250 and Counting

Tag: 7/4/1776

  • Independence Day–July 4, 1776

    Cover art for July 4, 1776: Declaration of Independence, depicting the five-man drafting committee of the Declaration of Independence presenting their work to the Congress. Painted by John Trumbull in 1819. The original hangs in the US Capitol Rotunda.

    Happy Independence Day!

    I don’t know if we ever mentioned this, but People of a Certain Age may remember that back in the Bicentennial Days, on our television every night during the 8:00 PM hour there was a one-minute (two, if you count the commercial) which offered up some snippet of history from that day 200 years previous, told to us by a famous person (whose identity changed every day).

    Here’s a YouTube playlist of the shows, if you’re curious. (One of the videos is a 20-minute collection of ads, and another is a straight-up recorded hour of CBS television, but you’ll get the idea.)

    Does that sound familiar? It should. The “Bicentennial Minute,” as it was usually called, ran from July 1974 to 1976, and was meant to end on July 4, 1976, but instead ran through the end of that year. So they did 912 episodes. At any rate, this was the inspiration for 250 and Counting. I wanted to revive the Bicentennial Minute in podcast form.

    Now, there was a lot of anticipation as we got closer to July 4, 1976/1776, because after all, that was the big day, yes? The July 4 episode was narrated by First Lady Betty Ford. But of course, the Lee Resolution had already been approved, the editing of the document was yesterday, the signing of the finished Declaration wouldn’t happen for some time…all there was for Independence Day was the vote to approve the Declaration as edited, so it wound up being a little anticlimactic. (We did try to warn you about not getting too excited. Learn From My Fail and all that.)

    Mike and I have committed to 729 episodes, from January 1, 2025 through the end of this year. After that, who knows? Maybe we’ll keep it up, maybe we’ll move on to another project. That largely depends on your level of interest. But there’s still lots of American History to look into as word gets out about this bold step our Founding Fathers took, and the repercussions for the war. We still have a couple of major battles to deal with (Long Island and Trenton, NJ come immediately to mind), the launching of the first military submarine attack, the Cherokee-American Wars are heating up, and so much more. We hope you’ll continue to ride with us. And thank you for riding so far.

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