Fort Meade, Maryland
National Cryptologic Museum
A priceless collection of the Nation's cryptologic history.
Places mfoster42 Wants to Go
768
Places I want to go
Places on this traveler's wishlist.
Columbia, Maryland
The Enchanted Forest Pine Tree Maze at Clark's Elioak Farm
A local farm's collection of unusual structures from a now defunct storybook amusement park.
Boonsboro, Maryland
Crystal Grottoes Caverns
Bizarre Cavern.
Silver Spring, Maryland
National Museum of Health and Medicine
An astounding collection of medical specimens, including bits of President Lincoln.
Baltimore, Maryland
Bazaar
Crammed into a Baltimore row house is an oddities shop that sells everything from skulls to dead insects.
Permanently Closed
Ellicott City, Maryland
St. Mary's College
The haunting "Hell House Altar" is one of the few remnants of an abandoned college that has been a magnet for local legends.
Permanently Closed
Laurel, Maryland
Forest Haven Asylum
This abandoned asylum was once a state of the art facility before devolving into one of the most deadly mental institutions in American history.
Annapolis, Maryland
John Paul Jones’ Crypt
Rediscovered after a century, the father of the American Navy was reinterred in something dredged up from Davy Jones’ locker.
Washington, D.C.
Reading Room at the Folger Shakespeare Library
Home to a vast and influential collection of Shakespeareana.
Washington, D.C.
Legislative Bell System
An ear-piercing buzzer calls lawmakers to a vote with a series of long and short rings to form coded messages.
Washington, D.C.
Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum
Before founding the American Red Cross, Clara Barton had a tremendous humanitarian impact by locating thousands of missing soldiers.
Washington, D.C.
Churchill and Mandela Call and Response
When it comes to handsignals (and colonialism) rock always beats scissors.
Washington, D.C.
Lincoln Book Tower
A three-story tower of books about Abraham Lincoln is one of the more unusual monuments to the president.
Washington, D.C.
Civil War Nurses Memorial
A bas relief commemorates the "Nuns of the Battlefield" who cared for soldiers on both sides of the conflict.
Washington, D.C.
The K-9 of the Korean War Veterans Memorial
Those with a sharp eye can find the hidden image of a German Shepherd on the memorial's Mural Wall.
Washington, D.C.
Alferd Packer Cannibal Plaque
A brass plaque dedicated to a convicted cannibal hangs in the National Press Club, and that's not even the craziest part of the story.
Washington, D.C.
Peacock Room
This stunning blue and gold room changed cities twice before becoming part of the Smithsonian.
Washington, D.C.
NIST Newton Apple Tree
A clone of a cloned tree that was so important it allegedly had its own guards.
Washington, D.C.
Peirce Mill Spy Station
Cold War intelligence agents monitored communist embassies from an attic in a former pigeon coop.
Washington, D.C.
Uncle Beazley the Triceratops
A celebrity from the late Cretaceous period.
Washington, D.C.
FDR's Bomb Shelter
The first presidential bomb shelter was located in an old vault under the Treasury, connected to the White House via tunnel.
Washington, D.C.
U.S. Naval Observatory Library
A hoard of sky catalogs, astrophysical journals, even the works of Galileo and Copernicus.
Washington, D.C.
Theodore Roosevelt Island
The national park was once a plantation estate.
Washington, D.C.
St. Elizabeths Hospital
Government testing at the asylum briefly explored using marijuana as a "truth serum" on Nazi prisoners of war.
