Boundary Stones

On April 26, 1954, second graders at Franklin Sherman Elementary in McLean, Virginia kicked off the nationwide trials of Dr. Jonas Salk's polio vaccine. Called the biggest medical experiment in U.S. History, the much-publicized trials were a turning point in the fight against a disease that had terrified families for decades.

In 1950, an orphaned bear cub was rescued from a wildfire in New Mexico and brought to Washington to live at the National Zoo. Named "Smokey" after the popular Forest Service character, the cub became a real life advocate for fire prevention and got so much fan mail that the U.S. Postal Service gave him his own private D.C. zipcode.

On a cold night on February 8, 1967, a plane landed at National Airport. The only indication of the plane’s arrival came through a cryptic message, sent by the FBI agents on board: “the Bird” had landed. On the plane was precious cargo — a painting by Leonardo Da Vinci, purchased for a record-breaking sum after a decades-long pursuit by the National Gallery.

Even in Washington, D.C.'s long and complex history of suffrage, the deadly election riot of June 1, 1857, stands out. That was the day anti-immigrant rioters — armed with sledgehammers, pistols, and even a cannon — attempted to win an election through brutal violence at the polls, clashing with police and forcing President James Buchanan to order out the United States Marines.

On the morning of August 21, 1939 five young African American men entered the segregated public library in Alexandria, Virginia and asked for library card applications. They were denied and sat down to read in silence. When the police arrived to arrest the protesters, it touched off a legal fight — and demonstrated the power of a new tactic to defeat Jim Crow.

After Richard Nixon resigned during the Watergate scandal, Gerald Ford found himself in uncharted territory. When Ford took the oath of office on August 9, 1974, the White House was not yet ready for him. So, for the first 10 days of his Presidency, Ford commuted to the Oval Office and his suburban neighborhood home in Alexandria, Virginia became the unlikely epicenter of American politics.

When Frank Kameny was fired from his job with Army Map Service in 1957 because he was accused of being homosexual, he could've gone quietly. Instead, he fought back, founding LGTBQ rights organizations and launching a longshot campaign for Congress in 1971.

According to legend, the Hope Diamond has a centuries-old curse and brings disaster to everyone who possesses it. But that didn't deter Washington, D.C. socialites Evalyn Walsh McLean and her husband Ned. After they bought the diamond from the Cartier Jewelry Company in 1911, Evalyn proclaimed, "Bad luck objects, for me, are lucky." For the next 36 years, fate would test that theory.

On March 22, 1969, a group made up mostly of Catholic priests, nuns and seminarians broke into the Washington office of Dow Chemical Company, a company then synonymous with the production of napalm. What the activists did next — and the criminal trial that followed — created a firestorm of controversy, raising questions about the Church, the war effort, and the limits of non-violent protest.

On December 5, 1980, renowned Washington, D.C. cardiologist Dr. Michael Halberstam was shot during a burglary at his home. Bleeding heavily, the doctor jumped in his car and ran over his assailant while driving himself to Sibley Hospital, where he died. The odd chain of events was just the tip of the iceberg in one of the strangest true crime stories in D.C. history.

Marion Barry wasn’t always Washington, D.C.’s “Mayor For Life.” When he arrived in Washington in 1965, he was a chemistry teacher-turned-civil rights activist with SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Less than a year later, he was leading a bus boycott that challenged inequities in transportation — and kick-started a political career which would last decades.

In 1941, the U.S. was preparing for World War II. Residents of Queen City, a tight-knit Black neighborhood in Arlington, watched in awe as nearly 15,000 workers erected the Pentagon on a plot of federally-owned land next to their community. Some had enlisted, while others worked for the federal government. But then the government came for their shops, their churches and even their homes.