Friday :: 03 July 2009 :: 10:46 PM
175 days to Christmas!
Read The Blog at Judicial Forum.
Fourth Of July Fact
Why do we celebrate Independence Day on July 4?
All kinds of history books and reference books will explain that the federal holiday celebrates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, declaring our independence from Great Britain. However, while that day is celebrated as the day of independence, it really is not. Our nation officially became independent on Sept. 3, 1783, when the British King George III and the American leaders signed the Treaty of Paris.
-- from Land Line magazine, published by OOIDA. July 2007 page 106.
This next commentary is from the same magazine and page. It is an excerpt from an article by Pete Rigney, the Silver Fox:
". . . Every time I read the original document [Ed - Declaration of Independence], I get goose bumps. I think about a little remembered delegate named Richard Henry Lee, a farmer from Westmoreland County, VA. Lee took on the whole British Empire when he introduced a motion that declared we were free from all allegiance to the British Crown on June 7, 1776. Talk about guts!
"John Adams seconded the motion. Thomas Jefferson penned the first draft based on Lee's outline. Ben Franklin and Adams made a few more changes and we were on our way with the noble experiment. Eventually we would become the most powerful nation in the world.
"Thank you, Richard Henry Lee. Thank you, signers who put it on the line for all of us. . ."
Random Humor: Strike That Inheritance
A man was very ill and his son went to visit him in the hospital. Suddenly, the father began to breathe heavily and grabbed the pen and pad by the bed. With his last ounce of strength he wrote a note, dropped it, and died.
The son was so overcome with grief that he didn't remember slipping the note into his pocket. At the funeral, he reached into the pocket of his coat and immediately felt the note. He excitedly read it thinking it might be something he could recite during the service. It said:
YOU IDIOT -- GET OFF MY OXYGEN TUBE!!!