So those booms were sonic booms from military jets that responded to a breach of presidential airspace. Exciting! Let's learn more about our new friend, the sonic boom. From wikipedia.org:

*A sonic boom is the sound associated with the shock waves created by the supersonic flight of an aircraft.

*A sonic boom is usually heard as a deep double 'boom' as the aircraft is usually some distance away.

*Duration of sonic boom is brief; less than a second, 100 milliseconds (0.1 second) for most fighter-sized aircraft and 500 milliseconds for the space shuttle or Concorde jetliner.

*Ground width of the boom exposure area is approximately one statute mile for each 1,000 feet of altitude (5 m/m); that is, an aircraft flying supersonic at 30,000 feet will create a lateral boom spread of about 30 miles, or at 10,000 meters a spread of 50 kilometers.

And my personal favorite sonic boom fact:

*The cracking sound a bullwhip makes when properly wielded is, in fact, a small sonic boom. The end of the whip, known as the "cracker", moves faster than the speed of sound, thus creating a sonic boom.

This is what it looks like (no sound, but you already know what it sounds like—BOOM!):

The more you know.