Candidates for a revised edition of Mondo DC, especially since the Squished Penny Museum has closed: Clay Risen visits ten of D.C.’s more obscure monuments.
Needless to say, the Cuban American Friendship Urn is not of recent vintage. Originally located in Havana in commemoration of the 266 U.S. sailors killed in the 1898 USS Maine explosion, a precipitating factor in the Spanish-American War, the marble urn (contents unknown) was moved to Washington after it was knocked over in a 1926 hurricane. At first it was placed in front of the Cuban embassy, but after Castro came to power—and the embassy was shut down—it was moved to its present location, an obscure corner of East Potomac Park, itself a relatively obscure spit of land running south from the Mall.