through air-travel reservation systems, with Z-prefixed codes assigned to rail stations.

Which architect designed the Supreme Court Building, completed in 1935?

Gilbert was a friend of William Howard Taft, who pushed for a separate building after becoming Chief Justice.

Who designed the black granite wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial?

Lin was a 21-year-old Yale student when her minimalist design won a national competition.

Who carved the 'Stone of Hope' statue at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial?

Lei Yixin, a sculptor from Changsha, carved the 30-foot Stone of Hope from pale Chinese granite; the choice of a Chinese artist and stone drew criticism before the 2011 opening.

The King Memorial's address, 1964 Independence Avenue SW, commemorates what?

The address 1964 Independence Avenue SW was chosen to mark the Civil Rights Act of 1964; King, who attended its signing, is the first African American honored with a memorial on the Mall.

Each of the 4,048 gold stars on the WWII Memorial's Freedom Wall stands for how many American dead?

Each of the 4,048 stars stands for 100 American military dead, about 405,000 in all; the memorial opened in 2004 on the site of the old Rainbow Pool.

Which piece of wartime graffiti is engraved twice, inconspicuously, in the WWII Memorial?

'Kilroy was here', the doodle of a long-nosed man peeking over a wall that followed American troops around the world, is engraved in two hidden spots of the memorial.

Which dog is sculpted beside Roosevelt at the FDR Memorial?

Fala, Roosevelt's Scottish terrier, was so famous that FDR defended him in the September 1944 'Fala speech' to the Teamsters; his bronze sits beside the president at the memorial.

The National Gallery of Art was founded in 1937 on a gift from which financier?

Neither Mellon nor architect John Russell Pope lived to see the West Building open in 1941.

Who designed the Hirshhorn Museum's raised cylinder on four massive legs?

Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill designed the 1974 building, which houses the sculpture and painting collection that Latvian-born financier Joseph Hirshhorn gave to the nation in 1966.

The Watergate complex sits in which DC neighborhood?

The Watergate stands in Foggy Bottom beside the Kennedy Center; the six-building complex, designed by Italian architect Luigi Moretti, gave its name to the scandal that toppled Nixon.

The Kennedy Center opened in 1971 with the premiere of whose 'Mass'?

Leonard Bernstein's Mass, commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy, opened the center on September 8, 1971; architect Edward Durell Stone designed the building.

Rock Creek Park was created by Act of Congress in which year?

Congress created Rock Creek Park on September 27, 1890, two days after Sequoia and four days before Yosemite; at 1,754 acres it is the city's largest park.

What is the oldest still-standing building in Washington, built in 1765?

It predates the city itself, and legend long (and wrongly) held that L'Enfant used it as his headquarters.

Theodore Roosevelt Island in the Potomac can be reached only by what?

A footbridge from the George Washington Memorial Parkway in Virginia is the only way on; no cars or bikes are allowed on the 88.5-acre island, once known as Analostan Island.

DC celebrates Emancipation Day on which date?

Lincoln signed the Compensated Emancipation Act on April 16, 1862, freeing about 3,100 people in the District nearly nine months before the Emancipation Proclamation.

Boundary Street, the city's original northern edge, was renamed what in 1890?

Beyond it the street grid was extended across the whole district starting in 1888.

K Street is shorthand in Washington for which industry?

Many lobbying firms have since moved elsewhere, but the name stuck as a political metonym.

An 1889 law bans what within much of the historic City of Washington?

Congress's 1889 ban on overhead wires in the original city is why downtown power lines run underground and why Washington's streetcars drew power from an underground conduit between the rails.

Which president was the first to worship at St. John's Church on Lafayette Square?

James Madison attended soon after the church opened in 1816; pew 54 has been reserved for the president ever since, earning it the nickname 'Church of the Presidents'.

The Folger Library on Capitol Hill holds the world's largest collection of material on which English writer?

Shakespeare: oil executive Henry Clay Folger's collection includes 82 copies of the 1623 First Folio.

The Phillips Collection in Dupont Circle was the first US museum devoted to what?

Duncan Phillips opened it in 1921 in his family home as America's first museum of modern art; Renoir's 'Luncheon of the Boating Party' is its best-known work.

Which Washington-born march composer led the Marine Band from 1880 to 1892?

John Philip Sousa, born on Capitol Hill in 1854, led the Marine Band from 1880 to 1892 and wrote 'Semper Fidelis' for it; the band, founded in 1798, is the country's oldest professional musical organization.

Congress held its first session in Washington in which year?

On November 17, 1800, the 6th Congress met in the unfinished Capitol, and John Adams had moved into the new President's House on November 1 that year.

The 446-acre National Arboretum in Northeast DC is run by which federal department?

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service runs the arboretum, founded in 1927; its best-known landmark is the National Capitol Columns, 22 sandstone columns removed from the Capitol's east portico.

What is DC's largest structure by floor area, at about 3.1 million square feet?

The Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, opened in 1998, anchors Federal Triangle; it is the largest building in the District and the second-largest federal building after the Pentagon.

Constitution Gardens includes a memorial to the 56 signers of which document?

The Memorial to the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence, dedicated in 1984, sits on an island in the Constitution Gardens pond, northwest of the Washington Monument near the Lockkeeper's House.

Which city's land was returned by retrocession in 1846, shrinking the district?

Alexandria and the rest of the district's Virginia side went back to Virginia in 1846; residents, fearing Congress would end the slave trade in the district and resentful of economic neglect, had petitioned for retrocession.