16th July: Washington DC

The signing of the Residence Act on July 16, 1790, approved the creation of a capital district located along the Potomac River on the country's East Coast. This was what would become Washington DC, the capital of the USA.

1. Washington is naturally named after George Washington, the first president. DC stands for District of Columbia, after Christopher Columbus.
2. It's the seat of government of the US and is home to the White House, the Capitol Building, numerous government offices, embassies, and the Library of Congress, the largest library in the world with more than 162 million objects in its collection. About 12,000 items are added to its collection every day.
3. Before the Eiffel Tower was built, the tallest man-made structure in the world was in Washington DC - the Washington Monument. It is still the world's tallest stone structure and the world's tallest obelisk at 555 feet 5 1/8 inches tall. Look carefully at it and you'll see it is made from two slightly different coloured types of stone, because the project ran out of money in 1856. What with that and the Civil War, construction ground to a halt and wasn't restarted for twenty years. Its cap is made from aluminium, which at the time, was as expensive as Silver. The Monument sways about .125th of an inch of the wind is at least 30 miles per hour.
4. There was no official Flag until 1938, when a flag based on George Washington's family coat of arms was adopted. There is an official bird (Wood thrush), flower (American beauty rose) and tree (Scarlet Oak).
5. Some of the licence plates have the words “Taxation without Representation” on them, because at one time it was true. The city was meant to be a seat of government rather than a place for people to live, but people ended up living there anyway. Until 1961, the city's residents couldn't vote in presidential elections and even today cannot vote for Congress.
6. The city was designed with a grid pattern of streets named after numbers and letters, with diagonal avenues named after states. There isn't a "J" street, which seems like a glaring omission. It's been suggested that the architect who designed the place, Pierre L’Enfant, hated the chief justice, whose name was John Jay, and so he omitted the letter out of spite. Actually, it's because at the time, the alphabet as we know it was still evolving, and "I" and "J" were interchangeable.
7. DC residents drink more Wine per capita than residents of any of the 50 states. There is also a wacky law which says it's illegal to drink alcoholic beverages standing up.
8. The Capitol is haunted - by a demon Black Cat which puts in an appearance before national tragedies. It's said there were sightings of the cat before the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. A less sinister fact about the Capitol is that there are Bathtubs in it, dating back to the time when senators lived in digs which tended not to have running Water, so senators had to take baths at work.
9. One of the gargoyles on Washington's National Cathedral is a carving of Darth Vader.
10. Washington DC has several sister cities and two partner cities. The partner cities are Paris and Rome, which have an ancient policy that they can only be sisters or twins with each other. The sister cities are: Bangkok, Thailand; Dakar, Senegal; Beijing, China; Brussels, Belgium; Athens, Greece; Pretoria, South Africa; Seoul, South Korea, Accra, Ghana, Sunderland, United Kingdom (rather than London, for some reason); Ankara, Turkey; Brasília, Brazil and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.