Aerial.America.S06E01.Washington.D.C
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00:00It was envisioned as a city worthy of a nation, a place of great democratic institutions,
00:08grand public spaces, and elegant city streets, all along a river connecting it to the outside world.
00:17Today, that vision is a reality and has made Washington, D.C. one of the most distinctive cities in America.
00:27But the journey of the nation's capital has not been easy.
00:31Less than 25 years after it was founded, invading troops nearly burned it to the ground.
00:37Later, during the Civil War, Washington became one of the most fortified cities in the world.
00:44Over the years, assassinations, major scandals, mass protests, and political battles have rocked its core.
00:53But through it all, Washington, D.C. has persevered, with its stunning landmarks,
01:01some of the most visited museums in the world,
01:05and memorials where the sacrifices of tens of thousands are still remembered today.
01:11From the U.S. troops who fought to bring an end to World War II,
01:15to a president who managed to unite a divided nation,
01:21to a man whose battle for civil rights has empowered millions.
01:26But there's much more to this city than its monuments.
01:30Its neighborhoods thrive.
01:33Its majestic waters still beckon.
01:37And it's home to a team with one of the most controversial names in professional sports.
01:43A famous writer once called it a city of magnificent intentions.
01:49This is the colorful story of Washington, D.C.
02:20From a distance, the skyline of Washington, D.C. has very few distinctive features.
02:26There are no modern towers of glass and steel glimmering on its skyline.
02:31The only structure that truly stands out is the soaring spire of the Washington Monument,
02:38as it reaches for the sky.
02:42It's part of what makes Washington, D.C. such a unique city.
02:46Many of its greatest buildings and institutions are not impressive for their awe-inspiring size,
02:52but for their history, purpose, and what happens inside their walls.
02:58And sometimes, it's just a matter of time before the city becomes a museum.
03:05Every Friday in the summer, the U.S. Marine Band gets ready to put on a show
03:11here at the Marine Barracks at 8th and I Streets.
03:15It's a sight that few people ever get to see from the air.
03:19The U.S. Marine Band is one of the world's most well-known bands,
03:23and it's an honor to be a part of it.
03:28It's a sight that few people ever get to see from the air.
03:34This is the oldest, continuously active post of the U.S. Marine Corps,
03:39and it's home to some of the Marines' most specialized units,
03:43from its drum and bugle corps, to its color guard, to its body bearers.
03:49Thomas Jefferson chose this location for the barracks because it was an easy march to the Capitol.
03:56It was also close to the Washington Navy Yard.
04:00Established in 1799, it was once the U.S. Navy's largest shipbuilding facility.
04:06Today, it's home to the USS Barry.
04:10This Navy destroyer was part of a large naval quarantine of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis,
04:16and was deployed to fire on Viet Cong positions along the Saigon River during the Vietnam War.
04:23The men stationed here at the Navy Yard and at the Marine barracks
04:27saw little to no action in Washington, D.C.'s first few years.
04:31But it wouldn't be long before they would be fighting for the very survival of the nation,
04:36right here in the Capitol itself.
04:41On a swelteringly hot day in late August 1814,
04:45more than 4,000 British troops arrived here on the banks of the Anacostia River in Bladensburg, Maryland,
04:51where this pedestrian bridge now stands.
04:54A hastily assembled American militia, together with 1,000 regulars from the Army, Navy, and Marines,
05:00tried to keep the British troops at bay.
05:03But the militiamen were disorganized and poorly trained, and were quickly overrun.
05:09Their humiliating defeat on August 24, 1814, is known as the Battle of Bladensburg.
05:17The British pushed on towards the city.
05:22They headed straight for the U.S. Capitol building.
05:26When they arrived, they found the Houses of Congress abandoned.
05:33Fearing for their lives, President James Madison, his government, and 90% of the city's population had fled D.C.
05:41There was no one to stop the British from piling up furniture and books and setting the building on fire.
05:48Less than 40 years after America's independence, its new Capitol was already being attacked and destroyed.
05:57As the Houses of Congress burned, the troops marched up Pennsylvania Avenue to the President's mansion.
06:04Inside, they are said to have found the table set for 40 guests,
06:08meat still roasting on the spit, and glasses filled with fine wine.
06:15They dined heartily, and then piled up furniture and linens, and set the President's House ablaze as well.
06:23Soon, many of D.C.'s most important government buildings were engulfed in flames.
06:28It's said the fires could be seen from up to 70 miles away.
06:33The British captured, but then spared, the Marine barracks,
06:37reportedly out of respect for the courage the Marines had shown on the battlefield in Bladensburg.
06:43The fires all over Washington, D.C. stopped burning,
06:47only because a freak hurricane-force storm swept in and doused the flames.
06:52A tornado also wreaked havoc on the residents of the city,
06:55destroying their homes, uprooting trees,
06:58and turning vast stretches of Washington into a wasteland.
07:02But by then, with their mission to humiliate the U.S. government accomplished,
07:06the British were gone, and the Americans were left to rebuild their nation's capital all over again.
07:19Three weeks later, in September 1814,
07:23the Star-Spangled Banner was raised above Fort McHenry
07:26to signal America's successful defense of Baltimore,
07:30which helped bring an end to the War of 1812.
07:39That famous American flag, more than 40 feet long,
07:42is now permanently on display here inside the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.
07:48A replica hangs outside.
07:57There's nothing like seeing Washington, D.C.'s National Mall from the air.
08:03Every year, this one national park draws roughly 25 million visitors,
08:08more than three times as many as Yellowstone and Yosemite combined.
08:12It's home to three of D.C.'s most visited sites,
08:15the National Museum of Natural History,
08:17with its great halls for mammals, fossils, and creatures of the sea,
08:22the National Air and Space Museum,
08:24where visitors come to learn about everything from the Wright Brothers,
08:28to moon dust, to the latest high-tech drones,
08:32and the National Museum of American History.
08:35Once cows grazed on the land where these museums now stand,
08:39it wasn't until the early 20th century
08:41that the land in front of the U.S. Capitol was cleared
08:44and the National Mall, as we know it today, was born.
08:52The Mall begins here, at the U.S. Capitol Reflecting Pool.
08:57It's a place where visitors can learn about the history of the U.S. Capitol,
09:01The Mall begins here, at the U.S. Capitol Reflecting Pool,
09:05and runs right up to the Washington Monument.
09:12But many of D.C.'s most moving sites lie past the monument to the west.
09:19There's the Korean War Veterans Memorial,
09:21where steel figures move through fields on patrol
09:25to honor the roughly one and a half million American servicemen and women
09:28who served in that war.
09:31Nearby lies the Vietnam Veterans Memorial,
09:35designed by 21-year-old architecture student Maya Lin.
09:39Its black granite slabs are carved with the names of more than 58,000 soldiers
09:43who died in the Vietnam War.
09:47It's one of Washington, D.C.'s most visited sites,
09:50and is the only memorial where visitors can leave objects of remembrance.
09:55One group of veterans left a Harley Davidson motorcycle here
09:58to honor their fallen brothers.
10:00On its license plate was one word,
10:03Hero.
10:06Nestled in the middle is the National World War II Memorial,
10:10which is marked by a pair of victory pavilions.
10:13They are dedicated to those who fought to win the war's Pacific and Atlantic campaigns.
10:18It was planned to preserve the view down the Mall,
10:22and then all the way across the reflecting pool of the majestic Lincoln Memorial.
10:31Designed in the style of a Greek temple,
10:33it has 36 Doric columns to symbolize the 36 U.S. states
10:37that existed at the time of Lincoln's assassination in 1865.
10:43A memorial to honor Lincoln was proposed shortly after his death,
10:47but it took 55 years to fund and complete.
10:51His famous Gettysburg Address is etched on its walls.
10:54But the biggest draw is what lies inside.
10:58A towering marble statue of Lincoln himself,
11:01in a pensive pose,
11:03gazing out across the memorial's long reflecting pool,
11:07towards the Capitol,
11:09and across a city that has changed dramatically
11:12since it was founded more than two centuries ago.
11:19To understand how Washington, D.C.,
11:22To understand how Washington, D.C.,
11:24went from being just an idea
11:26to the impressive city it is today
11:28requires a trip up the Potomac River
11:31to a site that lies 14 miles away
11:34from where the Lincoln Memorial now stands.
11:38It's a place known as Great Falls.
11:42Here, the waters of the Potomac River
11:45start a dramatic 76-foot descent on their way to Chesapeake Bay.
11:52The Great Falls
11:56Long before any Europeans set eyes on these rushing waters,
11:59members of the Powhatan and Iroquois tribes
12:02once used the land around the falls as a meeting place.
12:07In 1608, English Captain John Smith traveled up the Potomac,
12:11but could only reach the falls on foot.
12:15And that's also why the English traders who followed him
12:18ended up parking their canoes downriver
12:20and trading with Indian tribes that lived in a village
12:23that once stood here
12:25at the end of what's now Washington's Key Bridge.
12:31That Iroquois village was called Tohoga,
12:33but would be known to the world as Georgetown
12:36after Maryland established a port here in 1751.
12:43Ships and bustling docks lined its waterfront.
12:48Most of Georgetown's many historic buildings
12:50date back to after the Revolutionary War.
12:54But there is still one structure left from the town's earliest days.
12:59It's called the Old Stone House
13:01and was built by a cabinetmaker in 1765
13:04from locally quarried blue granite.
13:07It's now the oldest standing building in Washington, D.C.
13:11It was partly because of the success of Georgetown
13:14that the land around the port
13:16was chosen as the site for the new United States Capitol.
13:21When the U.S. Constitution was signed in 1787,
13:24it authorized the establishment of a new federal district
13:27for the new nation.
13:30Three years later, in 1790,
13:32President George Washington was given permission
13:35to choose the actual site.
13:38A potential location was identified here
13:41at the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers.
13:45It lay between the already thriving port cities
13:48of Alexandria, Virginia, and Georgetown, Maryland.
13:52And it was also, conveniently,
13:54right in the middle of the northern and southern states.
13:58At the time, much of present-day Washington itself
14:01was covered with low hills and trees.
14:03It probably looked a lot like this stretch of the Potomac River today.
14:07But in the late 18th century,
14:09the region around the Potomac wasn't exactly wild.
14:13Flanking both banks of the river were farms and plantations,
14:17many of which had been here for more than a century.
14:22One of the largest belonged to George Washington himself.
14:26It's known as Mount Vernon
14:29and stands on a spot high above the Potomac River,
14:32south of Alexandria.
14:34Washington's Grand House is now a museum.
14:37As a teenager, George Washington had surveyed
14:40and created the first maps of what became the city of Alexandria.
14:45Later, it was from Alexandria's port
14:47that he exported wheat and other products from Mount Vernon.
14:51He knew that this port and the port of Georgetown,
14:54on the opposite bank of the river,
14:56would be useful assets to the nation's new capital.
15:00Placing it on the Potomac would also provide
15:02an important access route to the Ohio Valley,
15:05which could help the nation expand to the west.
15:11Washington finally decided to establish the new district
15:14and its 10-mile square
15:16right over the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers.
15:20Maryland and Virginia would both provide the land
15:23and turn over their ports of Georgetown and Alexandria.
15:28Washington then hired a French artist and engineer
15:31named Pierre L'Enfant to design a plan for a new capital.
15:36L'Enfant clashed with local officials
15:38and Thomas Jefferson asked him to resign from the job
15:41before his plans were built.
15:43But much of his original vision for the nation's capital
15:46remains amazingly intact today.
15:49Just a few blocks from the White House,
15:51here in Freedom Plaza,
15:53part of Washington, D.C.'s original street plan
15:55has been laid out in marble and granite
15:57for all to see and to walk on.
16:00It's anything but the standardized grid of streets
16:03that are found in many other American cities.
16:06He placed Congress on a hill he called
16:08a pedestal waiting for a monument,
16:10which is Capitol Hill today.
16:15And he imagined a grand, tree-lined avenue
16:18that would connect the Capitol to the President's House.
16:22That's now Pennsylvania Avenue
16:24and carries every elected U.S. president to the White House
16:27after their inauguration.
16:31The plan also called for the President's House
16:33to be surrounded by a large park.
16:36L'Enfant imagined a city full of green, open spaces.
16:40Some would be sites to honor important figures of the day.
16:45They are the lifeblood of many of Washington's neighborhoods,
16:48especially this one, DuPont Circle.
16:52Once, this area was pretty much out in the suburbs.
16:55Only the wealthy could afford to live out here
16:58and own the horses needed to travel into town.
17:02These days, DuPont Circle lies right in the center of the city.
17:07From here, great avenues radiate out across Washington
17:11like giant spokes, creating the street plan
17:14that made L'Enfant's greatest contribution to Washington, D.C.
17:25On August 28, 1963, more than 200,000 people
17:29gathered around the Lincoln Memorial's reflecting pool
17:32for the famous March on Washington.
17:37At the end of the march, Martin Luther King, Jr.
17:40stood on the memorial steps
17:42and gave his famous I Have a Dream speech.
17:47With a firm, unwavering voice,
17:49he called on the U.S. government to follow through on its promise
17:52to guarantee all American citizens, black and white,
17:56the same inalienable rights of life, liberty,
17:59and the pursuit of happiness.
18:01The very next year, Congress passed the historic 1964 Civil Rights Act,
18:06which President Lyndon B. Johnson then signed into law.
18:10Today, a memorial to King stands on the banks of the tidal basin,
18:14just steps from the site of his most famous speech.
18:21The idea of a towering monument to an African American
18:25was unimaginable in D.C.'s early years.
18:29Just over a century before the March on Washington,
18:32thousands of African Americans were still living and working
18:35in the nation's capital as slaves.
18:38In fact, slave labor built much of the original city.
18:43Enslaved men did the back-breaking work of quarrying stone for the White House.
18:49They also sawed lumber, hauled bricks, constructed walls,
18:53and painted many of D.C.'s early government buildings, including the U.S. Capitol.
18:59Ten of the first 12 U.S. presidents owned slaves,
19:03and some even brought them to work in the White House.
19:08It was common to see lines of shackled African Americans being led through D.C.'s streets
19:13as slave dealers marched them from one place to another.
19:17By 1860, there were more than 3,000 slaves in Washington.
19:24In fact, it was the issue of slavery back in the 1840s
19:28that helped transform the original size of D.C.
19:31from what was authorized in the Constitution to the much smaller boundaries it has today.
19:37George Washington may have envisioned it as a perfect 10-mile square,
19:41but it didn't end up that way.
19:44The problem was, the city of Alexandria, which was then part of the District of Columbia,
19:49was at the heart of a booming trade in slaves.
19:53One of the largest human trafficking businesses in America at the time
19:57took place in this building, now known as Freedom House.
20:02Up to 1,800 slaves were sent from here to Louisiana and Mississippi every year.
20:10By the 1840s, pressure was mounting on Capitol Hill to ban slavery in the district.
20:16But Southern congressmen fought to keep Alexandria's booming slave trade intact
20:22and argued that the city be returned to the pro-slavery state of Virginia.
20:27Finally, Congress gave in and carved off Alexandria and all the land west of the Potomac River
20:33and gave it back to Virginia.
20:35And that's how D.C. went from being a square to being the odd shape it is today.
20:4216 years later, on April 16th, 1862,
20:46President Lincoln finally did outlaw slavery in Washington.
20:52Existing slaves were set free, and slave owners were paid by the government for their loss.
21:00By then, the Civil War was raging, and D.C. was caught between two pro-slavery states.
21:07The only fort protecting it was one that stood here, at Fort Washington, south of the city.
21:16The U.S. government launched a massive campaign to defend Washington.
21:21Union troops set about building 68 new forts all around the city.
21:26By 1865, they had turned the almost defenseless capital
21:30into one of the most fortified cities in the world.
21:33One of the new forts was Fort Stevens, which now lies in northwest Washington, D.C.
21:40In early July 1864, Confederate General Jubal Early and 12,000 of his troops
21:46began an assault on the nation's capital.
21:49Fort Stevens was where D.C.'s Union forces gathered to defend the city.
21:55Many in Congress had already left town, but on July 18th,
21:59Many in Congress had already left town,
22:02but on July 12th, President Lincoln arrived at Fort Stevens to observe the fighting.
22:08He climbed up onto the ramparts here, near where this stone marker now stands.
22:13But when a Confederate sharpshooter shot a Union Army surgeon nearby,
22:17General Horatio Wright ordered Lincoln to take cover.
22:21Mr. President, you are too conspicuous an object to remain in so exposed a position, he is reported to have said.
22:28Lincoln obeyed the orders and dropped down into the trenches.
22:32The battle ended when the Confederates gave up and slipped out of D.C. under the cover of darkness.
22:42Nine months later, the Civil War was over.
22:46The U.S. Army's defenses had succeeded in keeping D.C. safely in Union hands.
22:52And on April 11th, 1865, President Lincoln addressed a joyful crowd from the window directly over the main door of the White House.
23:01In the audience was a well-known actor named John Wilkes Booth.
23:10Booth believed that the President's anti-slavery policies would destroy the South.
23:15He and a number of conspirators had already been plotting to kidnap the President.
23:19But infuriated by Lincoln's speeches and the Confederates' surrender, their plan turned to murder.
23:28The next night, President Lincoln and First Lady Mary Todd made their way here to Ford's Theater, a few blocks away from the White House, to see a play.
23:38Their security detail consisted of just one D.C. police officer named John Parker.
23:44But during the play, Parker left his post and headed off for a drink at the Star Saloon next door.
23:51Meanwhile, Booth waited for a moment of laughter and applause, and then crept into the President's box and fired a fatal shot to the back of his head.
24:03When he leapt to the stage, he fell and broke his leg, but managed to limp out a back door to this alley, where he had a saddled horse waiting.
24:14These days, the Secret Service would have locked down D.C.'s streets.
24:20But in 1865, Booth was able to gallop right across Washington and escape via a bridge over the Anacostia River.
24:29I rode 60 miles that night with the bone of my leg tearing the flesh at every jump, he scribbled in a diary he kept while he was on the run.
24:37Booth was confident that if he could reach Virginia, he would be embraced by Southern sympathizers.
24:45He met up with a co-conspirator named David Herold, who was supposed to lead him to safety.
24:51First, they picked up guns and supplies at this tavern in Maryland, which was owned by a landlady named Mary Surratt.
25:00Then, they rode to the house of a doctor named Samuel Mudd, who set Booth's broken leg.
25:07The fugitive's next stop was a visit to Samuel Cox, a Southern sympathizer.
25:14But Cox was worried about harboring the men, so he sent them off to the woods nearby.
25:20Meanwhile, Booth's other co-conspirators had been caught, and federal troops were now combing the countryside, searching for Lincoln's shooter.
25:29After nine days on the run, Booth and Herold finally emerged from the trees and paddled across the Potomac into Virginia.
25:38They took refuge in a barn that's no longer standing.
25:43But federal forces were hot on their tail.
25:47In his diary, Booth wrote,
25:50After being hunted like a dog through swamps, I am here in despair.
25:55Tonight, I try to escape these bloodhounds once more. I have too great a soul to die like a criminal.
26:02But it was here in Virginia that U.S. soldiers finally caught up with the two men, and as the sun was rising, a young soldier shot Booth dead.
26:12The assassin's body was brought back to Washington, to Fort McNair, which lies at the confluence of the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers.
26:21He was buried here, ten feet underground in a storage room, inside what was the U.S. government's first federal penitentiary.
26:30It's also where Booth's co-conspirators were held and tried.
26:34Grant Hall is the only building from the penitentiary that's still standing.
26:38On July 7, 1865, the four conspirators were hanged just outside Grant Hall, on land that's now covered with tennis courts.
26:48One of those was Mary Surratt, the owner of the boarding house where the conspirators had met to plan their crime.
26:55She was the first woman ever to be executed by the U.S. government.
27:00Lincoln wasn't the last U.S. president to be assassinated in Washington, D.C.
27:06Sixteen years later, on July 2, 1881, President James Garfield was shot by an assassin in the old train station that used to stand here on the National Mall.
27:17He later died from the infection of his wounds, which modern-day doctors believe could have easily been prevented.
27:23Three other presidents in Washington survived attempted assassinations.
27:28Andrew Jackson in 1835, Harry S. Truman in 1950, and Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981.
27:37Reagan was waving to a crowd here, outside the portico of the Washington Hilton, when John Hinckley Jr. stepped forward and fired multiple rounds.
27:46A bullet ricocheted off a car and hit Reagan in the ribs.
27:49The Secret Service diverted the presidential limousine to George Washington University Hospital nearby.
27:55The president is reported to have told First Lady Nancy Reagan,
27:59''Honey, I forgot to duck,'' when she arrived at his bedside.
28:03But one of Hinckley's six bullets had hit Reagan's press secretary, James Brady, in the head, paralyzing him and leaving him with extensive brain damage.
28:12Brady died in 2014 of complications from his injuries.
28:17Hinckley used a guilty-by-reason-of-insanity defense and won.
28:22He was committed to St. Elizabeth's Hospital, right here in Washington, where he still is today.
28:27He claimed he shot Reagan to try and impress actress Jodie Foster, with whom he was obsessed.
28:35Real-life drama is a real-life drama.
28:39Real-life drama has pervaded Washington, D.C.'s history almost since the day it was founded.
28:47It's one reason why the fictional television series House of Cards, about powerful members of Congress, is such a hit.
28:55But one of the most fascinating tales in D.C. is the real story of how the U.S. government managed to lose, literally, a fortune in gold during the creation of the Smithsonian Institution.
29:08In 1829, an amateur English scientist named James Smithson died and left the equivalent of $508,000 in gold to the United States government, even though he'd never set foot in America.
29:23Smithson said his fortune had to be used to create what he called an Institution for the Increase and Diffusion of Knowledge, and he wanted it named after himself.
29:33The U.S. government accepted the gift, and it arrived as 105 sacks of English gold sovereigns, which were then melted down in Philadelphia to make $10 U.S. coins.
29:44The value of Smithson's gift was worth nearly 15 times the annual budget of the United States.
29:50But amazingly, the government then managed to lose Smithson's fortune.
29:56It invested the half-million dollars worth of gold in Arkansas and Michigan state bonds that went bust.
30:04But in 1846, the U.S. Congress decided to go ahead and create the Smithsonian Institution anyway.
30:11It also commissioned its first building, the castle.
30:15Over the years, its treasures have grown exponentially, thanks in part to a wide variety of donations, from scientific collections to works of art.
30:25One of those came from a railroad manufacturer from Detroit, who donated about 7,500 objects of art to create the Freer Gallery in 1906.
30:35With its courtyard open to the sky and famous Peacock Room, painted entirely by artist James McNeill Whistler, it's one of the most unique museums on the National Mall.
30:46Today, there are 19 Smithsonian museums and nine research centers around the world, including an entire island in Panama,
30:55and the new National Museum of African American History and Culture, that's rising on the last available space on the National Mall.
31:07Even today, thousands of new objects flood into the Smithsonian's collections every year.
31:13But even with all its museums in Washington, there's still not enough space to house them.
31:17And that's why up to 40% of its treasures have to be stored outside of D.C., in this nondescript facility in Maryland.
31:25It was featured in the Dan Brown novel, The Lost Symbol.
31:29Inside are skulls of elephants, the jaws of whales, vast collections of mosquitoes and jellyfish, along with more than 50 million other objects.
31:39But some objects are so big, they need their own giant hangers.
31:44That's why the National Air and Space Museum opened its Udvar-Hazy Center in 2003, here at Dulles International Airport in Virginia.
31:53Lurking inside is the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, the fastest jet aircraft in the world.
31:59To get to the museum, the jet flew from Los Angeles to San Francisco, where it landed.
32:05To get to the museum, the jet flew from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., in one hour, four minutes and 20 seconds, at more than 2,000 miles per hour.
32:16When it finally touched down here at Dulles, the pilot had to deploy a chute to keep the plane from racing right off the end of the runway.
32:26Even the Smithsonian's National Zoo has grown too big for Washington.
32:32Some of its most fascinating and endangered creatures now live 50 miles away, in Virginia.
32:40This is the Smithsonian's Conservation Biology Institute at Front Royal.
32:45One of the species here are the Chevalsky horses, or pea horses for short.
32:51These animals are native to Mongolia and China, and are considered the world's last truly wild horses.
32:58But they are also critically endangered.
33:01Nearby are some of the fastest land animals on the planet, at least when they're chasing prey.
33:08These are a few of the endangered cheetahs that belong to the National Zoo.
33:13They're part of what's called a Species Survival Plan, a coordinated effort to protect and breed groups of cheetahs that have strong enough genetics to be able to survive on their own in Africa.
33:23Researchers here get to work with a wide range of endangered species, from North Africa's scimitar-horned oryx, which are now extinct in the wild, to one of South America's most beautiful predators, maned wolves.
33:37This facility is closed to the public.
33:40But some animals at Front Royal also spend time at the National Zoo in Washington, so the public can see these species up close, and better learn about the efforts to protect them.
33:51But on the afternoon of August 23, 2011, keepers here at the National Zoo noticed some strange behavior.
34:00The beavers suddenly stopped eating.
34:04The pink flamingos seemed strangely agitated, and then started clustering together.
34:10And one of the zoo's elephants, Shanti, made a loud noise with her trunk, which she only does when she gets excited.
34:20Moments later, at 1.51 p.m., a violent 5.8 earthquake rocked Washington, D.C., giving residents and the creatures at the zoo a terrifying shake.
34:34The epicenter was the town of Mineral, Virginia, nearly 90 miles away.
34:39It lies in what's known as the Virginia Seismic Zone.
34:43The 2011 quake was the most widely felt of any earthquake in U.S. history.
34:50Its shockwaves rocked Washington, D.C. for about 30 seconds.
34:55When it was over, the towering National Cathedral had $26 million in damage.
35:02And down in the National Mall, engineers were soon rappelling down the face of the Washington Monument and finding dangerous cracks in the facade.
35:13It had to be closed for almost three years for repairs.
35:18The monument finally reopened in 2014.
35:23Today, once again, more than 800,000 people climb its stairs every year for a chance to see the nation's capital and its monuments from high above.
35:34What they can't see from here is a little piece of evidence of just how long it took to build the monument they're standing in.
35:41Construction began in 1848, but six years into the project, the private society that commissioned it ran out of money.
35:50And then the Civil War arrived, and it stood unfinished for more than two decades.
35:56When Congress finally agreed to fund and finish the project in 1876, marble from the original quarry was no longer available.
36:05Look closely at the Washington Monument today, and it's possible to see the faint line where the original pre-Civil War construction stopped and where the work started again with new money and new marble in 1879.
36:20Just one more piece of evidence that Washington, D.C. wasn't built overnight, and that many of its landmarks have a history almost as old as the nation.
36:35But D.C. has its share of modern landmarks, too, especially here on the banks of the Potomac.
36:42In 1965, a brand-new luxury apartment complex was completed here, just east of Georgetown.
36:49It was funded in part by the investment arm of the Vatican and named Watergate.
36:54Little did anyone know that Watergate would become a household name across the nation.
36:59Thanks to what happened here early one Saturday morning, seven years later.
37:09At 2.30 a.m. on June 17, 1972, a security guard at the Watergate complex happened to notice that some of the locks in the building had been tampered with.
37:20He called the police, who soon caught five men breaking into the offices of the Democratic National Committee on the sixth floor of Watergate's Central Tower.
37:30They also had bags of wiretapping equipment, and their pockets were lined with hundred-dollar bills.
37:36It was a small burglary, but was about to snowball into the biggest political scandal in the nation's history.
37:43When the sun rose over the city later that morning, two young reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, were assigned to investigate the crime.
37:52They worked for the Washington Post, in offices here, just a few blocks from the White House.
38:00Two days later, they reported that one of the burglars worked for the committee to re-elect President Richard Nixon.
38:07Within months, Woodward and Bernstein had uncovered a money trail, linking payments from members of Nixon's re-election campaign to the burglars.
38:16Despite Nixon's landslide re-election, all three branches of government were soon deeply involved in the Watergate story.
38:24On Capitol Hill, members of Congress called for a full inquiry.
38:28Down on Pennsylvania Avenue, at the Justice Department, the FBI was conducting its own investigation, and beginning to prosecute the burglars.
38:36At the White House, Nixon and his administration worked hard to explain the ever-increasing evidence of a cover-up.
38:43Meanwhile, the Washington Post and other media outlets carried the Watergate story to the world.
38:49But one of the most important locations in the investigation of the Watergate scandal was a well-guarded secret.
38:55It lay just across the Potomac River, in Roslyn, Virginia.
39:01It was here, in a parking garage below an office complex, that Woodward came to meet secretly with a government informant, famously identified only as Deep Throat.
39:12For two years, as the Watergate story unfolded, disturbing new evidence came to light about Nixon's role in the cover-up.
39:19On July 24th, 1974, the judges of the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the White House had to turn over the Nixon tapes to Congress.
39:30These recordings were the smoking gun that finally caused many on Capitol Hill, including high-ranking members of Nixon's own Republican Party,
39:38to pressure him to step down.
39:42Finally, on August 8th, here in the White House, Nixon resigned, instead of being forced from office.
39:49He never admitted to any of the high crimes or misdemeanors with which he was about to be charged,
39:55and was given a full pardon by his successor, President George W. Bush.
39:59He never admitted to any of the high crimes or misdemeanors with which he was about to be charged,
40:05and was given a full pardon by his successor, President Gerald Ford, one month later.
40:10But 25 members of Nixon's administration were convicted and given jail time.
40:18It wasn't until 2005 that the identity of the Washington Post source, Deep Throat, was revealed.
40:25He was the deputy director of the FBI at the time, Mark Felt.
40:30There have been any number of political scandals in Washington since Nixon,
40:35but the Watergate scandal was the first major event to make Americans question the ethics of their elected officials,
40:41and it sowed the seeds of cynicism about government that still exist today.
40:46While he was in office, President Richard Nixon was a fervent fan of the Washington Redskins,
40:53who played across town at RFK Stadium, here behind the U.S. Capitol.
40:58In 1996, the team moved from RFK to a new stadium in Maryland that's now known as FedEx Field.
41:06The Redskins actually started out in Boston as the Braves,
41:09but changed names to the Redskins after they started sharing Boston's Fenway Park with the Boston Red Sox.
41:15The Redskins later moved to Washington in 1937.
41:20But today, the team is facing a growing controversy about its own name.
41:25Native American groups and a growing number of others say the name Redskins is a racial slur.
41:31Some major media outlets refuse to use the name in their reporting.
41:34Continued protests, and even half the members of the U.S. Senate,
41:38have pressured the team's current owner, Dan Snyder, to come up with a new name.
41:43But so far, he's refused.
41:47This isn't the first controversy for the Redskins.
41:50It was the last team in the NFL to add an African American player to its roster.
41:55The team's owner at the time, George Preston Marshall, simply refused.
41:59The U.S. government finally told Marshall he had to hire black players,
42:03or the team would be barred from RFK Stadium.
42:07He finally relented during the 1962 draft,
42:11and signed up African American running back and wide receiver Bobby Mitchell,
42:15who went on to win a place in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
42:20Marshall's refusal to hire black players was especially controversial
42:24because the majority of Washington, D.C.'s population was African American.
42:30In 1900, there were more blacks in Washington by percentage than any other American city.
42:36By 1957, they made up more than 50% of the city's population.
42:41But recently, that's been changing.
42:45In 2011, D.C.'s African American population dropped below 50%,
42:49and tens of thousands of black residents have left the city in the last decade,
42:53thanks in large part to rising rents and gentrification.
42:58One part of town that's witnessed this dramatic change is this one,
43:03the Shaw neighborhood, which lies in D.C.'s Northwest Quadrant.
43:07It got its start as a Union Army camp for freed slaves,
43:11and went on to become the cultural heart of Washington, D.C.'s African American community.
43:15It got a big boost in 1867, just a few years after the end of the Civil War,
43:20when Howard University opened its doors.
43:23Howard went on to graduate a long list of African American leaders,
43:27from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall,
43:30to writer and Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison,
43:33to opera singer Jessye Norman,
43:35to music producer Sean Combs, also known as P. Diddy,
43:39who was the first African American to win the Nobel Prize.
43:42Sean Combs, also known as P. Diddy,
43:45who dropped out before graduation, but returned for an honorary degree in 2014.
43:54In the early 20th century, the Shaw's main avenue, U Street,
43:59was known as Black Broadway.
44:01Today, its historic Lincoln Theater is still standing.
44:05Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and local D.C. jazz great Duke Ellington
44:09all performed at the Lincoln.
44:12Today, some have called this neighborhood a mini-United Nations,
44:16thanks to the wide range of nationalities that now call the Shaw neighborhood home.
44:23But no matter where you live in Washington,
44:26there's one interesting fact that unites every D.C. resident.
44:30They all live within sight of the U.S. Capitol,
44:33and they all pay federal income taxes,
44:36but they don't have a vote in Congress.
44:39When the nation's Capitol was created under the Constitution,
44:43it was also decided that Congress would govern it directly,
44:46and it's been that way ever since.
44:48So, there's no such thing as a Washington, D.C. senator on Capitol Hill.
44:53They've had to file their grievances instead here at City Hall,
44:58which is one reason their license plate reads,
45:01Taxation Without Representation.
45:04It's one more example of how Washington, D.C. is unlike any other city in America.
45:09Where the rich history of a nation is there to discover,
45:13just about everywhere you look.
45:15From the banks of its rivers,
45:17to its halls of power,
45:19to the battlefields where its freedom was fiercely defended,
45:23and the angled pinnacle of its tallest tower.
45:27There is simply no other place like the capital of the United States of America,
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