… but Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence was submitted to Congress on June 28.
Let’s stipulate that there are several dates that have much more legitimate claims than July 4 to be called Independence Day and even to be remembered as the day the Declaration of Independence was signed.
The lo-cal TV news had a trivia question about when John Adams thought Independence Day should be. They said July 2.
Brian, the Declaration was ratified on 2 July, IIRC.
Germany has similar problems with the date of “unification day”. The date that the Wall fell was a complete accident, but Nov. 9th is encumbered by other nasty historic events, and is therefore inappropriate. Some West German politicians wanted to use the date of a brutally supressed uprising in East Germany, but instead everyone settled on a nice bureaucratic solution: the date that the official contract was approved by both legislatures. Nothing exciting happened on October 3rd (or July 4th), but we get the day off anyway.
Apparently erased from history is the fact that Germany previously had a holiday called Unification Day, commemorating the 1871 founding of the German Empire.
I think it was Adams who said something to the effect of”After what we did here today, no American will ever forget the date July 2.”
We can talk about the date of Christmas too.
Christmas is just too obvious to mention!
As someone said:
Chanukah is not early this year. It starts on the 25th of Kislev, the same as every year.
“We can talk about the date of Christmas too.”
According to all the local TV advertisements, it’s in July this year.
@ Bill – Besides the fact that it’s a pretty long stretch to ask anyone in today’s Germany to celebrate something that “imperial”, a review of the German Wikipedia artcles reveals that there was never a conclusive agreement on which date they were supposed to celebrate back then. Neither of the two Kaisers proclaimed an official holiday. There were celebrations on Sept. 2nd marking the victory over France in 1870, but these were outranked by festivities marking the Kaiser’s birthday.
@Kilby: West Germany wanted to use June 17, because it had been a national holiday since 1954, in commemoration of that workers’ uprising as a Day of Unity. November 9 really would have been a good date. Not only is it the day the Wall came down, it was also the day the Weimar Republic was declared (and the day the Beer Hall Putsch was suppressed). Unfortunately, it was also the date of some very bad things.
I wonder how many countries actually have this sort of national “birthday”. Off the top of my head, besides the US and Germany, all I can think of are Canada, Mexico, and Switzerland. Oh, and France. I suppose a lot of former colonies do, but it’s not the sort of thing you hear about unless you’re there.
@ DemetriosX – June 17th was a popular choice among conservative West German politicians, but I never saw that much support for it from the general public. While it is good to remember the victims, it would have permanently tied the celebration of the positive experience of the peaceful revolution to a bloody atrocity. The same goes for November 9th: as wonderful as that night was in 1989, the deadly “Reichspogrom” in 1938 is just not an event that should be tied to any holiday.
I think a better (and certainly more practical) choice would have been to select an exemplary Monday, in commemoration of the protest meetings in (and later around) the church in Leipzig, which led directly to the fall of the Wall.
P.S. There’s also “Australia Day” on January 26th.
LOL
The Soviet-bloc May Day comes to mind, although it’s not quite the same.
Not a “holiday you get off work to celebrate” sort of thing, but fun fact fodder — nobody knows the date of Shakespeare’s birth. April 23 is customary but approximate (we know when he was christened, so we can narrow probable date of birth down to a few days), and is assumed mostly because it makes for a nice symmetry with his death on (a later, d’oh) April 23rd.
I dunno, the joke falls flat when you know that the only thing “due” on July 4, 1776, was the official embossed document that John Adams was to sign — which Jefferson had nothing to do with. And even then, the date was just when the document was ready, not a deadline set by Congress.
I suppose we could hold the joke here to be self-evident.
Commemoration dates are often two-edged swords. Canada Day, July 1, is also the anniversary of the beginning of the battle of the Somme in 1916 – when the Newfoundland Regiment suffered disastrous losses. Jefferson himself died on July 4, 1826 (as did John Adams).
I dunno, I know the history surrounding the date, and the joke still works fine for me. A joke can work fine (at least for me) if it plays off a common cultural understanding, even if you know that understanding is wrong.
The joke is great! I placed a printout of it in my manager’s cubicle while he was in a meeting. That “Ha!” I’d hoped for could be heard at my desk is evidence enough for me that, while it may only be relevant to contract institutions that have to get their proposals and monthly reports out on time to keep the money flowing,.. for the target audience, it’s a gift.
John Adams – “The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.—I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”
One use of the word illuminations in period is fireworks.
The actual final document was not signed until August 2, 1776 (it took a lot longer to get things printed up – engrossed – then). The signatures are by state and not all of them are in the order of the signers actually signing. The singers from VA left the top of the area for them to sign blank so that George Wythe could sign there as a sign of respect for him. (First law professor in the colonies and he taught many of them.)
Let’s quickly name two famous people whose death dates are infinitely more well known than their birth dates.
Two random people who happened to be at Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941. OK, not “famous”.
All 7 Challenger astronauts, let’s say.
James, the Challenger explosion was before my time. Do people generally remember the exact date?
Speaking as a geezer (without looking it up), I can pinpoint it within a year or so and if I had to guess I’d say it happened in January.
A lot more than they remember the birthdates of anyone who was on it.
People of my grandparents’ generation remember Pearl Harbor. People of my parents’ generation remember JFK in Dallas (or, a small number, MLK in Memphis). People of my daughter’s generation remember 9/11. People of my generation have Challenger, January 28 of 1986. It hit us hard, because we’d grown up with the idea that spaceflight was dangerous, but not fatally so (Apollo 1 killed people on the ground, and otherwise everytime we (Americans) sent somebody up, they came back safe.
I was on active duty, which meant sitting in the ready room waiting for a noncom to assign me a task. One of the noncoms stuck his head in the room, and said “the space shuttle just blew up”.
Okay, before this thread goes completely off the rails, not that my question wasn’t already a tangent, I was going for November 22 and the Ides of March.
“if I had to guess I’d say it happened in January.”
All U.S. spacecraft-related deaths took place (in different years) over a space of less than 1 week:
Apollo 1, Jan 27; Challenger, Jan 28; Columbia, Feb 1.
So in other words… really, really good guess.
I’d love to see someone dig up a newspaper from 1809 with a big front page headline: “President Lincoln Born”.
Until his answer proved me wrong, reading the thread, I thought B.A. was going for John Adams and Thomas Jefferson who both died on July 4, 1826. Monroe also died on Independence Day, but was a few years after those earlier presidents. I like his answer too, though I bet a majority of people don’t know the dates for the ides.
It’s not quite the same as an 1809 headline, but H.T. Webster drew several comics on the subject of Lincoln’s birth: “What’s new?” / “Nothing at all, except for a new baby down at Tom Lincoln’s – nothing ever happens around here.”
“I was going for November 22 and the Ides of March.”
And here I’d guessed that it was the two Presidents who died on the 4th of July, in 1826.
B. A. – Easy: Jefferson and Adams both died on July 4,1826.
Bob, that would be “her,” thank you very much…
When you use a nom de Internet that was also the name of a TV character played by Mr. T, you run the risk of being identified as “he”.
I pity the fool who makes assumptions like that.
Blink, presumably there were a lot of witnesses involved: Because both of them dying exactly 50 years after the Declaration of Independence was(n’t quite) signed, and Adams’s final words being “Thomas Jefferson survives”… come on, it doesn’t get more contrived than that.
“I pity the fool who makes assumptions like that.”
Foolish it is, certainly. But predictably so.
The “B” is for “Barbara,” and the “A” is complicated.
And yes, I know “complicated” doesn’t start with an “A.”
Mark in Boston, when I was little, I wondered why you hear about famous people dying a lot more than you hear about famous people being born.
“the “A” is complicated”
It’s probably in an Old English font.
Complicated, not ornate.
Ba-Ba-Ba
Ba-Babara-A….
You try Peggy Sue? or Mary Lou?
Okay, maybe not so complicated…
larK nailed it: childhood nickname that eventually got reduced to initials.
“Barbara” and “Ann” happen to be 2/3 of my aunts on my dad’s side.
Jefferson actually died before Adams – but since the Internet and the telephone lines were “out” Adams did not know that, hence his statement was incorrect.
Comics I Don't Understand 
… but Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence was submitted to Congress on June 28.
Let’s stipulate that there are several dates that have much more legitimate claims than July 4 to be called Independence Day and even to be remembered as the day the Declaration of Independence was signed.
The lo-cal TV news had a trivia question about when John Adams thought Independence Day should be. They said July 2.
Brian, the Declaration was ratified on 2 July, IIRC.
Germany has similar problems with the date of “unification day”. The date that the Wall fell was a complete accident, but Nov. 9th is encumbered by other nasty historic events, and is therefore inappropriate. Some West German politicians wanted to use the date of a brutally supressed uprising in East Germany, but instead everyone settled on a nice bureaucratic solution: the date that the official contract was approved by both legislatures. Nothing exciting happened on October 3rd (or July 4th), but we get the day off anyway.
Apparently erased from history is the fact that Germany previously had a holiday called Unification Day, commemorating the 1871 founding of the German Empire.
I think it was Adams who said something to the effect of”After what we did here today, no American will ever forget the date July 2.”
We can talk about the date of Christmas too.
Christmas is just too obvious to mention!
As someone said:
Chanukah is not early this year. It starts on the 25th of Kislev, the same as every year.
“We can talk about the date of Christmas too.”
According to all the local TV advertisements, it’s in July this year.
@ Bill – Besides the fact that it’s a pretty long stretch to ask anyone in today’s Germany to celebrate something that “imperial”, a review of the German Wikipedia artcles reveals that there was never a conclusive agreement on which date they were supposed to celebrate back then. Neither of the two Kaisers proclaimed an official holiday. There were celebrations on Sept. 2nd marking the victory over France in 1870, but these were outranked by festivities marking the Kaiser’s birthday.
@Kilby: West Germany wanted to use June 17, because it had been a national holiday since 1954, in commemoration of that workers’ uprising as a Day of Unity. November 9 really would have been a good date. Not only is it the day the Wall came down, it was also the day the Weimar Republic was declared (and the day the Beer Hall Putsch was suppressed). Unfortunately, it was also the date of some very bad things.
I wonder how many countries actually have this sort of national “birthday”. Off the top of my head, besides the US and Germany, all I can think of are Canada, Mexico, and Switzerland. Oh, and France. I suppose a lot of former colonies do, but it’s not the sort of thing you hear about unless you’re there.
@ DemetriosX – June 17th was a popular choice among conservative West German politicians, but I never saw that much support for it from the general public. While it is good to remember the victims, it would have permanently tied the celebration of the positive experience of the peaceful revolution to a bloody atrocity. The same goes for November 9th: as wonderful as that night was in 1989, the deadly “Reichspogrom” in 1938 is just not an event that should be tied to any holiday.
I think a better (and certainly more practical) choice would have been to select an exemplary Monday, in commemoration of the protest meetings in (and later around) the church in Leipzig, which led directly to the fall of the Wall.
P.S. There’s also “Australia Day” on January 26th.
LOL
The Soviet-bloc May Day comes to mind, although it’s not quite the same.
Not a “holiday you get off work to celebrate” sort of thing, but fun fact fodder — nobody knows the date of Shakespeare’s birth. April 23 is customary but approximate (we know when he was christened, so we can narrow probable date of birth down to a few days), and is assumed mostly because it makes for a nice symmetry with his death on (a later, d’oh) April 23rd.
I dunno, the joke falls flat when you know that the only thing “due” on July 4, 1776, was the official embossed document that John Adams was to sign — which Jefferson had nothing to do with. And even then, the date was just when the document was ready, not a deadline set by Congress.
I suppose we could hold the joke here to be self-evident.
Commemoration dates are often two-edged swords. Canada Day, July 1, is also the anniversary of the beginning of the battle of the Somme in 1916 – when the Newfoundland Regiment suffered disastrous losses. Jefferson himself died on July 4, 1826 (as did John Adams).
@DemetriosX – lots of places have independence days, as you suggest mostly former colonies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_independence_days Mostly from the 19th and 20thCs, but Portugal’s goes back to 1143.
Smithsonian Magazine has a nice article about alternative dates for Independence Day.
I dunno, I know the history surrounding the date, and the joke still works fine for me. A joke can work fine (at least for me) if it plays off a common cultural understanding, even if you know that understanding is wrong.
The joke is great! I placed a printout of it in my manager’s cubicle while he was in a meeting. That “Ha!” I’d hoped for could be heard at my desk is evidence enough for me that, while it may only be relevant to contract institutions that have to get their proposals and monthly reports out on time to keep the money flowing,.. for the target audience, it’s a gift.
John Adams – “The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.—I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”
One use of the word illuminations in period is fireworks.
The actual final document was not signed until August 2, 1776 (it took a lot longer to get things printed up – engrossed – then). The signatures are by state and not all of them are in the order of the signers actually signing. The singers from VA left the top of the area for them to sign blank so that George Wythe could sign there as a sign of respect for him. (First law professor in the colonies and he taught many of them.)
Let’s quickly name two famous people whose death dates are infinitely more well known than their birth dates.
Two random people who happened to be at Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941. OK, not “famous”.
All 7 Challenger astronauts, let’s say.
James, the Challenger explosion was before my time. Do people generally remember the exact date?
Speaking as a geezer (without looking it up), I can pinpoint it within a year or so and if I had to guess I’d say it happened in January.
A lot more than they remember the birthdates of anyone who was on it.
People of my grandparents’ generation remember Pearl Harbor. People of my parents’ generation remember JFK in Dallas (or, a small number, MLK in Memphis). People of my daughter’s generation remember 9/11. People of my generation have Challenger, January 28 of 1986. It hit us hard, because we’d grown up with the idea that spaceflight was dangerous, but not fatally so (Apollo 1 killed people on the ground, and otherwise everytime we (Americans) sent somebody up, they came back safe.
I was on active duty, which meant sitting in the ready room waiting for a noncom to assign me a task. One of the noncoms stuck his head in the room, and said “the space shuttle just blew up”.
Okay, before this thread goes completely off the rails, not that my question wasn’t already a tangent, I was going for November 22 and the Ides of March.
“if I had to guess I’d say it happened in January.”
All U.S. spacecraft-related deaths took place (in different years) over a space of less than 1 week:
Apollo 1, Jan 27; Challenger, Jan 28; Columbia, Feb 1.
So in other words… really, really good guess.
I’d love to see someone dig up a newspaper from 1809 with a big front page headline: “President Lincoln Born”.
Until his answer proved me wrong, reading the thread, I thought B.A. was going for John Adams and Thomas Jefferson who both died on July 4, 1826. Monroe also died on Independence Day, but was a few years after those earlier presidents. I like his answer too, though I bet a majority of people don’t know the dates for the ides.
It’s not quite the same as an 1809 headline, but H.T. Webster drew several comics on the subject of Lincoln’s birth: “What’s new?” / “Nothing at all, except for a new baby down at Tom Lincoln’s – nothing ever happens around here.”
“I was going for November 22 and the Ides of March.”
And here I’d guessed that it was the two Presidents who died on the 4th of July, in 1826.
B. A. – Easy: Jefferson and Adams both died on July 4,1826.
Bob, that would be “her,” thank you very much…
When you use a nom de Internet that was also the name of a TV character played by Mr. T, you run the risk of being identified as “he”.
I pity the fool who makes assumptions like that.
Blink, presumably there were a lot of witnesses involved: Because both of them dying exactly 50 years after the Declaration of Independence was(n’t quite) signed, and Adams’s final words being “Thomas Jefferson survives”… come on, it doesn’t get more contrived than that.
“I pity the fool who makes assumptions like that.”
Foolish it is, certainly. But predictably so.
The “B” is for “Barbara,” and the “A” is complicated.
And yes, I know “complicated” doesn’t start with an “A.”
Mark in Boston, when I was little, I wondered why you hear about famous people dying a lot more than you hear about famous people being born.
“the “A” is complicated”
It’s probably in an Old English font.
Complicated, not ornate.
Ba-Ba-Ba
Ba-Babara-A….
You try Peggy Sue? or Mary Lou?
Okay, maybe not so complicated…
larK nailed it: childhood nickname that eventually got reduced to initials.
“Barbara” and “Ann” happen to be 2/3 of my aunts on my dad’s side.
Jefferson actually died before Adams – but since the Internet and the telephone lines were “out” Adams did not know that, hence his statement was incorrect.