Showing 1 - 10 of 17 posts found matching keyword: independence day

He 'reckons' a lot
National Comics #1, July 1940

Beware the goatee!

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You can have your birthday or Christmas, but for my money, Independence Day is the best holiday. I love everything about it... except the fireworks.

The way I see it, you can have fireworks or you can have dogs. I always have and always will choose dogs.

Some days you just can't get rid of a ball

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Independence Day is my favorite day of the year, but I really, really hate it when it falls on a Sunday. That means 2 full nights of non-stop fireworks. (From sundown until after midnight! There oughta be a law!)

Boom! Bam! Kang!
Spidey Super Stories #17, 1976

Everyone who shoots fireworks in a residential neighborhood should be reincarnated as a dog.

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Too cheap to buy a ticket, Batman?

John Adams: once a dick, always a dick
from Justice League of America #113 (1974)

Three things.

Thing 1: The Freedom Train was a real thing designed to unite America against the dawning Cold War. Ironically, the train was forced to bypass several cities because they refused to allow black and white people on the train at the same time. (In this comic, the train will be hijacked by the villainous Wizard, who only wants it to prove to his Injustice League pals that he's good at stealing trains.)

Thing 2: That's some weird perspective in the second panel. John Adams was 5 feet 7 inches tall. Thomas Jefferson was 6' 2". Adams must have been standing on his soap box.

Thing 3: It's funny to think that the self-righteous John Adams is just being a dick, but the "improvement" he's talking about is the phrase "with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence," which was added after that first comma as one of many revisions the Continental Congress made to the declaration draft that Thomas Jefferson unveiled on June 28, 1776.

The daily minutes of the first Continental Congress for June 28-July 4 do not indicate who was responsible for adding the phrase. Popular opinion points to New Jersey delegate John Witherspoon, the only clergyman to sign the Declaration. Witherspoon was at the time the president of Princeton, and just before joining the Congress, he made a big splash with a sermon titled "The Dominion of Providence over the Passions of Men." The movie 1776 gives him credit, which is good enough for me.

For the record, since this seems to be that kind of year, Witherspoon owned slaves. So did both good ol' Tom Jefferson (who often took his to bed) and, believe it or not, Benjamin Franklin (who did eventually change his mind and argue for universal emancipation). Of the four Founding Fathers mentioned in this post, the only one who never owned slaves was the self-righteous dick, John Adams. Give 'em hell, Johnny!

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U! S! A!

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This is your annual reminder: TCM is airing 1776 tonight at 10:15 Eastern.

You can keep your fireworks. I'm celebrating my independence in front of my TV.

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Superman celebrates Independence Day the same way I do: watching 1776. He just has a better seat.

Not a dream! Not an imaginary story!

That's the opening splash panel from "Die Now, Live Later" in Action Comics #463, published in the summer of 1976 with a nod to the nation's bicentennial. This might blow your mind, but this Superman comic book is not a 100% accurate depiction of the events of July 4, 1776.

I'll run my quill pen through it!

See what I mean? Everyone knows that Franklin had retired from day-to-day publishing pursuits in the 1740s and had divested all ownership of the Pennsylvania Gazette by 1766!

In addition to the occupation of Old Man Franklin (who in July of 1776 was a Medicare-eligible 70 years old — two years younger than our current Chief Executive), there is one other bit of historical inaccuracy presented herein. See if you can spot it:

No, it's not that the room is only 3/5th full of men

Both Franklin and the narration in this panel are correct. While Congress agreed on independence on July 2, the text of the declaration of that independence vote was indeed approved on the 4th. (We're really celebrating bureaucracy and paperwork today, not independence.) But that declaration wasn't signed on July 4th! The Declaration of Independence as we know it wasn't signed by John Hancock or anyone else until August 2, 1776.

Besides those tiny gaffes, I assume the rest of this comic book can be treated as a historical document suitable for elementary school classrooms. Superman himself explains how he became involved in this previously unknown bit of American history, and Superman would never lie to us.

Everything is clear now--Karb-Brak sent me back in time...after he used his psi-machine to erase my memory of being Superman! Then he programmed me... and everyone else here... to believe I was a reporter who lived in 1776! I've been wearing my Superman costume all along--which means my colonial outfit was only a hypnotic illusion projected by the psi-machine--an illusion which vanished when I regained my memory!

An alien named Karb-Brak? Yeah, that sounds legit.

Happy Birthday, America!

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What a great price for artificial flavors

Note that there aren't two shades of white

Of course its the white one that thinks it's so good

Happy Birthday, 'Murica.

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The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.

I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. 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.

— Letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, 3 July 1776 (masshist.org)

Happy Great Anniversary Festival, everybody!

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#ShitMyJeffersonSays

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To be continued...

 

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