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T H U R S D A Y

When Congress first convened in the new capital in 1800, Washington was a marshy, underdeveloped, half pint of a city. Many of its early visitors and part-time inhabitants chose to live and do business in the boarding houses and tavern hotels that dotted Capitol Hill. Join Barbara Carson, author of Ambitious Appetites: Dining, Behavior, and Patterns of Consumption in Federal Washington, for tea and “Political and Social Gatherings: Dining in Boarding Houses and Tavern Hotels in Early Washington,” a lecture on the early years of political noshing. At 3 p.m. at the Willard Hotel, 1401 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. $20. For reservations call (202) 879-7766. (Andrew Webster)