4.6 • 982 Ratings
🗓️ 26 August 2021
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
It’s August 26th. This day in 1814, the small town of Brookeville, MD becomes the Capitol of the United States — for one night.
Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss why Brookeville became the seat of government amidst the chaos of the War of 1812. Plus, a bonus conversation about another story on this day, from 1970 — the bombing of a research facility at the University of Wisconsin.
Thanks to Ana and Chris, the listeners who wrote in to suggest these two stories!
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0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia. |
0:08.0 | My name is Jody Avergan. |
0:10.0 | This day August 26th, 1814, let's travel to the town of Brookville, Maryland. |
0:18.3 | It's about 12 or 15 miles north of Washington, D.C. |
0:22.1 | On this day, Brookville consists of about, D.C. on this day Brookville consists of about 15 houses, a |
0:25.5 | tannery, a blacksmith, a store, several mills, a nice little town. And also |
0:30.0 | on this day it is the capital of the United States of America. That is right. On the night of |
0:35.5 | August 26th, James Madison, President of the United States, came through Brookville as he was |
0:39.6 | fleeing a burning Washington, D.C. He spent the night, then kept it moving the next day but that |
0:45.3 | night spent in brookville was apparently enough to make brookville the US capital |
0:49.4 | for a day I will just say this is maybe not surprising but the first thing you see when you look |
0:54.9 | up brook from Maryland online there is a plaque the city is very proud of it and we also |
0:59.6 | have gotten emails from listeners about it so a shout out to Anna Perez Lepore who clued us into this |
1:04.6 | story of Brookville here to discuss as always are Nicole Hammer of Columbia and Kelly |
1:09.8 | Carter Jackson of Wellesley hello there. Hello Jody. |
1:13.0 | Hey there. |
1:14.0 | Have either of you been to Brookville? |
1:16.0 | You don't have to spend the night. |
1:18.0 | Have either of you been to Brookville? |
1:20.0 | I haven't. |
1:21.0 | And I'm going to have to rectify that it seems. |
1:23.4 | Yeah, it goes to the plaque. |
... |
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