Happy Second of JULY!
Okay, time for me to throw a monkey wrench in all of your celebrations. I’m happy to announce that the good old US of A’s Birthday has been changed this year.
It’s because on July 4, 1776 we claimed our independence from Great Britain and our Democracy was born. But our celebratin’ might be a couple of days late. Here’s why. On June 11th, Congress met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and adopted a resolution urging independence from Great Britain. They appointed a committee to write a formal document that would tell King George that the Americans had decided to govern themselves. The committee asked Thomas Jefferson to write a draft of the document, so he worked for days, in absolute secret, until he had written a document that he thought said everything important that the committee had discussed.
On June 28, 1776, the committee met to read Jefferson's first copy. He put his best ideas together and wrote them in his own hand. They revised the document and declared their independence on July 2, 1776. Did you hear that? They declared their independence on JULY 2nd. They officially voted and adopted it on July 4, 1776.
John Hancock, President of the Continental Congress, was the first to sign the Declaration of Independence. It is said that he signed his name "with a great flourish" so "King George can read that without spectacles!" That is why we call that date "Independence Day."
The fact is that John Adams wrote home to Abigail on the 3rd that this day, July 2nd will go down in history," "We'll celebrate it with parades and pomp and bells ringing and fireworks, and it was because Congress actually ruled it in favor of independence on July 2. But it was two days later, of course, that Congress then accepted Jefferson's declaration, explaining the vote two days before that really got fixed in the America's imagination as our birthday. Some still say July 2nd should be our Independence Day.
The 4th of July is also significant in a strange way. Both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died within hours of each other on July 4, 1826. Weird huh?
Also, Americans began observing the Fourth of July as early as 1777, when the first-ever major celebration in Philadelphia included a parade, a thirteen-shot cannon salute and fireworks, but Congress didn’t make it official until 1870, when it was part of a bill passed to recognize major state holidays at a federal level. In celebration, about 155 million Hot Dogs are consumed each 4th of July alone.
Due to concerns about further cracking the iconic instrument, the Liberty Bell has not been rung since 1846. Instead, every year, to mark the Fourth of July, the 2,000-pound bell is tapped 13 times to signal for bells across the country to start ringing.
The United States got what may be the country's largest physical birthday present on July 4, 1884, when the French presented it with the Statue of Liberty. It took four months to assemble the 151-foot-tall statue, which was shipped from Paris in hundreds of pieces.
Alright now for a chuckle,
An upset senior citizen phoned her doctor's office. "Is it true," she wanted to know, "that the medication you prescribed has to be taken for the rest of my life?" "Yes, I'm afraid so," the doctor told her. There was a moment of silence before the senior lady replied, "I'm wondering, then, just how serious is my condition because this prescription is marked
NO REFILLS."
So I’ll see all you’all at the Fireworks show on July 2nd…uhhh…okay we’ll do it a couple of days later if you insist. Happy Birthday AMERICA!
