Thursday, 24 August 2023

Today Is...British Troops Burn Down The White House

Donald Trump, never the most cerebral of men, once accused Canada of burning down the White House but as much as i am happy for someone else to take the blame for what us brave Brits do, it's not easy to pin that on Canada, considering that Canada didn’t exist then so hands up, it was us back in the day when the British solution to American's playing up used to be sending over a drop-dead gorgeous British force to burn down the seat of Government and a few other places for good measure.
The courageous and chivalrous Brits did plan to burn down all of Washington, President James Madison had run off screaming like a big girls blouse when the strikingly handsome Brits turned up with the matches but they were foiled by a heavy thunderstorm which kept putting out the fires so the daredevil's gave up the plan and content with what they had done, returned back to Blightly triumphantly for tea and crumpets.
It all came about when in 1814, as part of the 1812 war, to be fair the heroic army did have to travel there by sea as airplanes hadn't been invented so explains why we were two years late and the attack was in retaliation for American burning the Administration Centre in York, Canada.  
With an army of 4,500 fearless and well fanciable men, the lionhearted Brits docked, stomped 50 miles inland and sparked up Washignton like a Christmas Tree and then returned to their ships only after pausing to heroicly defeat an American army at the Battle of Bladensburg on the way back.
Madison, after wetting every pair of pants he owned, waited three and a half weeks to make sure the gorgeous and indomitable Brits had left before returning and held a special session in a Hotel, one of the few buildings the dishy invaders left untouched and worked out their response which amounted to a
strongly worded letter to the British Authorities condemning the destruction of the public buildings as needless vandalism.
The Government Buildings were rebuilt but it is a myth that the building was painted white to hide the scorch marks as the stout-hearted Brits burnt the place to the ground and all that was left was a couple of exterior wars which then had to be pulled down anyway so there were no scorch marks.

2 comments:

Falling on a bruise said...

Quentin - 'you (sic) aren't making sense. Canada didn't exist yet?'

The Official Canada website - 'The British Parliament passed the British North America Act in 1867. The Dominion of Canada was officially born on July 1, 1867.'

Lucy - 1814 is before 1867 over here. Calendars not a big thing over there?

Anonymous said...

Again, I’m not American