In August 1814, the United States army was defeated just outside Washington, D.C., by the world’s greatest military power. President James Madison and his wife had just enough time to flee the White House before the British invaders entered. British troops stopped to feast on the meal still sitting on the Madisons’ dining-room table before setting the White House on fire. The extent of the destruction was massive; finished in wood rather than marble, everything inside the mansion was combustible. Only the outer stone walls would withstand the fire.
Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, James Madison, and George Washington met to restore rights and liberties that Great Britain had taken away. When Britain refused to meet the demands from that congress, the colonists called the Second Continental Congress in 1775. During this period, Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence and a group of colonists created the Articles of Confederation, America’s first constitution. They also named George Washington the commander of the new Continental Army.
Avid readers of Clancy's bestselling techno-thrillers ( The Hunt for Red October et al.) know agent John Kelly, code-named Mr. Clark, as Jack Ryan's "dark side." Here, in 1970, Vietnam vet Kelly gets involved in a secret operation to rescue 20 American pilots from a North Vietnamese prison camp. Betrayed by someone in Washington, the mission ends in apparent failure.
In the first of these stories, Rip van Winkle sleeps for over twenty years, and then wakes up to a world that he no longer understands. In the other story, Ichabod Crane, the school teacher, meets a headless rider in the middle of a dark night. These two classic tales of the supernatural by Washington Irving have been popular for nearly two hundred years.
What do you remember from when you were young? Probably a whole lot. Booker T. Washington had strong, long-lasting memories of his childhood. He was most likely born in 1856. But since he was born a slave, no one thought to record his birth...
