RESOURCES
Safety and Security Resources
Ten (10) Suggestions when preparing for an emergency
American Red Cross
District of Columbia Emergency Management Agency
District of Columbia Evacuation Routes
Maryland Emergency Management Agency
Maryland Evacuation Routes
Virginia Emergency Management Agency
Virginia Evacuation Routes
FBI Suspicious Mail Advisory
Homeland Security (Threat Level)
Washington Post. Com Personal Preparedness Guide
In 1790, a survey of the land for the District of Columbia was undertaken by Andrew Ellicott with the help of Benjamin Banneker. A descendent of slaves, and a freed slave himself from Maryland who was a self-taught mathematician and astronomer. Using forty boundary stones, laid at one-mile intervals, established the boundaries based on Banneker's celestial calculations The "Sable Astronomer" was often pointed to as proof that African Americans were not intellectually inferior to European Americans. Thomas Jefferson himself noted this in a letter to Banneker. Banneker's life is inspirational especially as a black man in segregated America. Despite the popular prejudices of his times, he was quite unwilling to let his race or his age hinder in any way his thirst for intellectual development.
The Residence Bill of July 16, 1790, established a site along the Potomac to be the capital.The Potomac River was known to Native Americans as the "Co-hon-ho-roo-ta." The first English explorers called it "Elizabeth." This federal district was first called the Territory of Columbia and the federal city the City of Washington. The name changed to the District of Columbia in 1793. Consequently the capital of the United sates is not a state of and in itself even though it is the seat of the federal government. " Taxation with out representation" the origins of the great republic still resonates in the freedom of The United States from the Brittsh.
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