7 secrets about Washington DC’s top tourist sights you didn’t know – moon rocks and typos to presidential monuments changing name
Why George Washington is buried at Mount Vernon, how Thomas Jefferson Memorial was meant for Theodore Roosevelt, and other secrets about the US centre of political power
The Lincoln Memorial had a typo
In the inscription of Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address, the word “future” started with an “E” instead of an “F”. The bottom part of the “E” was filled in to fix it. But if you look closely, the extra leg is still visible.
The Washington National Cathedral has a 3.6-billion-year-old piece of space rock
This is the cathedral's Space Window. Right in the centre is a sliver of moon rock that's 3.6 billion years old. The cathedral received the Moon rock from Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins in 1974.
The Washington Monument wasn't meant to be 2 colours
Construction of the Washington Monument began in 1848. It was built with marble, blue gneiss and granite. Six years later, the Washington National Monument Society ran out of money and construction stopped for the next 25 years. In 1876, the US government took over. Marble from a different quarry was used to finish the monument and over time, the sections changed colour as the materials reacted differently to the weather.
The White House and the Capitol were designed in a public competition