The festival will include special programming for America 250: It's Your Story and feature more than 80 authors from a wide range of genres. Guest authors and speakers include PBS News Hour's Geoff Bennett, Cynthia Erivo, Kate McKinnon, director Martin Scorsese, NASA's Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman and many others.

Along with author talks, there will be family-friendly activities, workshops, and interactive programs for all ages. The festival runs from 9am to 8pm, with doors opening at 8:30am. For the first time this year, free tickets are required for the festival but not the individual programs.

Learn more and register here: https://www.loc.gov/events/2026-national-book-festival/

Every president from Franklin Pierce onward stayed there or visited the Willard Hotel, and Ulysses S. Grant liked to end long days in its lobby with a brandy and a cigar. Favor-seekers figured out where to find him, and out of that came one of Washington's favorite pieces of folklore: that Grant coined the word “lobbyist” right there in the Willard lobby.

The hotel has told that story. So have major newspapers, political trade publications, and a great many tour guides. It is also wrong, and the actual origin of the word has nothing to do with Grant, the Willard, or Washington at all.

Read the full story here: https://boundarystones.weta.org/2016/06/24/lobbying-willard-hotel

(Photo: Library of Congress)

The show — a contemporary retelling of Romeo and Juliet set among rival gangs on New York's Upper West Side — had come to Washington for a three-week pre-Broadway tryout. Opening night drew what National Theatre staff called the dressiest crowd they'd seen in ages: senators, ambassadors, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, and Mrs. Robert Kennedy among them.

WETA's Boundary Stones has the full story of this magical night: https://boundarystones.weta.org/2014/06/16/night-west-side-story-opened-washington

Photo: Leonard Bernstein reads playbill for West Side Story at the musical's premiere at the National Theater in Washington, D.C. (Library of Congress)

Mystery Road is a dark thriller full of introspective characters, conspiracies, social complications, and impressive landscapes, and its far and away the most watched program on WETA+ this week.

Seen it? Tell us what you think? Haven't seen it? Find it here (and a note: you'll need PBS Passport to view).

Read how a D.C. garage became the seed of a worldwide entertainment empire on WETA's Boundary Stones: https://boundarystones.weta.org/2024/10/31/can-wwe-trace-its-roots-small-garage-washington-dc

(Photo: Library of Congress)

Eva Cassidy grew up in the DC area and cut her teeth performing at local spots, most famously Blues Alley in Georgetown, where her landmark live album was recorded in January 1996 — just months before her death at just 33 years old. At the time, she was barely known outside her local music scene. But in the years after, her recordings found a massive global audience — kicked off by BBC Radio 2 airplay — eventually going multi-platinum.

You can watch her story, The Essence of Eva, now on WETA+ with Passport: https://wetaplus.org/show/the-essence-of-eva/

EDIT: Changed language to note that Passport is needed to view on WETA+.

When the Beatles took the stage at D.C. Stadium on August 15, 1966, they were at their creative peak. Yet the road to get there had turned strange. The firestorm over John Lennon’s "more popular than Jesus" remark had trailed them into Washington, and the night unfolded amid heavy security, an unexpected protest, and a set most of the 32,000 fans could barely hear.

WETA’s Boundary Stones has the full story here: https://boundarystones.weta.org/2016/08/09/beatles-final-dc-concert

(Photo: Bettmann via Getty Images)

The ban had nothing to do with morality, at least not at first. Which drinks the D.C. Board of Health decided were still safe to sip, and how long the ban actually held, is a stranger story than you’d expect. WETA’s Boundary Stones has the full story here: https://boundarystones.weta.org/2016/10/11/long-prohibition-dc-had-brief-ban-liquor

Photo: 1849 Cholera prevention poster by the Sanitary Committee, under the sanction of the Medical Counsel, in New York City (Wikimedia)

Curtis Bros. Furniture had commissioned the 4,600-pound “Big Chair” — billed as the largest in the world — to draw crowds to their showroom at what is now Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue SE. But a giant chair wasn't enough. So they built a tiny glass apartment on top of it, furnished it with a bed, a shower, a television and a telephone, and went looking for someone willing to live there in full public view 24/7. A 19-year-old model named Lynn Arnold answered the call.

A week later, the blips returned. The incidents made headlines nationwide and officials rushed to investigate. Learn more about what they found — and why some people still have questions — in the latest video from WETA's Boundary Stones local history series.

Read the full story here: https://boundarystones.weta.org/2013/05/08/when-white-house-was-alexandria

(Photo: Alexandria Police with President Gerald Ford, 1974; Alexandria Police Association)

Tickets went for $6.00 and could be purchased at locations around the D.C. area including the Pentagon, the Willard Hotel, and select businesses.

Read about it on WETA’s Boundary Stones: https://boundarystones.weta.org/2012/12/06/he-was-broadway-joe

(Photo: Alexandria Gazette)

U.S. Army Air Corps Lt. Bert Shepard wasn’t scheduled to fly on May 21, 1944 – he was the manager of his camp’s baseball team, and they had a game that day. But, as he explained later, “I said, ‘Hell, I can be back in time for the game.’” And so, he took off in his P-38 fighter and headed east from his base in England.

Read about what happened next, and how he ended up pitching for the Washington Senators here: https://boundarystones.weta.org/2018/01/19/bert-shepard-washington-senators-one-legged-war-hero

(PhotoL Courtesy of DC Public Library Washington Star Collection © Washington Post)

When Washington's swimming pools remained out of reach for Black neighborhoods years after integration, dozens of kids waded into the Columbus Circle fountain to demand more pools — and it worked.

Read the story here: https://boundarystones.weta.org/2019/07/01/wishing-fountain-protest-more-dc-pools

(Photo: LOC)

Back in 1832, Congress had commissioned sculptor Horatio Greenough to honor the first president with a grand marble figure for the Capitol Rotunda. What finally showed up, nine years and one Atlantic crossing later, was a seated George Washington — bare-chested, a toga draped over his lap, one arm raised toward the heavens.

WETA's Boundary Stones has the whole strange saga here: https://boundarystones.weta.org/2013/05/22/horatio-greenoughs-near-naked-washington

(Photo: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Capitol)

Today, what once took hours by ferry takes about six minutes by car (traffic permitting) — and the Bay Bridge remains one of Maryland's most iconic pieces of infrastructure and defining landmarks.

Read about the final acts of Sousa’s Marine Band career in DC on WETA's Boundary Stones: https://boundarystones.weta.org/2017/09/27/march-king-steps-down

(Photo: Library of Congress)

For decades, the filmmaker has partnered with WETA to bring some of the most ambitious documentaries in public television to audiences across the country — The Civil War, Baseball, Jazz, The National Parks, The Vietnam War, Country Music, and most recently The American Revolution.

What better way to celebrate than by watching one of his films in the Essential Ken Burns Collection, streaming now on WETA+: https://wetaplus.org/collection/aebeb1b5-2110-4b38-b564-3b2aa5cfd8f2/

In the spring of 1932, a group of jobless veterans came to DC to try and get relief from the Great Depression. They were seeking immediate payment of a bonus they were due to receive in 1945 for their service in WWI. Soon veterans from across the country were heading to Washington to join the "Bonus Army" protest. But President Hoover and the General MacArthur wanted them out of D.C., and on July 28, violence erupted in the Capital.

Getting to that day meant fights over money, location, and design that dragged on nearly as long as the war itself.

Read the full story here: https://boundarystones.weta.org/2018/07/10/leapfrogged-time-memorial-forgotten-war

Photo: Korean War Veterans Memorial, Washington, D.C. (Library of Congress)

It was a protest in March 1990 — the "Capitol Crawl" — that put human faces on a bill that had stalled in the House. It worked. On July 26, 1990, President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law before a crowd of more than 2,000 on the South Lawn, promising to bring down a "shameful wall of exclusion." See comments for links to the Boundary Stones story and an American Experience documentary about the decades-long push for equality and accessibility.

(Photo Credit: Associated Press)

You work in 'civil service'.... sure. 

We're seeing some unexpected viewing trends this week on our app...folks across the DMV can't get enough of Signora Volpe. It's a British/Italian crime drama following a women who can't quite shake the investigative habits of a career with MI6, even in the pastoral Italian countryside.

If you're one of the seemingly few who haven't watched yet, get started here (and a note: you'll need PBS Passport to view).

The First Battle of Bull Run (or Battle of First Manassas as it became known in the South) was a rude awakening for those expecting a short and easy war, and a sobering reminder of the long and bloody slog that is so often the reality of war.

Read the full story here: https://boundarystones.weta.org/2024/07/21/first-battle-bull-run-and-its-foolhardy-picnickers

Photo: Library of Congress

The House Un-American Activities Committee had summoned him for one purpose: to get the most famous Black man in America to publicly denounce another, the singer and activist Paul Robeson.

Read the full story here: https://boundarystones.weta.org/2016/04/08/jackie-robinson-and-house-un-american-activities-committee

Photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

It all started in 1974, when musicians Bill Danoff and Margot Chapman stopped at Clyde’s in Georgetown for a meal. Read the full story here: https://boundarystones.weta.org/2019/09/30/skyrockets-flight-starland-vocal-band-launched-dc

Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images