4th of July Facts: Historic Date is More than Fireworks and Barbecue

Any historical event which happens on the Fourth of July is bound to get overshadowed. It’s kind of like having your birthday on Christmas, writes Larry Muhammad in the Louisville, Kentucky news site Courier-Journal.com.

But ever since John Hancock boldly affixed his John Hancock to the Declaration of Independence — “There,” he reportedly said, “I guess King George will be able to read that” — all else has taken a back seat.

So happy birthday to the USA., which turns 235 today. But amid the fireworks and the backyard barbecues. let’s not forget some of the other significant American moments that also took place on the Fourth of July.

“Leaves of Grass” published

It was Walt Whitman’s life’s work, a literary pursuit revised through several editions until he died in 1892. But he would omit his name as author from the inaugural edition of “Leaves of Grass,” the monumental poetry collection first published July 4, 1855, and instead included an engraving of himself that personified the raw sensory individualism the book extolled.

Initially advertised as a literary curiosity — the title itself was an industry pun for minor works — “Leaves of Grass” contained 12 untitled poems and was intended to be pocket-size. As Whitman said, “That would tend to induce people to take me along with them and read me in the open air: I am nearly always successful with the reader in open air.”

Jack Johnson KOs Jim Jeffries

It was billed as “The Fight of the Century” — the July 4, 1910, heavyweight title match between the notoriously flamboyant champion Jack Johnson, the first black to hold the title, and Jim Jeffries, the former champ who retired undefeated but was persuaded by promoters to return as “The Great White Hope.”

This was the match made in hell. Set amid a tinderbox of racial animosities, the bout was originally scheduled for San Francisco but banned by the California governor. Johnson’s life was threatened, and one of his trainers was poisoned after drinking from a wineglass intended for the champ. The fight was intended for 45 rounds in the blazing hot Reno, Nevada, sun, but was stopped after 15 because Jeffries had been knocked down three times. “A strange funeral-like silence” fell over the crowd, according to sportswriters, when Johnson was declared the victor.

Riots broke out across the country, and in the end seven people died. Jeffries would later call his decision to fight Johnson “the worst mistake of my life.”

West Point opens

Set on an abnormal S-curve in the Hudson River that made it strategically crucial during the Revolutionary War, with a great chain laid across the river to impede the British ships, West Point only became U.S. government property in 1790 and opened as the U.S. Military Academy on July 4, 1802.

Frederick Douglass denounces slavery

The great abolitionist Frederick Douglass winced when the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society asked him to speak in Corinthian Hall in 1852.

“This Fourth of July is yours, not mine,” he said. “You may rejoice; I must mourn.”

Douglass agreed to address the group the next day, July 5, rather than what he must have considered a so-called Independence Day.

“Do you mean, citizens, to mock me by asking me to speak today?” Douglass asked the ladies. “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?

“I answer: A day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.”

Eleven years later, the United States did a little better by Douglass — July 4, 1863, marked two turning points in the Civil War, with the Union’s bloody victory at Gettysburg and Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s capture of Vicksburg, Miss.

Space shuttle Discovery blasts off

The space shuttle Discovery became the first manned launch on Independence Day when it roared into the heavens July 4, 2006, carrying a seven-member crew.

And also in the heavens …

On July 4, 2009, people in 14 states reported seeing orange/red objects initially believed to be tailing fireworks or Chinese lanterns — before reports took off on the Internet that they were UFOs.

Google “July 4, 2009 UFO Sightings,” and there are 374,000 hits — including chat on About.com, YouTube videos and listings at the National UFO Reporting Center.

Lou Gehrig says farewell

The Iron Man called it a “bad break” — the diagnosis by Mayo Clinic doctors that he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a rare degenerative disease that ended Lou Gehrig’s 13-season, 493-home run career. It culminated in an emotional farewell July 4, 1939, before 61,808 fans at Yankee Stadium.

It was the last time he would be seen in a Yankees jersey with the number 4. Gehrig would never play ball again — and would be dead in two years, at age 38.

Three presidents die

They fought bitterly like brothers over political issues, amicably reconciled after retirement, but John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the second and third US presidents respectively, are also forever connected by July 4, 1826, the day they died.

Together with Benjamin Franklin, the men drafted the Declaration of Independence, and in their later years were ever conscious they might live to see the 50th Independence Day.

James Monroe, the fifth president, also died on the 4th of July, in 1831. One commander in chief was born on July 4 — Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president, in 1872.