High School to the Stars
Washington-Lee
● Shirley MacLaine, class of 1952
● Warren Beatty, class of 1955
● Sandra Bullock, class of 1982
Resident Chattering Class
● Peter Alexander, NBC News
● Eugene Robinson, Washington Post
● Chuck Todd, Meet the Press
Historical Notes
● In 1791, the land that includes Arlington was part of DC—at the time a diamond shape. Congress gave that land back to Virginia in 1846 so the state could pay for a canal project along the Potomac.
● During Watergate, the source known as Deep Throat met with Bob Woodward in a parking garage on Wilson Boulevard in Rosslyn. The county board voted to tear the garage down in 2014.
Screen Time
● In 2003’s The Recruit, Al Pacino eats a burrito at the Marine Corps War Memorial (a.k.a. the Iwo Jima Memorial) in Arlington Ridge Park.
● In the season-one finale of The West Wing, President Jed Bartlet, played by Martin Sheen, gets shot in a scene filmed at the former Newseum site in Rosslyn.
Urban Legend
● Pets around Four Mile Run began disappearing in 1974, giving rise to the tale of the so-called Beast of Barcroft (the inspiration for a 2015 e-book of the same name by Arlingtonian Bill Schweigart). The National Zoo eventually captured the culprit, a cat-like carnivore called a civet…or did it?
By the numbers
● At 25.8 square miles, Arlington County is the nation’s smallest.
● 81 languages are spoken by public-school students, who come from 96 countries.
● Arlington has 86 miles of biking and jogging trails, 8 libraries, and 652 restaurants.
● At 2.8 percent, Arlington County has the Washington area’s lowest unemployment rate.
● 207,627 people live in the county.
● 22207 (North Arlington) is the county’s most expensive Zip code, with a median home price of $890,000.
● 22206 (Shirlington) is the least expensive, with a median home price of $399,000.
Sources: Arlington County government; US Bureau of Labor Statistics; RealEstate Business Intelligence; US Census Bureau.
This article appears in our January 2016 issue of Washingtonian.
