(“The TEN” is not a top ten but ten items worth being included in “The TEN”)
In honor of this day, we thought we would take a break from sports and make The Ten about the Fourth of July!
1. July 4, 1776 wasn’t the day that the Continental Congress decided to declare independence (they did that on July 2, 1776). The Continental Congress approved the final wording of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
2. No one who signed the Declaration of Independence was born in the United States of America. The United States didn’t exist until after the Declaration was signed! However, all but eight of the signers were born in colonies that would become the United States.
3. Three U.S. presidents have died on July 4th. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in 1826 and James Monroe in 1831.
4. Although Thomas Jefferson is often called the “author” of the Declaration of Independence, he wasn’t the only person who contributed important ideas. Jefferson was a member of a five-person committee appointed by the Continental Congress to write the Declaration. The committee included Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman.
5. On December 13, 1952, the Declaration of Independence (along with the Constitution and Bill of Rights) was formally delivered to the National Archives in Washington, D.C., where it has remained since then.
6. John Hancock was the President of the Second Continental Congress when the Declaration of Independence was adopted. He, along with Samuel Adams, were the two most wanted men in the colonies by King George III.
7. The average age of those who signed the Declaration of Independence was 45. The youngest at age 26, was Edward Rutledge, Jr of South Carolina. The oldest delegate was Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania at age 70. Thomas Jefferson was 33.
8. In 1870 Congress made Independence Day an official unpaid holiday; in 1938, it was changed to a paid federal holiday.
9. Only two men signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th 1776 — John Hancock and Charles Thompson
10. July 4, 1776, became the date that was included on the Declaration of Independence, and the fancy handwritten copy that was signed in August (the copy now displayed at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.) It’s also the date that was printed on the Dunlap Broadsides, the original printed copies of the Declaration that were circulated throughout the new nation.
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