July 4

The signing of the American Declaration of Independence began on the 4th[i] in 1776. Only two people, Thomas Jefferson[ii], president of the Congress, and John Hancock, its secretary signed it on that day. Though the Declaration was largely written by Jefferson, Franklin and John Adams[iii] heavily edited it. It seems that editors just have to get their sticky fingers into everything. I guess Jefferson was a decent writer, but besides that whole, “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” thingy who has read anything else he wrote? What was he, some sort of one-trick pony? Come on, one paragraph and you are read over two hundred years later? Sheesh!
[i] Also on the 4th, in 1789, the Marquis de Sade was transferred out of the Bastille, where he had been imprisoned, and moved to another prison. Had he remained until the 14th he would have been freed, along with the other 6 people held there.
[ii] When he signed the Declaration Jefferson, and Washington, both owned over 200 slaves each. Jefferson must have liked the work of William Shakespeare a lot; when he visited the Bard’s house in Stratford-on-Avon, England, he got down on his knees and kissed the ground.
[iii] John Adams was in the practice of starting his day with a large mug of hard cider, a practice that he inculcated in his son John Quincy Adams when young John Quincy was 12 or 13 years old. Interestingly, Another of Adams’s sons, William, became an alcoholic. John Quincy appears to not have also gone that route.