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With most of our usual readership likely occupied with beaches, grilling, picnics, parades and/or fireworks today, we think it’s fitting to revolt from the responsibility of producing our typical volley of thought-provoking, legal-related blog content. Instead, we’re taking the opportunity to acknowledge the singularly memorable event that took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania exactly two hundred and forty years ago.
It was on that day, July 4, 1776, that the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, accelerating the rise of a baker’s dozen of determined colonies on their revolutionary, republic-building trajectory.
While that’s common knowledge among most Americans with a skosh of schooling under their belts, other Independence Day (the July 4th, 1776 version, not Brexit) facts are less well known, to wit:
Four for the 4th – Independence Day Facts You Might Not Know
- 25 of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence were lawyers
- Only 26 of the 200 copies of the Declaration of Independence printed for distribution throughout the colonies are known to have survived
- The U.S. Congress made July 4th a federal holiday in 1870
- In the 1996 movie, “Independence Day,” a line spoken by actor Harvey Fierstein originally contained an expletive. It was dubbed over in the final cut as “Eh, forget my lawyer.”
With that second token reference to lawyers making this post marginally legit, we wish you Happy Independence Day. We’ll be back with more cerebral content later in the week.