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Unknown Soldier nearly lost at see on USS Olympia to Arlington
Philadelphia — Up on deck, where the casket of the unknown soldier was tied down with rope and covered with canvas, the Marine guards lashed themselves to the ship’s stanchions so they wouldn’t be swept overboard. Twenty-foot seas broke over the pilot house. One Marine was drenched by a wave so big that it tore his hip boots off. And the ship was rolling so badly that the crew feared that each roll would be its last. It was the fall of 1921.
Fifty years ago, a hippie, a dental assistant and a 15-year-old helped open China with ping pong
It was April 10, 1971, and the teenage table tennis players were part of an improbable group of Americans who became the first to enter Communist China in two decades and begin a thaw that would evolve over 50 years. Called “ping-pong diplomacy,” the encounter brought the long hair, blue jeans, rock-and-roll revolution of the United States face-to-face with the grim reality of Communism in China.
The search for the missing dead in a historic African American cemetery
It was the fall of 1912, and in the Prince George’s County tobacco country, money to fix the old log church was scarce. But $50.01 was duly raised, and hailed with a church proclamation. Now, Sister Angeline, Brother Ceaser and Sister Josephine rest somewhere in a tiny cemetery where the church got its start, and their descendants in faith have launched a project to find the lost graves of some of the oldest members.
Wreckage of long-lost WW II ship, sunken with its Native American skipper and half its crew, identified
Near the end, the battered American destroyer USS Johnston was surrounded by Japanese warships closing in to finish her off. The Johnston was ablaze. Scores of sailors lay dead. And after three hours of heroic battle, only one of its guns could return fire. At 9:45 a.m. on Oct. 25, 1944, the wounded skipper, Cmdr. Ernest E. Evans, gave the order to abandon ship, and 25 minutes later the Johnston sank off the Philippine island of Samar.
An old church in Maryland marks Palm Sunday with a parade of cars
In the basement kitchen of the old whitewashed church, Elder Gail Howard was arranging the palm fronds for distribution. Upstairs, Debbie Blair was sitting in the first pew, preparing her laptop for the Zoom connection. And at the wooden altar, the Rev. Monica Banks, with a tattoo of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo on her left arm, opened the Bible to John 12:12-16.
Korean War Veterans Memorial to add a list of those who died in combat
Just before midnight on July 9, 1951, the body of Army Pvt. John Aaron Jr. left Jersey City, N.J., on a B & O train, bound for his hometown of High Shoals, Ga., and his mother, Lillie Mae Malcolm. Aaron was 22 when, early in the Korean War, he and hundreds of other green Americans were thrown into battle at a place called Hadong, where they were ambushed by North Korean soldiers and almost wiped out. He was first reported missing in action.
Covid art, vaccine vials to be part of Library of Congress, Smithsonian collections
Lane’s surreal drawing is part of the trove of physical and digital artifacts being gathered at places like the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution to capture for posterity what the great coronavirus pandemic was like. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History said Tuesday that it has acquired the empty vial of the vaccine dose given to the first post-trial U.S. recipient, New York nurse Sandra Lindsay, along with her hospital ID badge, socks, pants and top.
Remains of Emil Kapaun, Korean War priest who won Medal of Honor for bravery, identified
The remains of Father Emil J. Kapaun, the Catholic priest and Korean War POW who was given the Medal of Honor posthumously in 2013, have been identified, the Pentagon said Friday. The almost complete set of Kapaun’s remains had been exhumed from a cemetery in Hawaii where they had been buried as unknown after the 1950-1953 war, his nephew, Ray Kapaun, said Friday. The identification was made using dental records and DNA, he said. He said he was not sure when the exhumation took place.
More than 1 million coronavirus cases reported in D.C., Maryland and Virginia
Please Note The Washington Post is providing this important information about the coronavirus for free. For more free coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, where all stories are free to read. A line of waiting cars snaked around the parking lot of a Sterling elementary school this past weekend, the queue of vehicles stretching for blocks.
Human remains found at Williamsburg Black church site
Human remains have been discovered in an archaeological dig at the site of a historic African American church in Colonial Williamsburg, experts announced Monday. A worn upper front tooth and what is probably a finger bone were unearthed during excavation at the site of the old First Baptist Church, one of the oldest such churches in the country and the earliest African American church in Williamsburg, experts said.
West Point football was all-White until 1966. So why does this 1920s photo show an all-Black squad?
To his surprise, the image that popped up showed a team of all African American players. But the U.S. Military Academy did not have its first varsity Black football player until 1966, 40 years later. “Who are these guys?” he said he wondered. Schneider had opened a fascinating window into West Point’s past — a time when, amid entrenched racial segregation, units of the famous African American troops known as Buffalo Soldiers were brought to West Point to teach horsemanship.
National Zoo to split with longtime funding partner FONZ
The National Zoo said Thursday that after 63 years it is severing its relationship with its longtime fundraising partner, Friends of the National Zoo. The action is being taken as the zoo faces an estimated $15 million budget shortfall due to covid-19, which has kept the Smithsonian landmark in Washington closed for much of the last year.
Eight years after JFK’s assassination, Jackie Kennedy slipped into the White House for one last visit
Even so, “the thought of seeing the White House again” was painful, she wrote first lady Pat Nixon in January 1970. “I have returned to Washington only to visit Arlington,” the national cemetery where her husband was buried. “I know that time will make things easier,” she wrote. “And that one day, when they and I are older, I must take Caroline and John back to the places where they lived with their father.
The Marine Band has played at every inauguration since Jefferson. It’s one tradition that will carry on this year. Original
Shortly before 10 a.m. Wednesday, a group of about 60 men and women clad in black wool overcoats will assemble on a platform just below the Capitol inauguration stage where two weeks ago a mob egged on by President Trump’s incendiary words pushed through barriers and forced their way into the historic building.
Lincoln’s first inauguration met with threats of kidnapping, killing and militias
But below the platform the Army had deployed artillery. Snipers watched from rooftops and windows, and Lincoln had been guarded by infantry and cavalry on his carriage ride through the streets to the Capitol. Many people wanted him dead. “There goes that Illinois ape, the cursed Abolitionist,” a woman in crowd was heard to say.
Holocaust survivors record memories on Zoom during pandemic Original
But when he got to the part about how his mother, Liza, and younger brother, Rafael, had been lured to an Athens synagogue with promises of food, and how they were shipped off to the Auschwitz death camp, he began to weep. Ina Navazelskis, an interviewer with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, was quiet for a moment as she watched him on her laptop in her study in Falls Church, Va. Normally, she would have been face to face with Orel in his home with a video and audio crew.
National Zoo’s giant pandas will head to China in three years
The National Zoo said Monday that all three of its giant pandas will be going to China at the end of 2023, according to a new agreement struck with Chinese officials. The agreement grants a three-year extension to the stay of the adult giant pandas, Mei Xiang, a female, and Tian Tian, a male, who have been at the zoo for 20 years, the zoo said. But they and their 4-month-old cub, Xiao Qi Ji, a male, are to go to China by the end of the extension on Dec. 8, 2023.
Arlington Memorial Bridge to reopen after two-year rehab
The Arlington Memorial Bridge over the Potomac River was to reopen Friday after a two-year, $227 million rehabilitation project that had disrupted traffic on one of Washington’s most heavily used and historic spans. The bridge, which had seen many months of closed and shifted lanes, would re-open fully by afternnon, said Interior Secretary David L. Bernhardt. It still had some traffic limitations as of Friday morning.
Army museums have tens of thousands of artifacts. They’re looking to downsize.
Same for the elegant officer’s cap with the faded blue infantry band from the early 1900s. And the white cotton men’s underdrawers, circa 1950. And the piles of heavy leggings. And the Iraqi army helmet. And the women’s black shoes, circa 1985. And the posters, and rifles, and maybe some tanks, and tens of thousands of other artifacts at the museum center and 47 Army museums across the country, in Germany and in South Korea.
Graves found at site of historic Virginia Black church
Archaeologists have found evidence of at least two graves, along with artifacts such as a fragment of an ink bottle, a porcelain piece of doll’s foot, and building foundations, during a dig at the site of a historic African American church in Colonial Williamsburg, officials said Monday. The discoveries were made in late summer and early fall beneath a parking lot on Nassau Street at the former location of the old First Baptist Church.
Baraka, the zoo’s giant silverback gorilla, gets a checkup — inside and out
Baraka, the 400-pound silverback gorilla, lay on his back with a tube down his throat, red-and-orange booties on his feet, and his insides beamed in color on a video screen. It was an inelegant position for the leader of the National Zoo’s troop of western lowland gorillas — the boss, the arbiter of disputes, the ultimate authority.
Giant anchors, wrecked boats and a ‘Liberty’ clock: Inside the storage site for Navy museum Original
RICHMOND — After they left their shipwrecked comrades to go for help in November 1870, the five sailors carved their names in their small boat, as if to inform posterity if they did not survive. William Halford, Peter Francis Jr., John Andrews, James Muir and Lt. John G. Talbot etched their names in a hatch of their makeshift rescue vessel as they sailed from remote Kure Atoll in the mid-Pacific Ocean.
Maryland plantation may hold slave quarters connected to Georgetown University Original
Here, where the religious order that founded Georgetown University once kept scores of enslaved people, experts say they have found the first archaeological evidence of those enslaved at the former plantation at Newtowne in St. Mary’s County. A dig that ended late last month confirmed the outline of an unusual rectangular structure on the site, as well as artifacts such as ceramics and clay pipe stems, said Julie M.
100 years ago: An election, a virus and a cry from disillusioned youths
“We have seen hideous peculation, greed, [and] anger,” he wrote. “We have seen entire social systems overthrown, and our own called in question.” It was 1920, and the author was John F. Carter Jr., the 23-year-old son of a minister, who was just out of Yale, and who in later life would be a fixture in Washington political circles.
Women’s history shrine donates trove of artifacts to Library of Congress and National Park Service Original
Kirsten Hammerstrom pulled out the cabinet drawer, opened the flat box and unfolded the thin conservation paper to find what she was looking for: two century-old gray ribbons bearing the inscription “Woman’s Movement for Constructive Peace.” Each had a tarnished star fixed to the fabric, and Hammerstrom turned it over to show how the star was attached. “A great big safety pin,” she said, “which is kind of funny.” “They would pin to your shoulder, and the star would glitter,” she said.
FDR’s moving fireside D-Day prayer to be added to World War II Memorial
The voice of the president was soothing as it came through radios across America that evening, with the same slow cadences, precise enunciation and warmth people had heard from Franklin D. Roosevelt for years. But this was June 6, 1944 — D-Day, in World War II. Allied troops had begun the high-risk landings on the beaches of Normandy. And Roosevelt wished to tell the citizens how dangerous an enterprise it was, and how the soldiers and sailors needed their support and God’s.
Navy announces plans for new flagship museum in Washington
The Navy announced Tuesday that it plans to build a new $450 million flagship museum, replacing the out-of-date facility that has been at the Washington Navy Yard for more than 50 years. The new facility would replace the existing National Museum of the U.S. Navy, which has been in Building 76, a cavernous old former gun factory at the Navy Yard. But because it is on an active installation with tight security, public access has been difficult.
A dead soldier’s rifle and a trove of artifacts to debut in new Army museum
Pvt. Martin J. Teahan’s rifle sits in a display case, his name, “M. Teahan,” carved on one side of the wooden stock and the mysterious name “Kitty” carved on the other. It’s a small artifact. A simple rifle carried by an American paratrooper who jumped into France on D-Day and was killed in action. But it is a link to the Army’s history, and one of the powerful artifacts in its new museum outside Washington.
D.C. woman found shot to death in Southeast
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Men killed in Columbia Heights on Saturday identified
Two men found shot to death after the report of a burglary in Columbia Heights on Saturday have been identified, D.C. police said Sunday. The victims were Marcus Nelson, 59, and Simmeon Williams, 39, both of Northeast, police said. Investigators said police had gone to a home in the 1700 block of Irving Street, shortly after 2 p.m., for a report of a burglary and the sound of gunshots. They found both men dead at the scene with multiple gunshot wounds.
Man slain Saturday in Northeast D.C. is identified.
Authorities have identified a man slain Saturday afternoon in Northeast Washington as Darnell Mack. D.C. police said Mack, 25, who had been shot, lived in Northeast. Officers investigating a report of a shooting in the 4500 block of Quarles Street, near Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens, learned that a male victim had been driven to a hospital, where he died. Police asked anyone with information about the case to call 202-727-9099.
D.C. region’s coronavirus caseload ticks upward to three-week high
Please Note The Washington Post is providing this important information about the coronavirus for free. For more free coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, where all stories are free to read. The past two days have brought the greater Washington region’s highest coronavirus caseloads in nearly a month, sending the average number of daily infections to a 21-day high. The rolling seven-day average of new cases jumped to 1,617 on Friday, the region’s highest since Sept. 18.
Ford's Theater reopens - The Washington Post
After a seven-month closure because of coronavirus precautions, Ford’s Theatre and Museum will begin a phased reopening Wednesday, the Ford’s Theatre Society and the National Park Service announced Friday. The theater, where President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, and its museum will be open with timed tickets from 10 a.m. to noon, closed for cleaning from noon to 1 p.m., and reopening from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. A maximum of 25 visitors per hour will be permitted in the building.
Park Police horses to get new, more modern home on the Mall
Tedi, the horse, was upset. He was a 10-year veteran of the U.S. Park Police mounted unit. He had spent a decade of hot summer days on the Mall, cold winters on the streets, and time in the shabby stables off Independence Avenue. In the next stall was Chief, a former hunt club horse, who had worked at a spa in Virginia, donated to the force by a local philanthropist a year or so ago.
It’s a boy! National Zoo reveals the gender of its new panda cub.
The National Zoo said Monday that its six-week-old giant panda cub is a male. “Outwardly, male and female cubs appear similar at birth, so a genetic test was the most accurate way to determine the cub’s sex,” the zoo said in a statement. The statement continued: “During the cub’s first veterinary exam Sept. 19 … veterinarians obtained a swab from his cheek for DNA analysis.” Veterinarians said the cub appears to be healthy and strong, the zoo said.
Cascade of title pages, and one squashed fly, help mark 150 years of the U.S. Copyright Office
The poor fly. It could have been squashed on the title page of Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer,” or Frederick Douglass’s “My Bondage and My Freedom." It could have landed that day on poems by John Greenleaf Whittier. Or a book by Nathaniel Hawthorne. But, no.
Washington Monument to reopen to the public, with virus safety precautions
The Washington Monument will reopen to the public Thursday at 9 a.m. after a six-month closure due to covid-19 fears, the National Park Service said Monday. The monument will be open seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tickets will be available only online, starting Wednesday, at recreation.gov. Tickets will be available at 10 a.m. each day for the following day. Each ticket is good for up to four individuals, the Park Service said. Face coverings will be required.
Beneath a Virginia parking lot rest the bones of an old Black church and, perhaps, its worshipers
Dandridge and other archaeologists from Colonial Williamsburg last week began excavating the site of the old First Baptist Church, one of the oldest such churches in the country, which had buildings there in 1856, though perhaps as early as 1818, and was organized in 1776. The 1856 church — whose bell was used to dedicate the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington four years ago — was torn down in the 1950s.
How the Army and the media broke up a Japanese war criminal’s suicide attempt
Right behind them were George Burns, of Yank Magazine, Clark Lee, of the International News Service, Cornelius Ryan, the future D-Day historian, then with London’s Daily Telegraph, and reporters and photographers with the Associated Press, United Press, the New York Times and others. The general stood before them with a smoking pistol and a wound where he had just shot himself in the chest. “I am Tojo!” he had told the reporters outside minutes earlier.
Victim slain Thursday in D.C. is identified as Maryland man.
Police have identified a man killed Thursday afternoon in an industrial area off Bladensburg Road in Northeast Washington as Kyree Pringle, 25, of Bryans Road, Md., in Charles County. Police responded to a report of a shooting in the 2800 block of V Street at 4:01 p.m. They found Pringle’s body inside a vehicle, where he had sustained multiple gunshot wounds.
National Zoo says giant panda may be pregnant, birth could come this weekend
The National Zoo said Friday that its female giant panda, Mei Xiang, appears to be pregnant, and the birth of a cub — amid the nation’s medical, social and political upheaval — could come as early as this weekend. The zoo said it launched its 24-hour-a-day panda cam watch Friday. An ultrasound Friday morning clearly showed what looked like a fetus, the zoo said. Chief veterinarian Don Neiffer said there could even be two. “I can’t confirm or deny that there’s two there,” he said.
Japan’s emperor had to tell his people World War II was lost. He did so on a scratchy recording.
But Japan’s once-mighty armed forces had been destroyed — its ships sunk, its soldiers killed, its planes shot down. Its cities had been bombed to rubble — most recently by two atomic weapons. And the emperor now had to tell his people the war was lost. How loudly did one say that World War II was over? That the global catastrophe, which began in Europe in 1939 and spread across oceans and continents, and killed and maimed millions, was at an end?
Abraham Lincoln: Library of Congress finishes transcribing letters to president
An Italian opera singer expressed anger that the president had not replied to her: “How [can] a Great Personnage like your Excellency surrounded of glory and ornamented of fine education … not answer a Lady letters?” Complaints, advice, congratulations, introductions, pleas, job requests and military reports poured into Abraham Lincoln’s mailbox before and during his presidency.
Hiroshima’s Enola Gay carried 12 men, hope and the world’s deadliest weapon
The giant silver bomber roared along the runway on Tinian Island in the darkness, passing the firetrucks and ambulances parked every 50 feet, struggling to pick up speed. “Dimples Eight Two” weighed 150,000 pounds, and with fuel for the long flight to Hiroshima, 12 men on board, and a five-ton uranium bomb in the bay, the B-29 was 15,000 pounds overweight. The pilot, Col. Paul W.
A modern canal boat is headed to the C&O in Georgetown. It will be powered by both motors and mules.
In April 1835, an elegant new vessel entered the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal at Dam No. 5 and descended about six miles to the boat basin at Williamsport, Md. It was the Lady Washington, a “handsomely decorated and ‘trim built’ craft,” the local newspaper said, with a cabin roof that was painted red and white.
Zoo reopens to the delight of children and the relief of parents
Aundrea Wilcox and her husband, Matt, packed up their three kids and the double stroller and the umbrellas, jumped in the car and in the rain drove 60 miles from their home in Fredericksburg to be at the National Zoo when it reopened Friday morning. They would not be stopped. There had been nothing for the kids to do. For days, weeks, months. But now, at last, here was the zoo — back after a long coronavirus closure.
Fairfax County police chief Edwin C. Roessler Jr. injured in scuffle at his Chantilly church
Fairfax County police chief Edwin C. Roessler Jr. was injured Saturday during a scuffle inside his church with a person who apparently has a mental illness, county police said. Two people are believed to have suffered nonlife-threatening stab wounds, police said. The chief was not stabbed, but scratched and perhaps bitten, police said. He was taken to a hospital for examination.
Civil War slavery receipts: National Archives records show slaveholders were paid for work by enslaved
On Nov. 13, 1862, the Confederate government advertised in the Charleston Daily Courier for 20 or 30 “able bodied Negro men” to work in the new nitre beds at Ashley Ferry, S.C. “The highest wages will be paid monthly,” the ad stated. It was odious work. The nitre beds were large rectangles of rotted manure and straw, moistened weekly with urine, “dung water,” and liquid from privies, cesspools and drains, and turned over regularly, according to accounts at the time.
This year the virus has made the Fourth a fireworks fizzle
Shows at Elkton, Md., Middletown, Del., North East, Md., and dozens of other places were also gone, as a result of covid-19 fears, he said. “I’ve never been able to prepare for something like this,” he said. “About 90 percent of the shows canceled. . . . It’s just horrible.” While the virus has the trade in backyard fireworks booming, it has wrought havoc with the aerial fireworks display industry.
Fourth of July celebration on the Mall will feature fireworks and masks
Flyovers by the Air Force Thunderbirds and the Navy’s Blue Angels jet demonstration teams, plus a huge fireworks display, will highlight the Fourth of July festivities on the Mall, the Department of the Interior and National Park Service announced Wednesday. Vintage World War II aircraft such as the P-51 Mustang the B-29 bomber will also participate. But because of the covid-19 pandemic, more than 300,000 cloth face coverings will be available and distributed to visitors.
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