It should have been the second of July
The thirteen American colonies actually voted to break away from Britain on 2 July 1776. John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail the next day predicting that 2 July would be celebrated for ever after with parades, shows, games, bonfires and illuminations from one end of the continent to the other. He was right about everything except the date. Congress approved the final wording of the Declaration of Independence on the FOURTH, and that was the date printed at the top. Most of the signatures were added about a month later, on 2 August.
The Declaration was first read aloud in public in Philadelphia on 8 July, and in New York a few days later a crowd pulled down a statue of King George the Third. Our US presidents page covers the remarkable way Adams and Jefferson both died on the Fourth, fifty years later.
A song from a battle and a flag from a school project
The national ANTHEM, The Star-Spangled Banner, was written in 1814 by a lawyer called Francis Scott Key, who watched British ships bombard Fort McHenry in Baltimore through the night and saw at dawn that the huge American flag was still flying. His words were set to the tune of a British song, and it only became the official anthem in 1931.
The present fifty-star FLAG began, the story goes, as a school project. In 1958, a seventeen-year-old in Ohio called Robert Heft designed a flag with fifty STARS, expecting Alaska and Hawaii to become states. His teacher gave him a B minus. Heft sent the design to his congressman, and when Hawaii joined in 1959 his flag was chosen; the teacher changed the grade to an A. The thirteen STRIPES still stand for the original colonies.
The eagle, the turkey and a meat packer
The bald EAGLE has been the symbol of the United States since 1782, when it was put on the Great Seal, although it only became the official national bird by law in 2024. Benjamin Franklin grumbled in a letter to his daughter that the eagle was a bird of bad moral character that stole fish from other birds, and that the turkey was a much more respectable bird.
UNCLE SAM, the white-bearded figure in a top hat, is thought to be based on Samuel Wilson, a meat packer from Troy, New York, who supplied barrels of beef to the army during the War of 1812. The barrels were stamped U.S., and soldiers joked that the letters stood for Uncle Sam. In 1961 Congress officially recognised Wilson as the original.
Fireworks and hot dogs
Americans set off huge amounts of FIREWORKS on the Fourth, and cities from New York to Washington put on displays over rivers and monuments; our US landmarks page covers some of the most famous backdrops. On Coney Island in New York, a hot dog eating contest has been held every Fourth since 1972, with winners eating more than seventy hot dogs in ten minutes.
The day was made a federal holiday in 1870. A BARBECUE, a COOKOUT or a PICNIC, a PARADE, a SPARKLER, a waving BANNER and a SALUTE to the NATION are part of the celebrations of LIBERTY and FREEDOM across AMERICA every JULY, when a PATRIOT might remember the FOUNDING of the country.