9
Number of years since the American Library Association last held its Annual Conference in Washington, D.C.
800
Number of electronic newspaper front pages the Newseum receives each day from around the world. The museum enlarges and prints 80 for display in its Today’s Front Pages gallery.
12,000
Approximate number of items the Library of Congress adds to its collections daily.
260,000
Number of printed books housed at the Folger Shakespeare Library. The collection also contains 60,000 manuscripts; 90,000 prints, drawings, photographs, paintings, and works of art; and 82 copies of the First Folio of 1623.
350
Number of author readings and events that Politics and Prose, a bookstore in D.C.’s Chevy Chase neighborhood, hosts each year.
$10
Cost of a mojito at Busboys and Poets, a community gathering place for artists, writers, and activists with seven locations in the D.C. area, named to honor poet Langston Hughes. (For more on Busboys and Poets, and other places to eat and drink in D.C., see our dining guide.)
10
Number of years that Walt Whitman, poet laureate of the US Civil War, lived in Washington, D.C. Lines from his 1865 poem “The Wound-Dresser” are inscribed on the wall of the Dupont Circle Metro entrance.
1411
W St. SE address of the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site. Douglass lived at this Cedar Hill home during the last years of his life, from 1877 to 1895.
1972
Year that the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, the central library of the D.C. Public Library, opened. Currently undergoing renovations, the library is scheduled to reopen in 2020.
21
Number of specialized research libraries that make up the Smithsonian Libraries network. (To read about the Biodiversity Heritage Library, of which Smithsonian Libraries is a founding member, see our Bookend.)
