Community Corner

July 4: Happy Fourth of July

Instead of the usual event listings, here is a list of five facts you may not have known about the Founding Fathers and the Fourth of July.

1. When the Declaration of Independence was signed, 2.5 million people lived in the newly independent nation. The population of the United States today has grown to 311.7 million, roughly 125 times larger.

2. "The Star Spangled Banner," the American national anthem, may have been written as a patriotic poem by Francis Scott Key during the War of 1812 but the melody for the song is based on a drinking song from London, "To Anacreon in Heaven."

3. The only two men to sign the Declaration of Independence and later serve as president were John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Both died on the same day, July 4, 1826.

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4. Despite misconceptions, the Liberty Bell did not break when it was rung to celebrate America's independence in 1776. The bell earned its famous crack after being rung on the George Washington's birthday in 1846. The Liberty Bell was not even given its nickname during the Revolution. It was adopted by abolitionists as a symbol of liberty for all men in 1837.

5. Paul Revere, immortalized for his Midnight Ride, never shouted, "The British are coming!" In fact, Revere never shouted at all. His mission was to secretly warn Revolutionary leaders of the incoming British troops sent to arrest them. His actual words were, "The Regulars are coming out." Revere was not the only patriot who rode to warn the American militia. Shoemaker William Dawes and later Dr. Samuel Prescott also rode the Massachusetts countryside. Paul Revere is the most famous of the three, thanks to the poem "Paul Revere's Ride," written by poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to raise Union morale during the outbreak of the Civil War in 1860. 

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