Arlington National Cemetery was built on land seized from Robert E. Lee's family during the Civil War

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is located in Arlington National Cemetery

Dedicated on Armistice Day in 1921, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier serves as a symbolic memorial for unidentified fallen service members. It has been guarded continuously since 1937 at Arlington National Cemetery.

One of the earliest Memorial Day ceremonies was held by newly freed Black Americans in South Carolina

On May 1, 1865, roughly 10,000 people, mostly freed slaves, paraded around a Charleston racetrack where Union prisoners had been buried, predating the first national commemoration at Arlington National Cemetery by three years.

The American Battle Monuments Commission maintains 26 overseas military cemeteries in 16 countries

The cemeteries honor more than 218,000 American war dead, with the majority of sites located in France and Belgium, where some of the heaviest fighting of both World Wars took place.

Abraham Lincoln's assassination helped create the multibillion-dollar funeral business

After the president was killed in April 1865, he became one of the first well-publicized embalming examples in the US. The burgeoning science enabled his body to go on a multistate tour. Prices soon climbed for the process and fueled more wakes, perhaps helping to lay the foundation for the pricy funeral industry.

See rare Civil War photographs preserved by the National Archives

The Civil War was the first major American conflict documented by a camera, with its images distributed widely to the public. The National Archives' digital collection offers thousands of original Civil War images: portraits, battlefields, hospitals, and everyday life.

The final shots of the Civil War were fired in the Arctic over 2 months after the South's surrender

In June 1865—two months after Lee's surrender—the Confederate raider CSS Shenandoah unknowingly attacked Union whaling ships in the Arctic. When the crew learned the war was over, they sailed 9,000 miles to surrender in Liverpool, England.

In the midst of the Civil War, Lincoln rapidly expanded presidential power

Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, expanded the army without congressional approval, and issued the Emancipation Proclamation—despite likely lacking authority to unilaterally alter national slave law. His actions set precedents for expanded presidential power in wartime.

The Lincoln Memorial was almost never built

The Memorial faced years of opposition from Speaker of the House Joseph Gurney Cannon, who blocked it for nearly a decade, arguing that the swampy land west of the Mall was an unfit and undignified site to honor Lincoln.

Read an account of what life was like in America's national leprosarium—its leper colony

José Ramirez Jr. shares an account of his eight years at the 300-acre national leprosarium in Carville, Louisiana, from 1968 through the mid-1970s. Mostly staffed by nuns with nursing degrees, this facility was home to hundreds of people at a time, and it's also the site where they were required to be buried.

According to Confederate leaders, the defense of slavery was the primary reason for secession

Confederate leaders cited slavery as the reason for secession. Vice President Alexander Stephens called it the Confederacy's "cornerstone," built on "the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man."

2 months after Pearl Harbor, American libraries launched a drive to collect 10 million books for soldiers

The 1942 Victory Book Campaign—sponsored by the American Library Association, the Red Cross, and the USO—asked the public to donate books to both train and entertain troops. The national campaign exceeded its goal, collecting more than 10.2 million books.

There are over 20,000 trees on the National Mall

Nearly 4,000 of the Mall's trees are cherry trees, all maintained by a small National Park Service arborist team that provides year-round, science-based care to address soil compaction, root damage, and heavy visitor traffic.

The story of Opal Lee, 'grandmother' of Juneteenth

Opal Lee, an activist from Texas, is considered one of the major reasons Juneteenth is now an official federal US holiday. In 2016, Lee walked from Fort Worth, Texas, all the way to Washington, DC, to garner support for the cause of making the day an official national holiday. Read about her experience and victory in this brief overview of her role in the creation of the holiday.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt turned the National Mall into a public memorial in 1987

First displayed on the National Mall, the AIDS Memorial Quilt comprised thousands of handmade panels honoring individuals who had died of AIDS. Its placement on the Mall was intended to force public recognition of the human cost of AIDS amid widespread government inaction.

George Washington had a limited formal education, leaving school at 15

A few years after his father died in 1743, Washington's schooling ended. He soon began working as a land surveyor in Virginia. He later assumed management of Mount Vernon at age 22 and became the estate's master at age 29.

Abraham Lincoln was almost assassinated weeks before his inauguration as he traveled from Illinois to DC through Baltimore in 1861; it took two independent claims for Lincoln to be convinced the threat was real

Death taxes have helped fund wars since the 1860s

Death taxes date back to 700 BCE and were used in Ancient Rome and Ancient Egypt. In the US, they've been used to finance wars since the Civil War, and have been levied on both the estate and beneficiary. The estate tax created during WWI to help finance war efforts is still in effect today.

What happens when a cemetery goes out of business?

When a cemetery goes out of business, what happens to all the bodies? And how do cemetery business models work in the first place? This podcast episode answers those questions and others as host PJ Vogt interviews a cemetery expert who grew up in a cemetery before he began studying them as an adult.

American archaeology has a complicated legacy

Many national parks were discovered through American archaeological expeditions and, consequently, included the looting of Native American cultural sites and artifacts.

What 9/11 did to one family: the heartbreaking story of Bobby McIlvaine

Grief, conspiracy theories, and a family's search for meaning in the two decades since the attacks. On Sept. 11, 2001, Bobby McIlvaine was killed, along with nearly 3,000 other Americans. In the years since, his parents and brother have searched for...

In the 1960s, Virginia became home to the first emergency department in the US

It was a 450-square-foot basement room with four stretchers staffed by four doctors inside Alexandria Hospital, in Alexandria, Virginia. Patients there were charged $5 per visit. The first emergency medicine residency followed in 1970, in Cincinnati.

Whitman spent in his final years in Camden, New Jersey

There, he continued revising “Leaves of Grass” and enjoyed the city’s booming industrialization, spurred in part by the headquarters for Campbell’s Soup, until he died in 1892.

Farmer secretly plants sunflower field for 50th anniversary with wife

Kansas farmer Lee Wilson wanted to give something special to his wife of 50 years, Renee, on their golden anniversary, so he secretly planted 80 acres of sunflowers in May for an August bloom. The gift consists of roughly 1.2 million sunflowers,...

The Third Amendment bars the forced housing of soldiers in private homes

The amendment was designed to address a specific grievance of the Colonies and remains the only Bill of Rights provision that has never been directly tested by a Supreme Court ruling on its merits.

Loudoun County, Virginia, is considered the world's densest data center hub

Nicknamed "Data Center Alley," some estimates indicate that the region's approximately 200 data centers will generate over $1B in taxes in 2026, which county officials say will help lower residential property tax bills. However, from 2020 to 2025, wholesale electricity costs have risen by as much as 267% in areas near data centers.

Many legends about George Washington, including his supposed wooden teeth and the story of cutting down the cherry tree, lack evidence.

A Roman-era cemetery in York may hold the remains of gladiators

A burial ground in York, used from the 1st to the 4th centuries CE, contained around 80 skeletons of unusually tall and muscular young men. Many show fatal combat wounds, including one with a bite mark from a large predator.

Explore an interactive map of battles from the American Revolution, along with detailed summaries of each engagement

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

Apollo astronauts left items in the moon's 'toss zone,' including golf balls, family photos, and bags of human waste, to make room for lunar rocks.

See how Budweiser's famous Clydesdales spend their days at Warm Springs Ranch, where roughly 70 to 80 of the beer brand's giant horses can be found at any given time.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

20,000 letters to the advice columnist 'Dear Abby' provide insight into prevailing sex, religion, and LGBTQ fears, anxieties, and concerns from the 1950s onward.

Louisiana's 'Cancer Alley' is infamous for having some of the highest industrial pollution, toxic air emissions, and cancer risks in the US.

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

The concept of phantom limbs, the perception that amputated limbs are still present, dates back to a French military surgeon in the 16th century.

Before the current East Wing ballroom project, only two White House renovations in the past 100 years cost more than $10M.

Sunflowers have long been a symbol of nuclear disarmament because they can extract large amounts of radioactive cesium from soil.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

Explore the archaeological treasures of Pompeii, the city buried under volcanic ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE.

Sears sold DIY house kits starting at $600 in its famous catalog from 1908 through the 1940s, resulting in roughly 10,000 'Sears and Roebuck houses' being built.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict is the largest ground war in Europe since World War II in terms of casualties, forces mobilized, and displacement of civilians.

The tragic Pulitzer Prize-winning image 'The Vulture and the Little Girl' (1993) generated controversy, raised concerns about ethics in photography, and eventually led to the photographer's death.

'Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,' a work by American painter Thomas Moran, inspired Congress to establish Yellowstone National Park.

The US Constitution is widely regarded as the longest-standing written national constitution still in force—see how it has influenced rights worldwide.

Crows are believed to have intelligence on par with a seven-year-old child and demonstrate complex behaviors, from problem-solving with tools to recognizing human faces.

The US first hosted the World Cup in 1994, a tournament that lives in soccer infamy for its poor planning and the murder of Colombian player Andres Escobar, who'd accidentally scored on his own net.

Artificial coral reefs have been 3D printed from nontoxic, biodegradable terracotta clay, which coral polyps have used as a foundation for rebuilding marine ecosystems.

Firework or sparkler burns, even if they cover a relatively small area of skin, can significantly affect our range of motion.

Comedy legend Catherine O'Hara, star of 'Schitt's Creek' and 'Home Alone,' quit 'Saturday Night Live' after just one week to return to her old job.