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Will there be any huge celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 2026, the 250th Anniversary?

Arthur Fiedler conducting @ the Hollywood Bowl July 4th, 1976 oue Bicentennial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-fGZzS2M1s

Today, America celebrates it's 239th birthday, but do you remember our Bicentennial celebration, July 4, 1976?Come on you older FReepers, and you know who you are.Where were you and what did you do that day, 39 years ago.

BEAVERTON, Ore. -- Beaverton remains in full party-planning mode for Mexico's bicentennial despite outcry from pundits across the country. The city's celebration is scheduled for Thursday at City Park. City officials said they planned to mark the bicentennial because a large number of residents said they wanted more international festivals as part of Beaverton's community vision project. The city's budget committee then set aside $6,000 for the bicentennial. A number of conservative commentators criticized the decision to spend money on Mexico's independence, but not on America's independence. Thursday, Sept. 16 will mark the 200th anniversary of Mexico's independence from Spain....

BY JOHN J. MILLER On a snowy night toward the end of his life, Edgar Allan Poe delivered a lecture on the origins of the universe. It was an unusual topic -- Poe was always more interested in death than birth -- and the reviews were mixed. Frustrated by the response, Poe announced that 2,000 years would pass before his work was properly admired. His remarks were soon published as "Eureka: A Prose Poem." The book sold a few hundred copies and then slipped into obscurity, forgotten except for the fact that its author went on to become a giant...

On a plantation just outside the Jamaican capital, Kingston, we watched workers with long machetes slice down towering stalks of sugar cane with industrial precision. Sugar is still harvested by hand, when it is too wet for machines The crop is only harvested by hand on modern plantations when it rains and today there is a steady drizzle. Usually machines do the graft. But for more than 300 years until the early 19th century the machines were African slaves. Men, women and children were overworked and brutalised. Cruelty and torture meant as many as a third of all slaves...

VADUZ, Liechtenstein - Prince Alois von und zu Liechtenstein can see almost his entire realm from the castle — mountain ridge to mountain ridge and down to the capital below. In a Europe of nations coming together in a vast continental superstate, Liechtenstein is a quirk of history that harks back to an older world — of separateness, neutrality and sharp survival instincts. Created by Napoleon in 1806, it has managed to avoid the upheaval of the past century to celebrate its bicentennial, starting Wednesday, in peace and prosperity. This wedge of central Europe is no fairy tale kingdom, however,...

Born Feb. 11, 1805, at Fort Mandan, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau was the son of French Canadian interpreter, Touissant Charbonneau, and his Shoshone wife, Sacagawea. Lewis and Clark arrived in the Hidatsa-Mandan territory in October 1804 and hired the elder Charbonneau and Sacagawea as an interpreter team. The captains had learned that the Shoshones had a large herd of horses. They were eager to have Sacagawea, who spoke Shoshone, to accompany them to negotiate for horses needed to cross the western mountains, despite that she was six months pregnant at the time. While the expedition wintered at Fort Mandan, Lewis, on...

To loyal Mormons, Joseph Smith Jr. was an American prophet whose creed is preparing for Christ’s Second Coming. To skeptics, he was a reprobate impostor – if a remarkably successful one. Now as Smith’s Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints prepares to celebrate the bicentennial of his birth (Dec. 23, 1805), the occasion will certainly renew debates over one of America’s most important – and wooliest – religious careers. The oft-persecuted Smith was hounded out of New York, Ohio and Missouri, tarred and feathered, jailed and accused of serious crimes. He repeatedly alienated close associates. In Illinois, he ruled...

On August 20, 1804, the Corps of Discovery, led by Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, found themselves near present day Sioux City, Iowa. The Corps was just over three months into their journey and had paddled, pushed and pulled their small flotilla of boats over 500 miles up the Missouri River. Since their departure from St. Louis on May 14, the Corps had traveled further up the Missouri than any other American. They celebrated the first Fourth of July west of the Mississippi near today’s Fort Leavenworth, Kansas by firing their cannon and issuing an extra ration of whiskey...

The Stars and Stripes was raised while the Tricolore was lowered as the fife and drum band played Hail Colombia, the American national anthem in 1803. Standing before a crowd of a few hundred, Gale Norton, the American interior secretary, and Jean-Louis Debre, the president of the French National Assembly, stood and mouthed words of amity. The two countries' longstanding friendship "may not be put aside by differences of opinion that have occurred from time to time", M Debre said. No one believed a word of it. Two centuries ago this weekend France handed over Louisiana, along with a vast...

I have posted an alert at my web site, and have sent copies to several of our State Legislators in Ohio. The beginning of the article will explain its subject: March 1, 2003 is the 200th anniversary of Ohio Statehood. We had intended to draft a brief historical review, tracing settlement in the Northwest Territory; discussing the Virginia roots for the southern seventy-seven Counties, while acknowledging the New England origin for the eleven in the north, what had been the Connecticut Western Reserve. We had wanted to acknowledge the special contributions of the Virginians, with Jeffersonian values, who settled Ross...