In the early years of the nineteenth century, Napoleon Bonaparte and his Grande Armée kept his Britannic Majesty’s armed forces pretty well occupied. In the former American colonies, the first two years of the War of 1812 were little more than a series of skirmishes.
The Corsican’s defeat at Waterloo and subsequent exile to Elba freed up some of the most elite, battle hardened troops in the world.
On the morning of August 24, 1814, 4,370 of them were moving up the Chesapeake, toward Baltimore.
They were met by an inexperienced and poorly equipped militia force of some 6,000 American forces at Bladensburg, Maryland, whose comprehensive defeat and humiliating rout went into the history books as the “Bladensburg Races”. President James Madison and most of the federal government were present at the battle, and nearly captured. American militia members fled through the streets of Washington, while every politician from President Madison down to Freshman Members of Congress skedaddled across the countrysides of Maryland and Virginia.
The only bright spot for the American side that day, occurred when Commodore Joshua Barney lead 520 seamen in a downhill charge against vastly superior British forces. Barney took a bullet to the thigh and was captured by the British. Rear Admiral Sir George Cockburn was so impressed with the American sailor’s show of courage that he paroled the man on the spot, saying “They have given us the only fighting we have had.”
The British sent an advance guard of soldiers to Capitol Hill under flag of truce, intending to discuss terms of surrender. The column was attacked by the occupants of a single house at the corner of Maryland & Constitution Ave., the only resistance the redcoats would see in the city. The house was burned, and the British raised the Union Jack over Washington DC. Then they commenced to burn every government building they could find.
The Senate and House of Representatives buildings were the first to burn, along with the Library of Congress and Supreme Court, which at that time were located inside. The Treasury building was next, though British hopes were disappointed to find there was no money inside.
First Lady Dolley Madison barely had time to gather up some precious objects, ordering White House staff to remove the portrait of George Washington before the “President’s House”, as the White House was then called, was overrun. The table was set for President Madison and a party of 40 at the time, the wine still cooling on a sideboard when the British set the White House of it’s day, on fire. All night they added fuel to the flames, just to keep it going.
Portraits of King George III and his wife Queen Charlotte Sophia were discovered in one public building, and taken down before that building too, was burned. The two portraits made their way halfway across the Atlantic to Bermuda, where they hang in the Parliament building, to this day.
The Washington Navy Yard was torched the following day, along with departments of State, War and Navy. Admiral Cockburn entered the building of the National Intelligencer newspaper intending to burn that down, too, but several women persuaded him not to. Instead, Cockburn ordered his troops to tear the building down brick by brick. He ordered all the “C” typeset destroyed, too, “so that the rascals can have no further means of abusing my name.”
The largest loss of life in the whole episode occurred on the afternoon of the 25th, when
General Ross sent two hundred men to secure a fort on Greenleaf’s Point. The fort had already been destroyed by American forces, but 150 barrels of gunpowder remained. The powder ignited while the British were trying to drop it into a well, killing at least a dozen and injuring many others.
A heavy thunderstorm came up that same day, putting out many of the fires and spawning a small tornado that damaged British ships causing them to withdraw. Thomas Jefferson later sold his personal library of more than 6,000 volumes to the government, restocking the Library of Congress with his own personal collection.
The episode has been called “The greatest disgrace ever dealt to American arms”…”The most humiliating episode in American history.” It was the only time before or since, that an enemy force has occupied our nation’s capital.
Quantrill fled to Texas after the raid on Lawrence, and was later killed in a Union ambush near Taylorsville, Kentucky. His band broke up into several smaller groups, with some joining the Confederate army.
Gehrig was pitching for Columbia University against Williams College on April 18, 1923, the day that Babe Ruth hit the first home run out of the brand new Yankee Stadium. Though Columbia would lose the game, Gehrig struck out seventeen batters to set a team record. The loss didn’t matter to Paul Krichell, the Yankee scout who had been following Gehrig. Krichell didn’t care about the arm either, as much as he did that powerful left-handed bat. He had seen Gehrig hit some of the longest home runs ever seen on several Eastern campuses, including a 450′ home run at Columbia’s South Field that cleared the stands, landing at 116th Street and Broadway.
Gehrig left the team in June, arriving at the Mayo Clinic on the 13th. The diagnosis of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) was confirmed six days later, on June 19. It was his 36th birthday. It was a cruel prognosis: rapidly increasing paralysis, difficulty in swallowing and speaking, and a life expectancy of fewer than three years.
White found himself trapped in England by the invasion of the Spanish Armada, and the Anglo-Spanish war. It would be three years before he could return to Roanoke. He arrived on August 18, 1590, three years to the day from the birth of his granddaughter. He found the place deserted, only the word “CROATOAN” carved into a fence post. The letters “CRO” were carved into a nearby tree.
White had hopes of finding his family at Croatoan, the home of Chief Manteo’s people to the south, on modern day Hatteras Island.
Seventeen years later, another group of colonists would apply the lessons learned in Roanoke, founding their own colony a few miles up the coast at a place called Jamestown.
65 days at sea brought them up on the outer reaches of Cape Cod in mid-November, near the present site of Provincetown Harbor. There they stayed long enough to draw up the first written framework of government established in the United States, signing the Mayflower Compact off the shores of Provincetown on November 11, 1620.
Reporters from the AP, NY Times, NY Daily News and others descended on Times Square to record the spontaneous celebration.
This year, the couple celebrates their 68th wedding anniversary. Rita says she wasn’t angry that her husband kissed another woman on their first date. She points out that she can been seen grinning in the background of the famous picture. She will admit, however, ‘In all these years, George has never kissed me like that.’
Kennedy and Willy remained aboard as BQ-8 completed its first remote controlled turn at 2,000′, near the North Sea coast. They removed the safety pin arming the explosive, Kennedy sending the code “Spade Flush”, to signal the task was complete. They were his last words. The aircraft exploded two minutes later, a shower of wreckage coming to earth near the village of Blythburgh in Suffolk, England. A series of small fires were started and 59 buildings were damaged, but there were no casualties on the ground. The bodies of Kennedy and Willy were never recovered.
When Joseph Kennedy Jr. was born, his grandfather John F. Fitzgerald, then Mayor of Boston, said, “This child is the future President of the nation”. He had been a delegate to the Democrat’s National Convention in 1940, and planned to run for Massachusetts’ 11th congressional district in 1946.
In 1927, Army Chief of Staff General Charles Summerall directed that a bill be drafted and submitted to Congress, “To revive the Badge of Military Merit”. This badge of merit came to be known as the Purple Heart. General Douglas MacArthur, Summerall’s successor, began work on a new design for the medal in 1931. Elizabeth Will, heraldic specialist with the Quartermaster General’s office, created the design we see today.
104 years ago today, 1,700 seasonal hops pickers gathered in the field of the Durst Hop Farm. They demanded an increase from their $1.00/100 lbs of hops picked, and they wanted better working conditions. Durst agreed to some changes, but Ford and Suhr stuck to their full list of demands and called a strike.
More shooting incidents occurred in the days that followed. Objections to the whiskey tax gave way to a long list of economic grievances, as over 7,000 gathered in Braddock’s Field on August 1. They talked of secession and carried their own flag, each of its six stripes representing one of 6 Pennsylvania or eastern Ohio counties.
The whiskey rebellion collapsed in the face of what was then an overwhelming army, with 10 of their leaders brought to Philadelphia to stand trial. Two were sentenced to hang for their role in the rebellion, but President Washington pardoned them both. The whiskey rebellion was over.
Historical Easter Eggs - Today in History 
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