INDIANA – July 4, Independence Day, is a federal holiday, so banks, post offices, and non-essential government offices will be closed on Thursday. Most retailers, on the other hand, will be open.
The 248th anniversary of adopting the Declaration of Independence will be celebrated on July 4, 2024.
The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence during a meeting in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Statehouse (now Independence Hall). Congress declared the American colonies free and independent states. John Hancock signed the Declaration on July 4th, and the rest signed on August 2, 1776.
Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston comprised the committee that drafted the Declaration. Jefferson, regarded as the strongest and most eloquent writer, actually wrote most of the document. The committee and Congress made a total of 86 changes to Jefferson’s draft.
First two paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence:
“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
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, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”
There have been 27 versions of the official U.S. flag from 1777 to 1960. Out of these 27 changes, 25 of them were made only to the stars on the flag. Since 1818, the number of stars on the flag, by law, must always reflect the number of states in the United States, with new stars added to the flag on July 4 in the year following their admission. The last was Hawaii’s star after it was admitted in 1959.
