British Embassy Celebrates 200 Year Anniversary of White House Arson

British Embassy Celebrates 200 Year Anniversary of White House Arson

Embassy later apologizes for "commemoration" tweet about White House arson

Sunday was the 200 year anniversary of the day that British troops burned down the White House in Washington DC, a moment in history that many Americans are unaware of.  The arson took place at the tail end of the “War of 1812″, in which the British empire returned to their former colony to take it back over.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Washington

The British Embassy in Washington gave Twitter users a history lesson this week, when their office made a post “commemorating” the event and published pictures of their celebration.  Their celebration included a giant cake topped with a White House that was covered in sparklers, seemingly intended to represent fire.

It was also later revealed that the embassy called their party “The White House BBQ”.




The Embassy Tweeted the picture along with the following message:

Many ill tempered Americans become offended by the Tweet, creating a massive backlash on the embassy’s profile.  Hours later the embassy made another post apologizing for the bad joke, saying “Apologies for earlier Tweet. We meant to mark an event in history & celebrate our strong friendship today.”

This situation calls attention to the level of power that the UK continues to wield over the US and its other former colonies.  Many US history books call the war of 1812 “the second war for independence”, however, when looking at the political and financial control that the UK has had in the US for the past 200 years, it may be safe to consider that the British were the winners of that war.