Today in History

What went down and why you should care.

jun 03 Learn More John Adams Moves to Washington, D.C.


On this day in 1800, President John Adams moved into a Washington, D.C. tavern. Why should you care? Because it made him the first American president to live in Washington, D.C., which had just been named the new capital of the United States. Washington was chosen to replace the old capital, Philadelphia, because it was located in what was then the geographic center of the country. If we used that metric today, the capital of the United States would be an empty space twenty miles north of Belle Fourche, South Dakota. Well, that's if you include Alaska and Hawaii. If you stick just to the lower 48, our new capital would be Lebanon, Kansas.

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