July 4th Facts You May Not Have Known

We celebrate Independence Day on July 4th, but John Adams thought we got it wrong.

When Congress voted for independence on July 2, 1776, Adams declared that date would be “celebrated, by succeeding Generations... with Pomp and Parade.”
Turns out, the Declaration wasn’t adopted until two days later. Hence, July 4th stuck.

The Liberty Bell didn’t ring in freedom that day, it was too fragile.

Despite the legend, the bell wasn’t rung on July 4, 1776. Today, it gets a gentler treatment: it’s symbolically tapped 13 times, once for each of the original colonies.

Only two people signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4th.

Most folks think all the Founding Fathers signed on the big day, but only John Hancock and Charles Thomson did. Everyone else joined the party later, most in August.

Let’s talk hot dogs.

Americans are expected to eat around 150 million hot dogs on July 4th. That’s enough to stretch from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles five times. (That’s a lot of mustard.)