Maybe you’ve jogged by it and never quite knew why it’s there: thousands of colorful tulips in bloom between the Iwo Jima Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.
The tulips are planted on the grounds of the Netherlands Carillon, a gift given to the United States on behalf of the Dutch people in appreciation for our sacrifices during World War II. It was dedicated on May 5, 1960, to mark the fifteenth anniversary of the Netherlands’ liberation from the Nazis.
There’s a section of Arlington National Cemetery, near the Iwo Jima Memorial, that contains graves unlike any other. The graves belong not to soldiers, but to freed slaves who lived on the grounds after the Civil War, in a thriving “Freedman’s Village.”
The village was home to more than 1,100 former slaves, including the black abolitionist Sojourner Truth, who spent a year there, on what was once the estate of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s family.
Film crews were camped out near the Iwo Jima memorial in Rosslyn this morning for the taping of a new TV show starring Jimmy Smits.
The actor, who formerly portrayed a congressman (then a U.S. president) on The West Wing, is playing a Supreme Court justice who leaves the high court to start a law firm that fights constitutional injustices.
