You're Not From Here, Are You?: Less than a year after the U.S. Census Bureau shocked everyone in the District with the news that the city's population had grown, by nearly 30,000 people, for the first time in 50 years, a new report came out today showing that no state (or "equivalent," as the District [...]
Pandas are the worst. They're lazy, they won't have sex with each other (unless they're related), they fake pregnancies, and when they do manage to get pregnant, they almost always let one of the babies die.
But whatever! The National Zoo is celebrating a $4.5 million gift from David M. Rubenstein that will fund its useless panda-breeding [...]
Thanks to the District's excessive use of social media, we've pretty much heard how every person here (or the entire East Coast) reacted to the earthquake yesterday. Thanks to the National Zoo, we now know how the animals in captivity weathered the 30 seconds of terror.
The Zoo staff released a list of some of the [...]
Leave Only Footprints: There's no telling what a burglar will do when he or she breaks into an unattended house—rummage around, take valuables, use the bathroom. That was the modus operandi of whoever broke into a home in Vienna last week. The owners came home to find the doors unlocked, nothing taken, and some shit [...]
On June 22, 1972, Hurricane Agnes dumped torrential rainfall on the region as it swept up the eastern seaboard from the Carolinas to New York, flooding the Potomac River and Rock Creek in the District.
According to a report by the National Weather Service, the rare flooding event hit D.C., Virginia, and Maryland after Agnes dumped [...]
Bad Boys: Police officials like to boast of record-setting statistics, but a new set of numbers aren't likely to cause any joy near Judiciary Square. By mid-June, 16 Metropolitan Police Department officers have been arrested this year; all of last year, the total number was only 17. The vast majority of D.C. cops arrested get [...]
It Was Much Better Than Cats: Look around long enough in almost any alley in the District, and chances are you'll find a cat. To most people, that's not real cause for concern; authorities say that for Nico Dauphine, a National Zoo researcher who specializes in bird conservation, alley cats represented a veritable feline menace. [...]
On April 20, 1983, a magpie that had escaped from the National Zoo a week earlier was finally recaptured, after traveling through both Arlington and Alexandria in its attempt for freedom.
The magpie, which had lived at the zoo since being donated in 1973, escaped through wires "knocked awry by the constant walking of parakeets with [...]
All Your BlackBerries Are Belong to Us: It's bad enough that the government is going to shut down, making the U.S. look more and more like the sort of country that used to be relegated to the newsbriefs in the "world" section of newspapers (when newspapers still ran lengthy "world" sections), plagued with bizarre and [...]
Winter Storm Washed: The first time snow was forecast for D.C. after Vince Gray was sworn in as mayor, it missed the city. The District's luck changed last week, but now it looks like the Gray administration's snow plan—don't let it snow—is working again, as an ice storm that was originally projected for the region [...]
Pandas Stay Put: People think of the District as a transient place, but the dirty little secret of most people who move here for work is that once they arrive, they find they kind of like it. And they stick around (just ask former Sen. Byron Dorgan, who recently signed up with a D.C. law [...]
No Taxation Without Taxation Without Representation: Tired of watching the District get shoved around by the feds? Just this once, savor the usual order of things being reversed. The IRS announced today that federal income taxes will be due on Monday, April 18, instead of Friday, April 15, because April 15 is Emancipation Day, a [...]
Tipsy Tenth: Ever feel like the drivers around you are incompetent or blind? Turns out, they're probably just drunk. A AAA Mid-Atlantic survey finds one in ten drivers admits to driving drunk in the last year alone. Since only die-hard drunk drivers are likely to volunteer to a AAA researcher that they've done it, odds [...]
Baltimore United?: Has there ever been a more nefarious, underhanded state than Maryland? Our northern neighbors have embarked on a campaign to snatch D.C. United out of the District and relocate the team to Baltimore, putting out a study predicting up to $6.4 million in state and local revenues if the Maryland Stadium Authority built [...]
Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My: Okay, they're not pandas. But the debut Monday of the National Zoo's lion cubs should still set off alarms for possible cute overload. All seven of the cubs, born over the summer, will be "previewed" for Friends of the National Zoo members tomorrow, then—depending on weather—released outside early [...]
