It's an odd country that we live in
My mother-in-law gave my son The United States of Strange for a present one year. I think I read it more than him. It’s filled with lots of odd facts. If you love Mental Floss, you’ll love this book. Anyway, here’s some weird history that I pulled from the book. During the Civil War, Frank C. Armstrong was the only general officer to fight on both sides, as a captain for the Union army and a brigadier for the Confederacy. Talk about a split personality! As of 2011, the 10thS. president, John Tyler, who was born in 1790 still has two living grandchildren. I’m still trying to figure out how that is possible. Until 1977, the U.S. nuclear launch code was 00,00,00,00,00,00,00. This makes those people whose computer passwords are “Password” look like geniuses. Thomas Edison held 1,093 patents during Read more…
Lawyers find that the Declaration of Independence was legal
That’s nice to know, isn’t it…235 years after the fact. Also, quite honestly, when you’ve got lawyers talking law, I half expected the decision to be that it wasn’t legal and that the United States still belongs to the British. I ran across this article yesterday and have been thinking about it since then. You’ve got British barristers and American lawyers debating the legality of Declaration of Independence. If the United States had tried to win its freedom in the courts, we would probably still be tied up in appeals. A couple of points hit me in this article: It is assumed that the British were the rightful owners of the country when the Declaration of Independence was written. If the group had found the Declaration of Independence illegal, then there probably would have needed to be a follow-up debate Read more…
Becoming American "citizens" in the Declaration of Independence
Thomas Jefferson was a thinker. He knew that words mean things and he always tried to capture the best word to represent the message the was trying to send. Recently, scientists at the Library of Congress found that in writing his most-famous work, the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson “even in the act of declaring independence from England, had trouble breaking free from monarchial rule,” reported the Associated Press. While drafting the Declaration, Jefferson initially called Americans “subjects.” Then apparently he realized the implications of the word. He was crafting a statement of freedom while at the same time saying the free people were still subject to someone’s rule. He wisely struck the word and chose the more-appropriate “citizens” instead. “It shows the progress of his mind. This was a decisive moment,” James Billington, Librarian of Congress, said. “We recovered a Read more…
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