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This Day in Esoteric Political History

Capitol for A Day (1814)

This Day in Esoteric Political History

Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia

History

4.6982 Ratings

🗓️ 26 August 2021

⏱️ 17 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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!

This Day In Esoteric Political History is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX.

Your support helps foster independent, artist-owned podcasts and award-winning stories.

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Get in touch if you have any ideas for future topics, or just want to say hello. Our website is thisdaypod.com Follow us on social @thisdaypod

Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Julie Shapiro, Executive Producer at Radiotopia

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

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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