Happy Independence Day!

I hope you're getting your patriotic on and have big plans for fireworks tonight! I'm sporting my red, white, & blue, and I've got sparklers handy. It's been years since I've talked about what the 4th of July really means (like go back to high school) and why it is we are fortunate to celebrate this holiday. So in honor flashing back for Friday and the history of our country, I dug up some of my favorite facts! Share any you have; I love learning new things! 

• Today is the 238th Independence Day..
• Red is a symbol of valor and bravery. White symbolizes purity and innocence. Blue signifies vigilance, perseverance, and justice.
• The House of Representatives’ 1977 book about the flag states: “The star is a symbol of the heavens and the divine goal to which man has aspired from time immemorial; the stripe is symbolic of the rays of light emanating from the sun.”
• Betsy Ross sewed the very first American Flag Betsy Ross's daughter, Rachel Fletcher, testified in 1870, the following: "[The committee] showed her [Betsy Ross] a drawing roughly executed, of the flag as it was proposed to be made by the committee, and that she saw in it some defects in its proportions and the arrangement and shape of the stars. That she said it was square and a flag should be one third longer than its width, that the stars were scattered promiscuously over the field, and she said they should be either in lines or in some adopted form as a circle, or a star, and that the stars were six-pointed in the drawing, and she said they should be five pointed."
• John Hancock was the Continental Congress President, and the first signature on the Declaration of Independence. signing your name then became known as giving your John Hancock.
• Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston were the men who comprised the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence. (Adams and Jefferson were the only two presidents to sign it.
• The United States population was a strong 2.5 million in 1776. Today it is exponentially increased to 314 million.
• Although we celebrate on July 4, in a letter to his wife, Abigail, John Adams wrote that July 2 would be the day celebrated as “the great anniversary Festival."