This pun was simply waiting to come to life, and one defense contractor made it so.

The semi-reclaimed ruins of this canal were once part of an ambitious plan to reroute the mighty potomac.

At Washington's Dulles Airport is a satellite museum (no pun intended) with three quarters of a million square feet of aircraft history.

These unusual rooms on wheels are holdovers from the 1960s.

The bank that helped fund the Mexican-American War and the purchase of Alaska met its downfall after helping Augusto Pinochet launder money.

Railroad officials in the early 1900s sought to spare travelers the sight of Roman soldiers’ private parts.

This statue of the "father of television" stands prominently in the United States Capitol.

The 5.5-mile ring of steel posts around the Capitol Building is one of the largest (and most uniform) of its kind in the world.

The tunnel under the Capitol Building where Congress takes out its trash.

One critic described it as "middle Mussolini, early Ramses, and late Neiman-Marcus." Another called it an architectural "natural disaster."

This statue of one of baseball’s greatest pitchers looks like something out of a sci-fi horror movie.

This taxidermy horse was a Civil War hero.

The grand marble structure next to the White House is Andrew Carnegie's temple to Pan-American diplomacy.

D.C. once had its own tiny rival to the New York Stock Exchange.

A line of blue paint marks the route of the inaugural parade.

The U.S. Navy’s preposterously detailed mini battleship took 77,000 hours to complete.

Part of a WWII submarine is lurking outside the Washington Navy Yard parking lot.

This mysterious structure by the Washington Monument is a flood barrier designed to protect the White House against rising waters.

A derelict bit of infrastructure from the canal that once ran through D.C. is landlocked in the heart of the city.

A hidden passageway now marks the site of an assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan that some say broke a 140-year-old curse.

This seemingly out-of-place gas station by the Watergate hotel was once described as the most expensive gas station in the world.

A gorgeous mural outside a beloved D.C. restaurant pays homage to famous Black Americans.

A muscular Art Deco monument represents the struggle between regulators and unbridled markets.

Behind an abandoned storefront is an example of pioneering 1930s gas station architecture.