FREEDOM!!!

and of course, the beverage pictured on the packaging invariably looked like a can of beer; because America assumes that everyone likes beer.

We can always start another thread about myths of William Wallace.
Although I dont know if there are any left... much of his important life is already known isnt it?...
But that is a question best asked elsewhere.



Back to fourth of July.
Cyber said


Not quite so sure....
The rest of the world knows what its all about.
Perhaps if you concentrated on the why its all abut, and cleared up the main myth.

Just WHY did they want independence from UK.

That is a whole discussion on its own...

And just for the record here, I have been playing a game called assassins creed.
Part of it deals with the war of independence....
The game "Claims" that is is based on truth.
During the game, certain historical events are explained....
Now do I believe everything a GAME tells me?...
Of course not!...

Except....

Well, I took to Google and went into checking some of the facts.

Bloody fascinating, its obvious the game makers had been there first, because some of them were right on the money.
Especially the truth behind the Boston Tea Party, and Tax, and because so much was being taken by UK, and why it is that today drinking Tea is so unpopular in USA......

And no, I am not certain enough yet to state my own views on the subject, because I still am not syre of all the facts, but its been entertaining and enlightening to do the finding out... so far...

Perhaps a show dedicated to Independence is not such a bad thing, if its an education into how and why July the Fourth came to be.

And why the Fourth anyway?....

I aint sure on this, but, so far, research shows, the date of the signing was not July the fourth.

In fact, no significant even can be proven to have actually happened on July the Fourth.

So why was that date chosen..........

[Ever here to ask the bloody awkward.....]

Sources include

The Declaration of Independence

We celebrate American Independence Day on the Fourth of July every year. We think of July 4, 1776, as a day that represents the Declaration of Independence and the birth of the United States of America as an independent nation.

But July 4, 1776 wasn't the day that the Continental Congress decided to declare independence (they did that on July 2, 1776).

It wasn’t the day we started the American Revolution either (that had happened back in April 1775).

And it wasn't the day Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence (that was in June 1776). Or the date on which the Declaration was delivered to Great Britain (that didn't happen until November 1776). Or the date it was signed (that was August 2, 1776).

So what did happen on July 4, 1776?

The Continental Congress approved the final wording of the Declaration of Independence on [edit or about]July 4, 1776. They'd been working on it for a couple of days after the draft was submitted on July 2nd and finally agreed on all of the edits and changes.

In contrast, we celebrate Constitution Day on September 17th of each year, the anniversary of the date the Constitution was signed, not the anniversary of the date it was approved. If we’d followed this same approach for the Declaration of Independence we’d being celebrating Independence Day on August 2nd of each year, the day the Declaration of Independence was signed!

www.constitutionfacts.com/us-declaration-of-independence/fourth-of-july/

Congress debated and revised the wording of the Declaration, finally approving it on July 4. A day earlier, John Adams had written to his wife Abigail:

The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch 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 shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.[7]

Adams's prediction was off by two days.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_Day_%28United_States%29

The problem the colonials had with Britain was not with King George, who actually seems to have been well liked and respected, but with Parliment; Which was viewed as self-serving, backing private companies who would line their pockets with money.

*Sarcasm activated* Not that such a claim could possibly be leveled against Parliament today....

The American Revolution was directly responsible for a more peaceful transfer of administration elsewhere, and a willingness to grant independence to countries over time (the major one being India).
This wasn't actually a case of learning from mistakes made in running the North American colonies, rather it was a change in Britain's world view and how it measured national power. Prior to the Revolution Britain subscribed to the notion that national power was expressed and measured by the amount of land it controlled; a view that persisted elsewhere in Europe well into the 1950's and 60's in some places.
The revolution led Britain to consider national power as less the expression of land held, and more about the trade you could control. Basically an 'Empire of the sea' rather than an 'Empire of land'.
While Britain did maintain colonies and outposts around the world. Practically all of these were locations that allowed Britain to control and protect trade routes*. Even India was held because it gave a position to control trade from the East**.

(*This can be seen by the territories and locations the British were willing to hand back to France during the peace of 1801. The only places the British were not interested in handing back were those that they felt would allow them to better support trade. Or at least this was the case until it started to dawn on them that Napoleon might not have been quite as interested in long term peace as they'd hoped.)

(*Although India ended up as a British colonial possession this was basically accidental. The East India Company actually just wanted and took over Bombay and Calcutta as trading posts, allowing local lords to maintain their power as long as they didn't cause problems. They ended up taking over other ports from their French and Dutch counterparts during the various wars. Then the local lords caused problems that resulted in the EIC having to depose them and take over administration of those areas. As the power of the EIC waned the British government ended up having to step in and take over entirely.