Washington

The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the President of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in... Washington, D.C., it was designed by Irish-born James Hoban. and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the late Georgian style. It has been the residence of every U.S. President since John Adams. When Thomas Jefferson moved into the home in 1801, he expanded the building outward, creating two colonnades that were meant to conceal stables and storage. In 1814, during the War of 1812, the mansion was set ablaze by the British Army in the Burning of Washington, destroying the interior and charring much of the exterior. Reconstruction began almost immediately, and President James Monroe moved into the partially reconstructed house in October 1817. Construction continued with the addition of the South Portico in 1824 and the North in 1829. Because of crowding within the executive mansion itself, President Theodore Roosevelt had nearly all work offices relocated to the newly constructed West Wing in 1901.
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The Lincoln Memorial is an American memorial built to honor the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. It is located on the National... Mall in Washington, D.C. and was dedicated on May 30, 1922. The architect was Henry Bacon, the sculptor of the main statue was Daniel Chester French, and the painter of the interior murals was Jules Guerin. It is one of several monuments built to honor an American president. The building is in the form of a Greek Doric temple and contains a large seated sculpture of Abraham Lincoln and inscriptions of two well-known speeches by Lincoln. The memorial has been the site of many famous speeches, including Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered on August 28, 1963 during the rally at the end of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Like other monuments on the National Mall – including the nearby Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Korean War Veterans Memorial, and National World War II Memorial – the memorial is administered by the National Park Service under its National Mall and Memorial Parks group. It has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since October 15, 1966.
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Mount Vernon, located near Alexandria, Virginia, was the plantation home of the first President of the United States, George Washington. The mansion... is built of wood in neoclassical Georgian architectural style, and the estate is located on the banks of the Potomac River. Mount Vernon was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is owned and maintained in trust by The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association and is open every day of the year, including holidays and Christmas. When Augustine Washington owned the estate, it was known as Little Hunting Creek Plantation after the nearby Little Hunting Creek. Lawrence Washington, George's older half-brother, inherited the estate and changed its name to Mount Vernon in honor of Vice Admiral Edward Vernon. Vernon had been Lawrence's commanding officer in the British Navy, and Lawrence greatly admired him. When George Washington inherited the property he kept the name Mount Vernon. The early history of the estate at Little Hunting Creek is separate from that of the home, which wasn't occupied until 1743.
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The Washington Monument is an obelisk near the west end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., built to commemorate the first U.S. president,... General George Washington. The monument, made of marble, granite, and sandstone, is both the world's tallest stone structure and the world's tallest obelisk, standing 555 feet 5⅛ inches . There are taller monumental columns, but they are neither all stone nor true obelisks. It is also the tallest structure in Washington D.C.. It was designed by Robert Mills, an architect of the 1840s. The actual construction of the monument began in 1848 but was not completed until 1884, almost 30 years after the architect's death. This hiatus in construction happened because of co-option by the Know Nothing party, a lack of funds, and the intervention of the American Civil War. A difference in shading of the marble, visible approximately 150 feet up, shows where construction was halted for a number of years. The cornerstone was laid on July 4, 1848; the capstone was set on December 6, 1884, and the completed monument was dedicated on February 21, 1885. It officially opened October 9, 1888.
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The National Gallery of Art is a national art museum, located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Open to the public free of charge, the museum... was established in 1937 for the people of the United States of America by a joint resolution of the United States Congress, with funds for construction and a substantial art collection donated by Andrew W. Mellon. Additionally, the core collection has major works of art donated by Paul Mellon, Ailsa Mellon Bruce, Lessing J. Rosenwald, Samuel Henry Kress, Rush Harrison Kress, Peter Arrell Brown Widener, Joseph E. Widener and Chester Dale. The Gallery's collection of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, medals, and decorative arts traces the development of Western Art from the Middle Ages to the present, including the only painting by Leonardo da Vinci in the Americas and the largest mobile ever created by Alexander Calder. The Gallery's campus includes the original neoclassical West Building designed by John Russell Pope, which is linked underground to the modern East Building designed by I. M. Pei, and the 6.1-acre Sculpture Garden.
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The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, along with the Freer Gallery of Art, is an Asian art museum that helps form the national museums of Asian art of the... Smithsonian Institution. It's collection includes 9,917 Asian art objects The gallery is located on the National Mall , directly behind the Smithsonian Castle. Its main gallery spaces are underground, and the building connects to both the Freer Gallery of Art and the National Museum of African Art. The Sackler's main entrance is situated off of the gardens of the Smithsonian Castle along Independence Avenue. The Sackler Gallery opened in 1987 after Arthur M. Sackler, a research physician and medical doctor, donated some 1,000 Asian art objects to the Smithsonian, as well as $4 million toward the gallery's construction. The highlights from his gift include early Chinese bronzes and jades, Chinese paintings and lacquerware, ancient Near Eastern ceramics and metalware, and sculpture from South and Southeast Asia.
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The National Building Museum, in Washington, D.C., United States, is a museum of "architecture, design, engineering, construction, and urban... planning". It was created by an act of Congress in 1980, and is a private non-profit institution; it is adjacent to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial and the Judiciary Square Metro station. The museum's large, open space hosts various temporary exhibits, such as an Amish barn raising, types of fencing, and green design. The National Building Museum is housed in the former Pension Bureau building, a brick structure completed in 1887 and designed by Gen. Montgomery C. Meigs, the U.S. Army quartermaster general, which is notable for several architectural features, including the spectacular interior columns and a frieze, sculpted by Caspar Buberl, stretching around the exterior of the building and depicting Civil War soldiers in scenes somewhat reminiscent of those on Trajan's Column as well as the Horsemen Frieze of the Parthenon. The vast interior, measuring 316 × 116 feet , has been used to hold inauguration balls; a Presidential Seal is set into the floor near the south entrance.
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The National Portrait Gallery is an art gallery in Washington, D.C., administered by the Smithsonian Institution. Its collections focus on images of... famous individual Americans. It resides in the National Historic Landmarked Old Patent Office Building , located just south of Chinatown in the Penn Quarter district of downtown Washington. The third oldest federal building in the city, constructed between 1836 and 1867, the marble and granite museum has porticoes modeled after the Parthenon in Athens, Greece. The building was used as a hospital during the Civil War. Walt Whitman worked there and used his experiences as a basis for The Wound Dresser. The Bureau of Indian Affairs moved into the building after the war ended. Whitman worked as a clerk for the bureau until 1867, when he was fired after a manuscript of Leaves of Grass was found in his desk.
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Frederick Lincoln "Link" Wray Jr was an American rock and roll guitarist, songwriter and occasional singer. Wray was noted for pioneering a new... sound for electric guitars, as exemplified in his hit 1958 instrumental "Rumble", by Link Wray and his Ray Men, which pioneered an overdriven, distorted electric guitar sound, and also for having, "invented the power chord, the major modus operandi of modern rock guitarist," "and in doing so fathering," or making possible, "punk and heavy rock". Wray was born in Dunn, North Carolina to Lillie M. Coats and Frederick Lincoln Wray. It was there that Link first heard slide guitar at age eight from a traveling carnival worker, an African-American man named "Hambone." Link and his family later moved to Norfolk, Virginia as his father got work in the Navy shipyards. Link served a hitch in the US Army and was a Korean War veteran. In 1956, his family later moved to Washington, D.C., and from there, they moved to a farm in Accokeek, Maryland. Link relocated to Arizona with his brother Vernon in the very early 1970s, and later moved to San Francisco in the mid 1970s.
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Judith Lee Baldwin is an American film and television actress best known for replacing Tina Louise in the role of Ginger Grant in Rescue From... Gilligan's Island and The Castaways on Gilligan's Island . Baldwin amassed 46 screen credits between 1969 and her leading role in 2005's Every Secret Thing. Baldwin was born in Washington, D.C. She was crowned Miss New Mexico USA 1965 and was the second runner up to Sue Ann Downey in the Miss USA pageant that year. Her first acting job in Hollywood was in 1969 on I Dream of Jeannie in the episode "Jeannie and the Bachelor Party" playing Major Nelson's secretary "Dolores". In 1987, she created the role of Beth Logan on the soap opera, The Bold and the Beautiful, but she was soon replaced by Nancy Burnett, who became more closely identified in the role. Baldwin has guest starred on many TV shows including, Police Story, Fish, Quincy, M.E., The Dukes of Hazzard, The Fall Guy, T.J. Hooker, Hill Street Blues, Fantasy Island, Archie Bunker's Place, CHiPs, Matt Houston, Emerald Point N.A.S., Brothers, Matlock, Freddy's Nightmares, Empty Nest, Tales from the Crypt, Cybill and Six Feet Under.
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Bob Mould , is an American musician, principally known for his work as guitarist, vocalist and songwriter for alternative rock bands Hüsker... Dü in the 1980s and Sugar in the 1990s. Born in Malone, New York, Mould lived in several places, including the Minneapolis-St. Paul area where he then attended Macalester College. There, he formed Hüsker Dü in the late 1970s, with drummer/singer Grant Hart and bass guitarist Greg Norton. Hüsker Dü first gained notice as a punk rock group, with a series of recordings on the independent label SST Records. One of the first 1980s underground bands to sign a contract with a major record label , Hüsker Dü found only moderate commercial success, but were later often cited as one of the key influences on 1990s alternative rock. In the late 1980s, Hüsker Dü broke up acrimoniously amid members' drug abuse and personal problems.
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Gbenga Akinnagbe is an American actor, best known for his role as Chris Partlow on the HBO original series The Wire. Born in Washington, DC to... Nigerian parents and raised in Silver Spring, Maryland, Akinnagbe was in and out of trouble as a youth. He is the second oldest of six children, one older sister and four younger brothers. He attended Colonel Zadok A. Magruder High School in Rockville, Maryland. Akinnagbe attended Bucknell University on a wrestling scholarship, majoring in Political Science and English. He is the cousin of DC rapper Wale. He also played "Yinka" on Barbershop: The Series. In the summer of 2006, Gbenga performed the role of "Zim" in the NYC Fringe Festival's "Outstanding Play" award-winning production of "Modern Missionary". In 2007, Gbenga appeared in the film The Savages with Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Laura Linney, and Philip Bosco. He appeared in the remake of The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, which was released by Sony in June 2009. Gbenga made a guest appearance on a Season 10 Law and Order: SVU episode entitled "Hell" as Elijah Okello, a former Ugandan child soldier living in New York, facing deportation.
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Benjamin Jeremy "Ben" Stein is an American actor, writer, lawyer, and commentator on political and economic issues. He attained early success as a... speechwriter for American presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Later he entered the entertainment field and became an actor, comedian, and Emmy Award-winning game show host. Stein has frequently written commentaries on economic, political, and social issues, along with financial advice to individual investors. He is the son of noted economist and writer Herbert Stein, who worked at the White House under President Nixon. His sister, Rachel, is also a writer. He is well known for his dry, monotonous way of speaking. Stein was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Mildred , a homemaker, and Herbert Stein, a writer, economist, and presidential adviser. He is Jewish and grew up in the Woodside Forest neighborhood of Silver Spring, Maryland. Stein graduated from Montgomery Blair High School in 1961 along with classmate journalist Carl Bernstein; actress Goldie Hawn was two years behind. Actor Sylvester Stallone was a schoolmate at Montgomery Hills Junior High School.
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Hazel Harrison was an American pianist, known as the premiere black pianist of her time. Harrison was born in La Porte, Indiana, and spent most of... her childhood home schooled. In her 20s Harrison went to Europe for employment and education. She spent most of her time in Berlin performing recitals and performing with the Berlin Philharmonic. She later returned to the states and while performing in Chicago received sponsorship to travel back to Europe. During the next several years Harrison continued her studies with Ferrucio Busoni in Berlin. She then began performing as a concert pianist both in Europe and the U.S. In 1931, Harrison accepted a job as the head of the piano department at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. In 1936 she moved to Washington, D.C. and accepted a teaching job at Howard University, where she remained until retirement in 1955. While teaching, Harrison still performed in the U.S., and after retirement she accepted positions at Alabama State A&M College and Jackson College .
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Andrew Stuart Fastow was the chief financial officer of Enron Corporation until the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation... into his conduct in 2001. Fastow was one of the key figures behind the complex web of off-balance-sheet special purpose entities used to conceal their massive losses. He was serving a six-year prison sentence for charges related to this conduct. Fastow was born in Washington, D.C. He grew up in New Providence, New Jersey, the middle of three sons. His parents, Carl and Joan Fastow, worked in merchandising. Andy graduated from New Providence High School, where he took part in student government, played on the tennis team, and played in the school band. He was the sole student representative on the New Jersey State Board of Education. Fastow graduated from Tufts University in 1983 with B.A.s in economics and Chinese. While there, he met his future wife, Lea Weingarten, whom he married in 1984. He and his wife are both Jewish and have 2 children. Her family had founded a grocery store chain in Houston and later entered the real estate business.
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John Philip Sousa was an American composer and conductor of the late Romantic era, known particularly for American military and patriotic marches.... Because of his mastery of march composition, he is known as "The March King." John Philip Sousa was born in Washington, D.C. on November 6, 1854 to António de Sousa and Maria Elisabeth Trinkhaus. His parents were of Portuguese, Spanish, and Bavarian descent; his grandparents were Portuguese refugees. Sousa started his music education by playing the violin as a pupil of John Esputa and G. F. Benkert for harmony and musical composition at the age of six. He was found to have absolute pitch. When Sousa reached the age of 13, his father, a trombonist in the Marine Band, enlisted his son in the United States Marine Corps as an apprentice to keep him from joining a circus band. Sousa served his apprenticeship for seven years until 1875 and apparently learned to play all the wind instruments while honing his mettle with the violin. On December 30, 1879, Sousa married Jane van Middlesworth Bellis .
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Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader. Duke Ellington became one of the most influential artists in... the history of recorded music, and is largely recognized as one of the greatest figures in the history of jazz, though his music stretched into various other genres, including blues, gospel, movie soundtracks, popular, and classical. His career spanned 50 years and included leading his orchestra, composing an inexhaustible songbook, scoring for movies, and world tours. Due to his inventive use of the orchestra, or big band, and thanks to his refined public manner and extraordinary charisma, he is generally considered to have elevated the perception of jazz to an artistic level on par with that of classical music. His reputation increased after his death, and he received a special award citation from the Pulitzer Prize Board in 1999. Ellington called his music "American Music" rather than jazz, and liked to describe those who impressed him as "beyond category.
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Edward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright best known for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Zoo Story, A Delicate Balance and Three Tall... Women. His works are considered well-crafted, often unsympathetic examinations of the modern condition. His early works reflect a mastery and Americanization of the Theatre of the Absurd that found its peak in works by European playwrights such as Jean Genet, Samuel Beckett, and Eugène Ionesco. Younger American playwrights, such as Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel, credit Albee's daring mix of theatricalism and biting dialogue with helping to reinvent the post-war American theatre in the early 1960s. Albee continues to experiment in new works, such as The Goat: or, Who Is Sylvia? . According to Magill's Survey of American Literature , Edward Albee was born somewhere in Virginia . He was adopted two weeks later and taken to Larchmont, New York in Westchester County, where he grew up. Albee's adoptive father, Reed A. Albee, the wealthy son of vaudeville magnate Edward Franklin Albee II, owned several theaters.
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Goldie Jeanne Hawn is an actress, film director, producer, and occasional singer, whose career has spanned more than four decades. Hawn is perhaps... best known for her roles in Private Benjamin, Foul Play, Wildcats, Overboard, Bird on a Wire, Death Becomes Her, The First Wives Club, and The Banger Sisters. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the 1969 film Cactus Flower. She is also the mother of actors Oliver Hudson and Kate Hudson. Hawn has maintained a relationship with her long-time boyfriend, actor Kurt Russell, since 1983. Hawn was born in Washington, D.C., the daughter of Laura , a jewelry shop/dance school owner, and Edward Rutledge Hawn, a band musician who played at major events in Washington. She was named after her mother's aunt. She has a sister, Patricia; a brother, Edward, who died before she was born. Through her father, Hawn is a direct descendant of Edward Rutledge, a signatory of the Declaration of Independence. Hawn was raised in Takoma Park, Maryland. Her father was Presbyterian and her mother was Jewish, the daughter of immigrants from Hungary; Hawn was raised in Judaism.
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Samuel Leroy Jackson is an American film and television actor and producer. After Jackson became involved with the Civil Rights Movement, he moved... on to acting in theater at Morehouse College, and then films. He had several small roles, before meeting his mentor, Morgan Freeman, and the director Spike Lee. In 1991, after gaining critical acclaim for his role in Jungle Fever, he joined the casts of more films, including Goodfellas, Patriot Games, Amos & Andrew, True Romance and Jurassic Park. In 1994 he was cast as Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction, where he received several award nominations and critical acclaim. Jackson has since appeared in over 100 films including Die Hard with a Vengeance, The 51st State, Jackie Brown, Unbreakable, The Incredibles, Black Snake Moan, Snakes on a Plane, as well as the Star Wars prequel trilogy and small roles in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol. 2 and Inglourious Basterds. Jackson's many roles have made him one of the highest grossing actors at the box office. Jackson has won multiple awards throughout his career and has been portrayed in various forms of media including films, television series, and songs.
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