Back in the early 1990s I was Washington Correspondent for Flight and lived with my wife and children there for three years. As many people have observed Washington's an odd sort of city and when we had visitors I was never quite sure what to show them.
I know I wasn't the only ex-pat who in the end settled on Arlington Cemetery (that's an unofficial link as the official website is down just now) as the one fixture on my mini-tour.
There is a lot to see there, most of it deeply moving. But the place that most raised the hairs on my neck is the one shown below. It's the Shuttle Memorial and I think it beautifully encapsulates the combination of zest for life, intellectual curiosity and sheer courage displayed by the crew. These were some of America's brightest - they knew the risks as nobody else and they went ahead and did it anyway.
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