News recently that Washington DC will be the site of the newest Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. The museum will fill the void left by the National Wax Museum, which closed in 1984. Currently the topic of discussion of who should be immortalized in the hall. One figure has been getting a fair amount of support. "Mayor for Life Marion S. Barry, Jr." Marion Barry, currently a DC Council member, served as DC's mayor until the "bitch set him up" in a drug raid that caught the mayor smoking crack in a DC hotel room.
Marion Barry was elected mayor in 1978, a year after he gained notoriety in an attack that occurred thirty years ago today. On this date, a group of Hanafi Muslim gunmen stormed three locations around the city, the Wilson Building, home to DC government and then called the District building, the B'nai B'rith International Center, and the Islamic Center, taking more than 150 people hostage.
At the District Building, Barry was hit by a shotgun blast as he stepped out of the Council Chambers. Already dead was Maurice Williams, a reporter for WHUR radio, the Howard University radio station. At ceremonies today, the press room at the Wilson Building will be named in Williams' honor.
The siege ended when ambassadors from Iran, Pakistan, and Egypt persuaded the gunmen to give up, with no further loss of life.
In an age where threats of terrorism are a part of daily life, this was an early reminder to a city that now lives with the specter of attacks nearly every day and a hint of what could happen again in an instant.
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