Ghosts of DC

The lost and untold history of Washington, DC. New and old content regularly tweeted automagically for your scrolling pleasure.

[Ghosts of DC @GhostsofDC]

On a Thursday afternoon in 1929, a 500-gallon tank under the sidewalk at 416 Seventh Street NW let go. It lifted 40 feet of concrete into the air and killed six people walking to lunch. None of them worked at the store.

https://t.co/uajlJjo5Bq

[Ghosts of DC @GhostsofDC]

In 1863, one determined woman wrote a letter to Abraham Lincoln that changed Thanksgiving forever. Here's how Sarah Josepha Hale convinced a wartime president to give thanks.

https://t.co/AZUsdoE3Tf

[Ghosts of DC @GhostsofDC]

The Pentagon's iconic five-sided shape wasn't chosen for symbolism, military branches, or geometric perfection. The real reason? A few old farm roads in Arlington.

https://t.co/mDaEKrV7VV

[Ghosts of DC @GhostsofDC]

U2's second American show ever. The Ramones, 21 times. Eva Cassidy's final performance. For 45 years, the loudest room in Georgetown sat in the shadow of an elevated freeway, then vanished for a multiplex.

https://t.co/1grQoCm2aC

[Ghosts of DC @GhostsofDC]

He laid the Washington Monument's cornerstone in 1848 and was invited back 36 years later to see it finished. In between, he became the last man DC residents would elect as mayor for over a century.

https://t.co/GGCgcDcknn

[Ghosts of DC @GhostsofDC]

The cast-iron column blocking your view at the original 9:30 Club was drawn by a Treasury architect in 1887. Bands loaded gear through the same alley John Wilkes Booth used to escape.

https://t.co/D8vaP4kvtw

[Ghosts of DC @GhostsofDC]

Queen City, Arlington. 903 residents, 218 homes, a church, a school, a grocery. On April 17, 1942, the Army cleared the last of it to build the cloverleaf feeding the Pentagon. The families scattered, never relocated as a community.

https://t.co/TPmWCtITUy

[Ghosts of DC @GhostsofDC]

A Bentley double-parked on Wisconsin Avenue in Bethesda in July 1966. A chauffeur in full livery walked into a record store and asked for Brian Jones's stolen dulcimer. A 15-year-old from Chevy Chase had grabbed it from a van behind Washington Coliseum.

https://t.co/RCzRGaqQyC

[Ghosts of DC @GhostsofDC]

May 1957: Marilyn Monroe slept on a sofa bed in a Forest Hills den at 3625 Appleton St NW, biking around in sunglasses while Arthur Miller stood trial for contempt of Congress downtown. The only neighbor who recognized her was a six-year-old.

https://t.co/t8XMk6lCNO

[Ghosts of DC @GhostsofDC]

In July 1958, sixty-seven new buses rolled into Washington with chrome script above the windows reading Arcticooler. The man behind them, O. Roy Chalk, also wanted to build a 116-mile monorail to Dulles.

https://t.co/22gLQ0q1RO

[Ghosts of DC @GhostsofDC]

September 11, 1886. A skinny 23-year-old catcher made his major-league debut on a swampy lot near the Capitol and beat Philadelphia 4-3. His name was Connie Mack. The whole neighborhood is buried under Union Station now.

https://t.co/CALYGhLH3g

[Ghosts of DC @GhostsofDC]

Frank Lloyd Wright drew Washington a glass city in 1940: twenty-one towers, 2,500 hotel rooms, a 400-foot crystal bar, a theater for 1,000. DC's height limit killed it. The Hinckley Hilton sits on the hill instead.

https://t.co/uDgU0aAsQK

[Ghosts of DC @GhostsofDC]

Gordon Parks timed them at seven seconds: boots, coat, helmet, gone. The Black firefighters of Engine Company No. 4 also ate off plates the department labeled separately, and slept on cots assigned by race. DC's first all-Black firehouse, 1919–1962.

https://t.co/kaCszkgMZ9

[Ghosts of DC @GhostsofDC]

In 1921, Glen Echo wouldn't let Black Washingtonians through the gate. So a vaudeville star, an engineer, and a writer built their own amusement park in Deanwood. Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway played the dance pavilion.

https://t.co/2104g0ZI3W

[Ghosts of DC @GhostsofDC]

On June 30, 1960, five Howard students were arrested for trying to ride the Dentzel carousel at Glen Echo Park. Same horses are still spinning today. $2 a ticket.

https://t.co/b6IppFMe0q

[Ghosts of DC @GhostsofDC]

In 1921 the future Duchess of Windsor was just a separated Navy wife in Georgetown, lunching at the Hotel Hamilton on K Street. That's where she met the Argentine diplomat who would unwind her marriage years before Edward ever did.

https://t.co/gWnqEej5C7

[Ghosts of DC @GhostsofDC]

In 1987 the Army and Navy Club at 17th and I was gutted down to its 1912 stone shell. Reagan was supposed to cut the ribbon on the rebuild. A snowstorm scrubbed it.

https://t.co/FeFZjl1FDk

[Ghosts of DC @GhostsofDC]

Washington's first AI panic happened in 1950.

A computer on Connecticut Avenue. Congress held hearings about machines replacing jobs.

An MIT professor refused to help build them.

Same argument. Different machine.

https://t.co/D2x9rttycZ

Live photo animated by Grok.

[Ghosts of DC @GhostsofDC]

$3 million in cash hidden in the safes. Burning papers wafting from the chimney on Pearl Harbor Day. The old German Embassy at 1435 Mass Ave NW had secrets that nobody remembers anymore. https://t.co/P7N9NMcVxj

[Ghosts of DC @GhostsofDC]

Why is it named Constitution Ave? It used to be B Street.

1937 AI-enhanced clip of 14th St NW near Constitution Ave. An 80-year-old congressman renamed it in a 30-minute hearing. He died two days before Hoover signed the bill.

https://t.co/1JbnRHrZyr