Lion Dancer Playing in Exploding Firecrackers

A lion dance team has to perform face-first among loud and painful exploding firecrackers throughout the day as part of the show. This picture is in front of the restaurant that today is Wok and Roll, at 604 H St NW, in Washington, DC. In 1864 building was Mary Surrat's boarding house, where her son, and John Wilkes Booth, planned the kidnapping of Abraham Lincoln, that turned into his assasination.

"In the early dawn hours of April 15, 1865, authorities searched an inconspicuous house in downtown Washington, D.C. on a tip from a local witness, they were in hot pursuit of John Surratt Jr. for his participation in the conspiracy to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln, shot by John Wilkes Booth just hours earlier. Surratt was on his way to evading arrest across the border in Canada, but the house and its legacy live on today at 604 H St. NW.

Today, the building is home to Wok and Roll, a karaoke bar and restaurant serving Japanese and Chinese cuisines. Nestled between an alley and a pho restaurant in the heart of D.C.’s Chinatown neighborhood, it’s easy to walk by without noticing the plaque by the door that indicates the building’s unique history.

In 1864, Mary Surratt turned the eight-bedroom building into a boarding house to earn money after her husband’s death. Between September 1864 and April 1865, Booth and fellow conspirators met several times there to plan the assassination.

Indeed, the National Register of Historic Places records indicate that Booth met with Mary Surratt at the boarding house at 9 p.m. that night. Approximately one hour later, he fired a bullet into President Lincoln’s head. The rest, of course, is history.

Photo by Elizabeth Cutler.
“The building is not only significant to the story of the Lincoln assassination, [but also] to what Civil War Washington was really like,” says Jake Flack, deputy director of education at Ford’s Theatre. The war stoked a significant population surge in Washington, D.C., spurring a need for hotels and boarding houses like the one Mary Surratt owned. As historian and author John DeFerrari notes, the building is typical of the structures that used to fill many downtown D.C. neighborhoods — and there are not many left that predate the Civil War."
https://districtfray.com/articles/sing-karaoke-eat-chinese-food-in-the-building-abraham-lincolns-assassination-was-plotted/