July the 4th Independence Day

Here are some Independence Day fun facts, history and trivia.  On July the 4th, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was approved by the Continental Congress. Thereafter, the 13 colonies embarked on the road to freedom as a sovereign nation. This most American of holidays is traditionally celebrated with parades, fireworks and backyard barbecues across the country.

4th of July History & Trivia -Did You Know…

• The major objection to being ruled by Britain was taxation without representation. The colonists had no say in the decisions of English Parliament.
  

  The 1765 Stamp Act, a tax imposed on American colonies by the British Parliament.

• In May, 1776, after nearly a year of trying to resolve their differences with England, the colonies sent delegates to the Second Continental Congress. Finally, in June, admitting that their efforts were hopeless; a committee was formed to compose the formal Declaration of Independence. Headed by Thomas Jefferson, the committee also included John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Philip Livingston and Roger Sherman. On June 28, 1776, Thomas Jefferson presented the first draft of the declaration to Congress.
  

  The Second Continental Congress

• Betsy Ross, according to legend, sewed the first American flag in May or June 1776, as commissioned by the Congressional Committee.
  

  Betsy Ross presenting the first American flag to George Washington

• Independence Day was first celebrated in Philadelphia on July 8, 1776.
  

  First celebration of the Independence Day in Philadelphia

• The Liberty Bell sounded from the tower of Independence Hall on July 8, 1776, summoning citizens to gather for the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence by Colonel John Nixon.
  

  The Independence Hall and Liberty Bell

• June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress, looking to promote national pride and unity, adopted the national flag. “Resolved: that the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.”
  

  The first American flag

• The word ‘patriotism’ comes from the Latin patria, which means ‘homeland’ or ‘fatherland.’
• The first public Fourth of July event at the White House occurred in 1804.
  

  The White House in 1804 ( During Pres. Thomas Jefferson )

• Before cars ruled the roadway, the Fourth of July was traditionally the most miserable day of the year for horses, tormented by all the noise and by the boys and girls who threw firecrackers at them.
• The first Independence Day celebration west of the Mississippi occurred at Independence Creek and was celebrated by Lewis and Clark in 1805.
  

  A depiction of the Independence Creek in 1805

• On June 24, 1826, Thomas Jefferson sent a letter to Roger C. Weightman, declining an invitation to come to Washington, D.C., to help celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. It was the last letter that Jefferson, who was gravely ill, ever wrote.
  

  Jefferson’s 50th anniversary letter

• Both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on Independence Day, July 4, 1826.
  

  John Adams and Thomas Jefferson

• The 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence did not sign at the same time, nor did they sign on July 4, 1776. The official event occurred on August 2, 1776, when 50 men signed it.
• The names of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were withheld from the public for more than six months to protect the signers. If independence had not been achieved, the treasonable act of the signers would have, by law, resulted in their deaths.
• Thomas McKean was the last to sign in January, 1777.
  

  Thomas McKean

• The origin of Uncle Sam probably began in 1812, when Samuel Wilson was a meat packer who provided meat to the US Army. The meat shipments were stamped with the initials, U.S. Someone joked that the initials stood for “Uncle Sam”. This joke eventually led to the idea of Uncle Sam symbolizing the United States government.
• In 1941, Congress declared 4th of July a federal legal holiday. It is one of the few federal holidays that have not been moved to the nearest Friday or Monday.

Read more on the Declaration of Independence.

Independence Day Trivia & Facts – An Inspired America:

• Thirty places nationwide with “liberty” in their name. Liberty, Missouri (26,232) boasts the highest population of the 30 at 26,232. Iowa has more of these places than any other state at four: Libertyville, New Liberty, North Liberty and West Liberty.
• Eleven places have “independence” in their name. The most populous of these is Independence, Missouri, with 113,288 residents.
• Five places adopted the name “freedom.” Freedom, California, with 6,000 residents, has the largest population among these.
• There is one place named “patriot” — Patriot, Indiana, with a population of 202.
• And what could be more fitting than spending the day in a place called “America”? There are five such places in the country, with the most populous being American Fork, Utah, with 21,941 residents. Check out American Fact Finder.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
–The Declaration of Independence 4 of July, 1776.

Did you ever wondered why they say that cats have “nine lives”?

 

Or how they always seem to land on their feet after a fall?

According to a myth in many cultures, cats have nine (or sometimes seven) lives. The myth is attributed to the natural suppleness and swiftness cats exhibit to escape life-threatening situations. Also lending credence to this myth is that falling cats often land on their feet because of an inbuilt automatic twisting reaction and are able to twist their bodies around to land feet first, though they can still be injured or killed by a high fall.

The proverbial curiosity doesn’t usually kill cats. The inquisitive feline has a knack of dodging death by a whisker. Cats are intrepid explorers and fearless acrobats. After all, a creature with nine lives can afford to take risks. According to Brewer’s Dictionary Of Phrase & Fable, a cat is said to have nine lives because it is “more tenacious of life than many animals.”

The clumsy biped is understandably impressed by the feline arts of stealth, poise and athletic prowess. But why nine? Nine, a trinity of trinities, is a mystical number often invoked in religion and folklore. The cat was once revered in Egypt, and this is probably where its nine lives began. The priesthood in On – known to the Greeks as Heliopolis and now a suburb of Cairo – worshipped Atum-Ra, a sun god who gave life to the gods of air, moisture, earth and sky, who, in turn, produced Osiris, Isis, Seth and Nephthys. These gods are collectively known as the Ennead, or the Nine. Atum-Ra, who took the form of a cat for visits to the underworld, embodied nine lives in one creator. A hymn from the fourth century BC says, “O sacred cat! Your mouth is the mouth of the god Atum, the lord of life who has saved you from all taint.”

Do you know why cat’s have nine lives — or did you ever wonder why people say they do? This is the story. A very hungry cat entered a house one day and found a plate of nine fish that were going to be eaten for dinner by the nine starving children who lived there. The cat was feeling a little selfish that day and ate up all of the fish in nine quick bites. With no food on the table, the nine starving children died of hunger the very next day, along with the cat who died from eating WAY too much. When the cat went up to heaven and spoke with God, God was so angry with the cat that he threw him out of heaven and made him fall for nine days all the way back to earth. To this day, the cat still holds the nine lives of the starving children in his belly, which is why he must die nine different times before he will stay dead.

(Good myth, never heard of it.)Source:http://www.ustrek.org/odyssey/semester2/…

Stephen St Claire goes on to note an even more astounding ability of cats to quite literally land on their feet by routinely surviving and completely recovering from falls that would kill most animals (including humans). On the basis of a survey in the late 1980s (based on reports from vets… as opposed to intentionally dropping the cats), 132 cats fell from an average of 5.5 stories but with only about one third requiring emergency treatment, another third non-emergency treatment, and one third no treatment at all. St Claire notes that the highest recorded fall survived by a cat was 45 stories! Apparently, the adage of a cat having nine lives has a scientific, experiential basis.

http://www.halexandria.org/dward765.htm

Although cats do not have nine lives, they do seem to. Cats can fall from tremendous heights and jump seven times their tail length.

http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~bgoebel/Russell/A…

The well-known saying that a cat has nine lives has its origins in witchcraft. A book titled Beware the Cat written by English author William Baldwin during the Dark Ages in 1584 contained the phrase “It is permitted for a witch to take her cat’s body nine times”. Thus the idea that cats have nine lives.

http://pets1st.com/articles/00072legends…
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chica…

SCIENTISTS have discovered that the purring of cats is a “natural healing mechanism” that has helped inspire the myth that they have nine lives. Wounded cats – wild and domestic – purr because it helps their bones and organs to heal and grow stronger, say researchers who have analysed the purring of different feline species. This, they say, explains why cats survive falls from high buildings and why they are said to have “nine lives”. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/mai…

The cat having nine lives represents the unique relation to humans. The legend of Noah and his Ark are well known but there is another legend that is associated with this that many people have never heard. There weren’t any domestic cats when Noah built the Ark, but there were rats and mice on board. They reproduced and soon there were too many vermin. Noah asked the lion for help so the lion sneezed and this is when the first domestic cats appeared to help rid of the vermin.

The clumsy biped is understandably impressed by the feline arts of stealth, poise and athletic prowess. But why nine? Nine, a trinity of trinities, is a mystical number often invoked in religion and folklore. The cat was once revered in Egypt, and this is probably where its nine lives began. The priesthood in On – known to the Greeks as Heliopolis and now a suburb of Cairo – worshipped Atum-Ra, a sun god who gave life to the gods of air, moisture, earth and sky, who, in turn, produced Osiris, Isis, Seth and Nephthys. These gods are collectively known as the Ennead, or the Nine. Atum-Ra, who took the form of a cat for visits to the underworld, embodied nine lives in one creator. A hymn from the fourth century BC says, “O sacred cat! Your mouth is the mouth of the god Atum, the lord of life who has saved you from all taint.”

10 Things You Ought To Know

These are 10 of the most interesting facts hand picked from ‘The Book of General Ignorance’, written by John Lloyd, and forwarded by English broadcaster and entertainer, Stephen Fry. The human brain is, by far, the most complex single object in the cosmos, having more neurological connections within it than there are positively charged particles in the entire universe. With this astonishing level of computing power, there’s only one thing to do with it; use it.

10. Henry VIII

How many wives did Henry VIII have?

The answer? Two, not six. Henry’s fourth marriage to Anne was annulled, as the marriage was never consummated, in other words it was seen to that the marriage technically never took place, also Anne happened to be betrothed to Francis, Duke of Lorraine. At the time ‘betrothal’ would bar the individual from marriage. So that leaves 5 wives. Henry’s second marriage to Anne Boleyn was declared illegal by the pope, because the king was still married to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Henry, as the head of the church of England, declared himself that his first marriage was invalid on the grounds that a man cannot sleep with his brother’s widow. He did the same with his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, bringing us down to two wives.

9. Huge!

What’s the largest living organism?

The elephant? The blue whale? The T-Rex? No. The largest ever living organism is a mushroom. And not even a particularly rare one. The Armillaria ostoyae or ‘Honey fungus’ is very common, and is probably in your garden as we speak. However, lets hope it doesn’t grow as large as the largest ever recorded specimen, in Malheur National forest, in Oregon. It covers 2,200 acres (890 hectares)!! And is between 2,000 and 8,000 years old!! The majority of the organism is under ground, in the form of a massive mat of tentacle-like mycelia (the mushroom’s equivalent of roots). The giant honey fungus was originally thought to grow in different clusters around the forest, but researches have confirmed it is in fact one very, very large single organism!

8. Chameleons

Why do chameleons change their skin color?

Not to blend into their background, never have, never will. They change their color depending on a number of emotional states, they change often, and so it’s no wonder that eventually they will match their backgrounds, but only until the next change. They change color when frightened, when mating, when fighting another chameleon etc. A chameleon would have little use for blending in, their main prey, insects, tend to have eyesight unfit to spot them when they are still anyway, and being an apex predator, chameleons don’t tend to have any natural predators.

7. Matter

How many states of matter are there?

Three surely? Solid, liquid and Gas? Actually, it’s more like fifteen. Although the list grows almost daily, some examples are: Solid, amorphous solid, liquid, gas, plasma, super-fluid, supersolid, degenerate matter, neutronium, strongly symmetric matter, weakly symmetric matter, quark-gluon plasma fermionic condensate (pictured above), Bose-Einstein condensate and ‘strange matter’. The most interesting is possibly Bose-Einstein condensate, or ‘bec’. which occurs when you cool a specific substance down to a fraction below absolute zero (-273 degrees), at this point, things get peculiar. For example if you put a ‘bec’ in a beaker, and keep the beaker at the correct temperature, the bec will actually climb the sides of the beaker. If you don’t believe me: YouTube. This happens because behavior only before observed at atomic levels are observed at greater levels. Some scientists believe the behavior is a result of the bec trying to “reduce it’s own energy”.

6. Number of the Beast

What is the number of the Devil?

616. For 2000 years, 666 has been the number of the dreaded anti-Christ. An unlucky number for many, even the European parliament leaves seat number 666 vacant. The number is from the book of Revelation, the last book of the Christian Bible. However, in 2005, a translation of the very earliest known copy of the book of revelation clearly shows it to be 616, not 666! The 1,700 year old copy was recovered from the city of Oxyrhynchus, in Egypt, and deciphered by a palaeographical research team from the University Of Birmingham, UK. The team was led by Professor David Parker.

5. Golden Skies

What color was the sky in ancient Greece?

Bronze! There was no word for blue in the ancient Greek language. The nearest words to blue – glaukos and kyanos are more like expressions of relative light intensity than descriptions of color. So when the Greek referred to the sky as ‘bronze’, they meant that it was dazzlingly bright, like the sheen of a bronze shield, rather than actually bronze-colored. It seems the ancient Greeks described things based on other qualities, so when a word is used that, to us, seems to indicate ‘yellow’ or ‘light green’ really just means fluid, living and fresh, and was therefore used to describe flowers, blood, the sea and sheep. It would appear to us that the Greeks were referring to all of these things as yellow colored, but that’s because of the way we describe things. Interestingly, in Russia, there are two words for blue: goluboi and sinii, one word referring to light blue, the other dark, which to Russians are two different, distinct colors, not shades of the same color, much like other cultures perceive pink to be a shade of red, rather than a color in it’s own right.

4. Senses

How many senses do you have?

At least nine. The five we all know about: Sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch, were first proposed by Aristotle, but there are now four more which are agreed among scientists to be official senses, these are:

1. Thermoception – the sense of heat (or it’s absence) on our skin,
2. Equilibrioception – our sense of balance, which is determined by the fluid filled cavities in our inner ear.
3. Nociception – Pain.
4. Proprioception – or ‘body awareness’. This is the conscious knowledge of where our body parts are without having to look, for example, close your eyes and waggle your big toe, you still know where it is in relation to the rest of you.

Some neurologists also argue that there are even more than 9. What about hunger? Or thirst? It’s certainly a grey area.

3. Over the Edge

What shape did medieval people believe the earth was?

Wrong again. Since around the fourth century BC, almost no-one, anywhere has believed the earth to be flat. This misconception that people where ignorant of the shape of the earth comes from the partially fictional text ‘The Life And Voyages Of Christopher Columbus’ (1828), which incorrectly stated that Columbus set out to prove the earth was round. Truth is, nobody would have disputed the theory. Evidence shows that almost all cultures of the world worked out, through mathematics or just observation, the spherical nature of the Earth.

2. Moth to a Flame

How does a moth react to a light?

They are not attracted to them, but disorientated by them. The reason being that moths use natural light sources, i.e. the sun and moon, to navigate. The insects use the location of the light source from the Sun or moon to determine what direction they should be facing (i.e. what direction is up!) and how to fly in a straight line. When people come along with artificial suns and moons in their bedrooms, it confuses the insect, making it think it’s somehow moving in a curved path, because the direction of the light source has suddenly changed, to rectify this, moths try to straighten their trajectory, but the light source being so close, the only way to do this is to fly around in circles. And moths don’t eat cloths, their caterpillars do.

1. Arid Land

Where is the driest place on earth?

The Sahara desert? Nevada? Actually, it’s Antarctica. Some parts of the continent hasn’t seen any rain for two million years! A desert is technically defined as an area of land that receives less than 254mm (10 inches) of rain a year. The Sahara gets 25 mm, Antarctica gets around the same amount, but some areas of Antarctica never get rain, and haven’t for millennia. Making Antarctica the driest place on earth. Also, Antarctica can claim to be the windiest place on earth, with wind speeds of up to 200mph, the fastest ever recorded.

Source : http://listverse.com/2011/05/27/10-things-you-ought-to-know/