July 4th Holiday Fun Facts

President John Adams and President Thomas Jefferson
Read what happened to them on 1826 in this blog post.

May Independence Day bring good fortune and celebration to you wherever you are.  As the United States celebrates its birthday, here is a link to other countries with the dates of their Independence Days.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_independence_days

And here are some fun facts of other historical events that have also happened on July 4th. (Source: https://www.onthisday.com/events/july/4)

1636 City of Providence, Rhode Island is formed

1776 According to popular legend the Liberty Bell rings for the Second Continental Congress

1776 US Congress proclaims the Declaration of Independence and independence from Britain

1796 1st Independence Day celebration is held

1802 US Military Academy officially opens (West Point, NY)

1803 The Louisiana Purchase is announced to the American people by President Thomas Jefferson

1826 Past presidents Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both die on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, President John Quincy Adams calls "visible and palpable remarks of Divine Favor"

1827 Slavery abolished in New York

1831 "America (My Country 'Tis of Thee)" is 1st sung in Boston

1838 Iowa Territory is organized from Wisconsin Territory, lasting until 1846

1840 The Cunard Line's 700-ton wooden paddle steamer RMS Britannia departs from Liverpool bound for Halifax, Nova Scotia on the first transatlantic crossing with a scheduled end

1845 Henry David Thoreau moves into his shack on Walden Pond (Massachusetts)

1845 Texas Congress votes for annexation to US

1862 Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) creates Alice in Wonderland for Alice Liddell on a family boat trip on the river Isis (Thames) in Oxford (England)

1863 General Lee's army withdraws from Gettysburg (Turning point during the Civil War)

1863 Vicksburg, Mississippi surrenders to Union forces

1865 First edition of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll is published

1868 Maori leader Te Kooti and 300 of his followers captured the schooner Rifleman in the Chatham Islands and sail for New Zealand; landing at Whareongaonga six days later

1873 Aquarium opens in Woodward Gardens, San Francisco

1875 White Democrats kill several blacks in terrorist attacks in Vicksburg

1876 1st public exhibition of electric light in San Francisco

1876 Batholdi visits Bedloe Island, future home of his Statue of Liberty

1881 Booker T. Washington establishes Tuskegee Institute (Alabama)

1883 Buffalo Bill Cody presents 1st Wild West Show, North Platte, Nebraska

1884 Statue of Liberty presented to US in Paris

1886 1st scheduled transcontinental passenger train reaches Port Moody, British Columbia

1887 Future founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, begins his studies at Sindh Madressatul Islam University in Karachi

1892 Western Samoa changes the International Date Line, so that year there were 367 days in this country, with two occurrences of Monday, July 4

1894 Republic of Hawaii proclaimed, Sanford B Dole as president

1895 Katherine Lee Bates publishes "America the Beautiful"

1901 William Howard Taft, former Federal judge, is installed as the first governor-general of the Philippines and declares amnesty for all insurgents who take an oath of allegiance

1902 Civil government is established in the Philippines by a proclamation from US President Theodore Roosevelt, who offers a general amnesty to insurgents

1906 Great Britain, France, and Italy declare the independence of Ethiopia (Abyssinia), but all lay claim to their own 'spheres of influence' in that land

1910 "Fight of the Century": African American Jack Johnson beats "The Great White Hope" James J. Jeffries by TKO in 15 in Reno, Nevada to retain his world heavyweight boxing title

1917 Troops of the Russian Provisional Government opened fire on protesters in Petrograd during the 'July Days' of unrest (Russian Revolution)

1918 Ottoman sultan Mehmed VI ascends to the throne. This signaled the end of the Ottoman Empire and the beginning of modern-day Turkey following World War I.

1927 Sukarno and friends form the pro-Indonesian independence party, the PNI (Perserikatan Nasional Indonesia) in Batavia, Dutch East Indies

1934 Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard patents the chain-reaction design for the atomic bomb

1939 Lou Gehrig is first MLB player to have his number (4) retired on his "Appreciation Day" at Yankee Stadium, makes iconic "luckiest man" speech

1941 Latvia partisans shoot 416 Jews dead during World War II

1941 Howard Florey and Norman Heatley meet for the 1st time, 11 days later they successfully recreate penicillin

1944 1,100 US guns fire 4th of July salute at German lines in Normandy

1944 1st Japanese kamikaze attack, US fleet near Iwo Jima

1946 Anti-Jewish riots in Kielce Poland, 42 die

1946 Philippines gains independence from the US

1946 President Manuel Roxas inaugurated as the 5th President of the Philippines and the first president of the Third Republic at the Independence Grandstand, Manila

1950 Harry Truman signs public law 600 (Puerto Ricans write own constitution)

1950 The first broadcast by Radio Free Europe.

1954 Dr. Sam Sheppard's wife Marilyn is murdered (he is accused of the crime)

1954 Meat and all other food rationings officially end in Britain, nine years after the end of World War II

1959 Island Records founded in Jamaica

1966 Beatles attacked in the Philippines after (unintentionally) insulting Imelda Marcos

1966 President Lyndon B Johnson signs Freedom of Information Act

1975 Wimbledon Women's Tennis: Billie Jean King outclasses Evonne Goolagong 6-0, 6-1 for her 6th Wimbledon singles title

1975 Ted Bundy victim Nancy Baird disappears from Layton, Utah

1976 Operation Entebbe - Israel rescues 229 Air France hostage passengers In Uganda (3 hostages die along with Ugandan soldiers and Israeli soldier)

1987 Nazi Klaus Barbie, "Butcher of Lyon" sentenced to life in France

1990 400 New Kids on the Block fans treated for heat exhaustion in Minnesota

1993 Pilar Fort crowned 25th Miss Black America

1994 Rwandese Patriotic Front occupies Kigali

1996 Hot Mail, a free internet E-mail service begins

2003 LA Lakers basketball star Kobe Bryant is arrested in Eagle, Colorado for sexual assault, charges eventually dismissed

2004 The cornerstone of the Freedom Tower is laid on the site of the World Trade Center in New York City. (This was largely a symbolic event; actual construction would not start for several weeks)

2006 Richard Branson sells Virgin Mobile to NTL for £962.4 million

2006 Sri Lanka sets new ODI cricket record score 443-9 in a World Cup win over the Netherlands in Amstelveen (Jayasuriya 157, Dilshan 117no)

2009 The Statue of Liberty's crown reopens to the public after 8 years, due to security reasons following the World Trade Center attacks

2017 North Korea tests first successful intercontinental ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan

2018 Hong Kong'stop court rules same-sex couples entitled to equal visa rights in a landmark case

2018 Wildfire in Yolo County, California, grows to 82,700 acres with 2,800 firefighters battling the blaze

2018 Chinese technology company Baidu announces it has begun mass production of self-driving buses, the 14-seat Apolong