Washington DC

[primeideal]

Did a lot of sightseeing/touristy things in the DC area over the last week, spending time with my family, which was great. One of the places (I'm not exactly sure which, but I think it was probably the post office/clock tower area) mentioned the history of DC--it was a planned city, originally designed by Pierre L'Enfant (who L'Enfant Plaza, an area with a big subway station), is named after. The survey of the boundaries was conducted by Andrew Ellicott, who is from the same family that Ellicott City in Maryland is named after, along with Benjamin Banneker, an astronomer/almanac writer, who is historically noteworthy for being a black polymath in early US history. There's been a lot of rightful celebration of him in terms of "hey, black people have always been at the forefront of science." However, it's not clear if he played a direct role in the city planning process. There's a wikipedia editor or editors who clearly has/have an axe to grind about "this guy is getting credit for things he probably never actually did, here is the fact-checking." Which is kind of niche, but I can relate to "please fact-check things before you quote them" and "unclear if we're doing this for accuracy or just the revisionist history feelings" mood.

However. One of the exhibits (again, thinking this may have been the post office, but not sure) was like "after L'Enfant got fed up with the project and left in a huff, Banneker was able to recreate his work from memory. Clearly they had a connection! Were they secret lovers maybe??!" and like, where is that RPF ship.

Also, although Banneker was not the first person to do so, he noted the 17-year appearance of the Brood X cicadas (the ones that are currently making a lot of noise in DC and Maryland right now) and pointed out that since they had last appeared in 1783, they would be due in 1800. Please give me all the RPF/"Hamilton"/etc. fic about the prime number cicadas!!