August 24 · This Day in America
British troops march into Washington City almost unopposed and set it on fire. The Capitol burns. The President's House burns — the redcoats reportedly sit down to eat the dinner laid for James Madison before they torch it. The Treasury, the arsenal, the office of the National Intelligencer: all in flames. The President is in the field; the city is abandoned. It is the only time in history a foreign power has captured and burned the American capital. And yet. First Lady Dolley Madison refuses to flee until the great Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington is cut from its frame and carried to safety. That night a freak storm — by some accounts a tornado — roars through, dousing the fires and driving the British out after barely a day. The walls still stood. The government came back. The country had been knocked down on its own ground and got up anyway.
Source: www.whitehousehistory.org
Also on this day · 1932
Just after sunset she lifts off from Los Angeles in her red Lockheed Vega, alone, and points it east. Nineteen hours and five minutes later she sets down at Newark — the first woman to fly nonstop, solo, across the United States, nearly 2,500 miles in one unbroken night and morning. A small crowd meets her, loud beyond its size. She had already crossed the Atlantic alone. Now she had stitched her own country together coast to coast, by herself, in the dark.
Source: airandspace.si.edu