Three major airports serve the District. Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport is across the Potomac River from downtown Washington in Arlington, Virginia and primarily handles domestic flights. Major international flights arrive and depart from Washington Dulles International Airport, 26.3 miles west of the District in Fairfax and Loudoun counties in Virginia.
Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport is 31.7 miles northeast of the District in Anne Arundel County, Maryland.
An expected 32% increase in transit usage within the District by 2030 has spurred the construction of a new DC Streetcar system to interconnect the city’s neighborhoods. Construction has also started on an additional Metro line that will connect Washington, D.C. to Dulles airport.
Flag of Washington, D.C.
The flag of Washington, D.C., consists of three red stars above two red bars on a white background.
It is an armorial banner based on the design of the coat of arms of George Washington, first used to identify the family in the 12th century, when one of George Washington’s ancestors took possession of Washington Old Hall, County Durham, northeast England.
As elements in heraldry, the stars are properly called mullets.
For over a century, the District of Columbia was without an official flag and flew several unofficial banners—usually the flag of the D.C. National Guard. In 1938, Congress established a commission to choose an official, original flag design. The commission held a public competition, and picked the submission of graphic designer Charles A. R. Dunn, who had first proposed his design in 1921.
Dunn’s design was officially adopted on October 15, 1938.
In 2002, the D.C. Council debated a proposal to change the flag in protest of the District’s lack of voting rights in Congress. The new design would have added the letters “D.C.” to the center star and the words “Taxation Without Representation” in white to the two red bars, a slogan already in use on the District’s license plates.
The change presumably would have been temporary and revoked once the city achieved equal representation or statehood. It passed the council on a 10–2 vote, but support for the proposal soon eroded, and then-mayor Anthony A. Williams never signed the bill.
District Nickname:
One of several unofficial nicknames for Washington, D.C. is “A Capital City” which is a direct reference to its status as the national capital of the United States. The nickname is also a play on alternate meanings of the world “capital” to mean elevated or superior.