From an AP story by Ben Finley headlined “Sonic boom heard over Washington is a rare sound with a rich history”:

People living in and around the nation’s capital experienced a rare sound: A sonic boom.

The boom was heard Sunday after the U.S. military dispatched six fighter jets to intercept an unresponsive plane flying over restricted airspace.

The Air Force gave the F-16s permission to fly faster than the speed of sound — something civilian aircraft rarely get to do — as the jets scrambled to catch up with the Cessna Citation. The result was a thunderous rumble that resonated across a metropolitan area that’s home to more than six million people.