5 Things You Didn’t Know About America’s Birthday
July 4 is celebrated as Independence Day in America, a time of parades, fireworks and barbecues, when patriotic citizens recall the freedom won from Great Britain by the thirteen colonies in 1776. Here are 5 things you may not know about the United States of America’s birthday:
The very first proto-Independence Day celebrations took place in 1776, the same year the Continental Congress declared the colonies’ freedom. Mock funerals were held for the English monarch George III, along with the first public readings of the Declaration of Independence.
Nine of the original colonies voted to adopt the Declaration of Independence. Voting no were South Carolina and Pennsylvania, New York abstained and Delaware was undecided. It took 15 months to get the majority of the colonies to agree.
Independence Day was declared a national holiday by Congress in 1870. Federal workers got the day off with pay after 1938.
The number of people living in the U.S. during the time of American independence was approximately 2.5 million.
One of the most important effects of the Declaration of Independence at the time was to allow foreign governments to recognize the United States of America as a free country, no longer dependent on Great Britain.
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