Party like it's two days ago

It's Independence Day! The Fourth of July! The day that -- wait, what exactly happened on this day in 1776? The honest answer is, very little of note, at least not in the minds of the men who were there. Lots of people think our Declaration of Independence was signed on that day -- not true. It was signed for the first time on Aug. 2, 1776, and signatures were applied for months afterwards, as the members of our fledgling congress returned from their distant states to put their John Hancock on the document. So, was the vote to dissolve the ties between the colonies and the king taken on July 4? No, sorry, delegates to the Continental Congress endorsed the idea of a Declaration of Independence on July 2. John Adams, the second American president, wrote in a letter to his wife, Abigail, that "the second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America ... It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other, from this Time forward forever more." On July 4, the congress approved a final, edited version of the document, but that event was an afterthought to the statesmen who cast their courageous, treasonous votes two days earlier. Yet by the following year, July 4 -- the date that appears on the Declaration itself -- and not July 2 was the anniversary date that was being celebrated by Philadelphians and the Continental Congress. And the date stuck.

What the heck is a shew?

From the AP
• Man Buys Smoker, Finds Human Leg Inside • Coach Stops Runaway Horse by Biting Ear • Man Allegedly Tries to Use 'Blurry' $100 • Police Break Up Brawl at Chuck E. Cheese • Suggestive Card Ruffles Farmer's Feathers • Nerds to Auction Themselves to Women • Toilet to Tap? San Jose Probes Plan • Seattle to Allow Pygmy Goats As Pets • Yankees Rookies Dress Up in Oz Costumes

Think Ed Sullivan: A shew is the old English way to spell "show."

More from John Adams

"[On July 2] the greatest Question was decided, which ever was debated in America, and a greater perhaps, never was or will be decided among Men. A Resolution was passed without one dissenting Colony 'that these united Colonies, are, and of right ought to be free and independent States, and as such, they have, and of Right ought to have full Power to make War, conclude Peace, establish Commerce, and to do all the other Acts and Things, which other States may rightfully do.' You will see in a few days a Declaration setting forth the Causes which have impell'd Us to this mighty Revolution, and the Reasons which will justify it in the Sight of God and Man. A Plan of Confederation will be taken up in a few days."

Know your patriotic songs

You know that Francis Scott Key wrote the "Star Spangled Banner" (and if you don't, shame on you). But did you know that "America the Beautiful" was written by poet and professor Katharine Lee Bates (no, not that Kathy Bates) after her trip to Pikes Peak, Colorado, in 1893? Her poem, sans music, first appeared in print in The Congregationalist, a weekly journal, on July 4, 1895. The words to "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory" -- you may know it as "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" -- were written by Julia Ward Howe, after she visited a Union Army camp during the Civil War. (The lyrics were written with the tune "John Brown's Body" in mind, and she received $5 from Atlantic Monthly for the rights to publish the poem.) "My Country 'Tis of Thee" is actually sung to the melody of Britain's "God Save the Queen," but the lyrics were written by the Rev. Samuel Francis Smith of Boston. "God Bless America" came from Irving Berlin in 1918, and "You're a Grand Old Flag" was written by none other than famed composer George Cohan, for his stage musical about George Washington.

What else don't we know?

While we're at it, we might as well spoil a few other bits of American folklore. Via author Bill Bryson: "The image of the spiritual founding of America that generations of Americans have grown up with was created, oddly enough, by a poet of limited talents (to put it in the most magnanimous possible way) who lived two centuries after the event in a country 3,000 miles away. Her name was Felicia Dorothea Hemans, and she was not American but Welsh." She wrote the poem about the swashbuckling nighttime landing of the Mayflower. Problems: "It was not night when they moored, and Plymouth was not where first they trod but in fact marked their fourth visit ashore -- [yet] it became an instant classic, and formed the essential image of the Mayflower landing that most Americans carry with them to this day.

"The one thing the Pilgrims certainly didn't do was step ashore on Plymouth Rock. Quite apart from the consideration that it may have stood well above the high-water mark in 1620, no prudent mariner would try to bring a ship alongside a boulder in a heaving December sea when a sheltered inlet beckoned nearby. If the Pilgrims even noticed Plymouth Rock, there is no sign of it. No mention of the rock is found among any of the surviving documents and letters of the age, and indeed it doesn't make its first recorded appearance until 1715, almost a century later. Not until about the time Ms. Hemans wrote her swooping epic did Plymouth Rock become indelibly associated with the landing of the Pilgrims."

Who you callin' Pilgrim?

Oh, and they didn't call themselves Pilgrims, even though we do so retroactively. Bryson: "They called themselves Saints. Those members of the party who were not Saints they called Strangers. Pilgrims in reference to these early voyagers would not become common for another 200 years ... Nor, strictly speaking, is it correct to call them Puritans. They were Separatists, so called because they had left the Church of England. Puritans were those who remained in the Anglican Church but wished to purify it."

And while we may think of them as resourceful creatures who learned, with the help of the Indians, to live off the land, they were nothing of the sort: "It would be difficult to imagine a group of people more ill-suited to a life in the wilderness. They packed as if they had misunderstood the purpose of the trip; they found room for sundials and candle snuffers, a drum, a trumpet, and a complete history of Turkey. One William Mullins packed 126 pairs of shoes and thirteen pairs of boots. Yet they failed to bring a single cow or horse, plow or fishing line ... With the uncertain exception of the [captain], probably none in the party had ever tried to bring down a wild animal ... They were, in short, dangerously unprepared for the rigors ahead, and they demonstrated their incompetence in the most dramatic possible way: by dying in droves. Six expired in the first two weeks, eight the next month, 17 more in February, a further 13 in March."

And the Mayflower?

The Pilgrims -- er, Saints -- thought so much of their enterprising vessel that they broke it down and sold it for scrap and salvage.

That's enough history for one day. Now enjoy your hamburger.