by Dan Jones<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I have just returned from a six-day trip to the Washington DC area, which I am now referring to as “The Most Interesting Place in the Nation.”<\/span><\/p>\n Washington DC is packed with various and sundry museums, monuments, and historical markers. People have collected and gathered together all kinds of Very Interesting Things and put them all pretty much in one place.<\/span><\/p>\n Deep in the recesses of one of the many Smithsonians, around the corner from all kinds of steam engines, there was a display of the original light bulbs Edison invented. The interesting bit of trivia here was that the base of about the third or fourth variation of the light bulb he came up with in 1881 has exactly the same base we use today.<\/span><\/p>\n Just a couple of steps away were examples of early toasters. From the incredible variety displayed, it was obvious that toast has been\u00a0very, very important to Americans for a very long time. (Of all the vast technological marvels in our world, I still do not think we have produced a machine that can quickly and easily produce perfect toast every time.)<\/span><\/p>\n The Smithsonian Institute’s National Air and Space museum was also fascinating. Hanging from the ceiling just a little ways from the famous Spirit of St. Louis that Charles Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic in 1927, I found the Fokker T-2. \u00a0This was the first airplane that flew non-stop across the United States. In 1923, \u00a0just four years before Lindbergh’s famous flight,\u00a0\u00a0Air Service Lieutenants Oakley Kelly and John Macready took off from Long Island, New York, on May 2 and landed at Rockwell Field, San Diego, California, on May 3, slightly more than 26 hours and 50 minutes later.<\/span><\/p>\n Standing there, right below the 10,852-pound T2, I could see the cockpit was open with the exhaust pipes from the 408 horsepower Liberty V-12 passing right beside the pilot’s head! The landing gear was secured to the plane with ropes, for goodness sake! I told my wife I wouldn’t fly eight blocks in that plane, let alone 2521 miles.<\/span><\/p>\n We also journeyed to Mt Vernon, the home of General George Washington. Fascinating trivia abounded in this place also. For example, Washington never wore wooden teeth. Although he suffered from bad teeth for most of his adult life, his dentures were made from elephant ivory, hippopotamus ivory, human teeth and lots and lots of lead to hold them together. The were hideous-looking cartoonish things with springs\u00a0to open them.<\/span><\/p>\n I also learned that Washington died at age 69 of what was pretty much a sore throat. He had been outside on a cold, wet December day, which developed into\u00a0some kind of throat infection. The doctors of his day, while well-meaning, treated his condition by removing 40 ounces of blood from his body and applying a paste made out of beetles to his neck (twice!) which caused it to blister horribly. It occurred to me he may have survived had he not been treated.<\/span><\/p>\n All of this is the kind of trivia minutiae that I very much enjoy, but the part of the trip I will never forget is that this country was founded by people who really and truly believed in freedom and that God Himself had ordained that all men are indeed endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. I saw those words written on the original Declaration of Independence in the National Archives, along with the original Constitution of the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n The first words I saw when walking into the Capitol were “One Nation Under God.”<\/span><\/p>\n The Lincoln Memorial is one thing when viewed from the back of your one cent piece, but when you are standing there with fifty-foot columns around you with a statue of Lincoln before you that (should he rise from that chair) he would stand 28 feet tall before you, it is an entirely different perspective. Cut into the stone to Lincoln’s left is his second inaugural address which quotes so heavily from the Bible it sounds like a page from the KJV. On his right is the Gettysburg Address, which ends with the words, “\u2014that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom\u2014and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”<\/span><\/p>\n Likewise,\u00a0the Jefferson Memorial is a massive structure of marble columns. Inside, a 19-foot bronze statue of Thomas Jefferson looks out over the Tidal Basin and, inscribed in capital letters around the edge\u00a0of the dome over his head are the words, “I HAVE SWORN UPON THE ALTAR OF GOD ETERNAL HOSTILITY AGAINST EVERY FORM OF TYRANNY OVER THE MIND OF MAN.<\/span><\/p>\n Everywhere we went, we saw clear evidence that this nation’s very foundations were sunk into the rock of the Lord God, that it would bring forth the fruit of freedom for its people. It was a radical, revolutionary concept that noble men were serious enough to die for, not just at the foundation of our country, but throughout our history.<\/span><\/p>\n I saw the actual Star Spangled Banner, the very flag that Francis Scott Key wrote about in the National Anthem as it flew over Fort McHenry in the War of 1812 when the British tried to take back the freedom we had won from them.<\/span><\/p>\n I saw that freedom, that struggle against tyranny, and that trust in God displayed all over Washington DC.<\/span><\/p>\n And towering above it all, perched on a hill and visible from all over our nation’s capital, is the 555 foot Washington Monument. It is the tallest stone monument in the world and at its peak is an aluminum pyramid inscribed with the words “Laus Deo,” which is Latin for “Praise Be to God.”<\/span><\/p>\n It is that hard-fought freedom that makes the praise of God possible every day on Kinship Christian Radio.<\/span><\/p>\n Today’s Praise<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n There is a plaque fastened to the wall over the Washington family tomb that reads:<\/span><\/p>\n “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” John 11:25-26 (KJV)\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Dan Jones I have just returned from a six-day trip to the Washington DC area, which I am now referring to as “The Most Interesting Place in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 13:11:33","action":"delete","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7126"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7126\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kinshipradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}