The Fourth of July

On July 4, 1777, the night sky of Philadelphia shone with the blaze of bonfires below. Candles illuminated the windows of houses and public buildings. Church bells and volleys from ship cannons broke the quiet. The city was celebrating the first anniversary of the founding of the United States. One year earlier, on July 4, 1776, American patriots had signed the Declaration of Independence, which announced to the world that the 13 colonies no longer belonged to England.

The Fourth of July soon became the main patriotic holiday of the entire country. Veterans of the Revolutionary War made a tradition of gathering on the Fourth to remember their victory. In towns and cities, the American flag flew; shops displayed red, white, and blue decorations; and people marched in parades that were followed by public readings of the Declaration of Independence.

Declared a federal holiday in 1941, the Fourth of July is still a day for celebrating America's birth. It is also a day for picnics, parades, swimming, and games. In the evening, many Americans gather to watch fireworks that light up the sky.

John Adams, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and the second President, thought that Americans should observe " a great anniversary festival with pomp and parade....with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations...from time to time forward forevermore."

Indianapolis 500

The roar of 33 high-powered engines fills the air. Around the track, the cheers of 300,000 fans mix with the thunderous sounds of straining motors. Finally, after 500 miles of grueling, heart-pounding racing, one driver crosses the finish line as the winner of the world’s greatest autorace: the Indianapolis 500.

The first Indy 500 was run in 1911, just two years after former racer Carl Fisher built the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. At that time, many states were outlawing road races because bigger, faster cars made auto racing dangerous. Fisher built a 2.5-mile oval track where carmakers could more safely test new cars and racers could compete for prizes. The first Indy was won by Ray Harroun, whose average speed was 74.5 miles an hour.

Today, high-tech Indy cars, which cost up to $300,000, race around the oval at speeds averaging 160 miles per hour. Driving such fast cars requires quick reflexes, a steady hand, strong nerves, endurance, and more than just a little luck. But winning the Indy 500 guarantees a driver’s place in the history books, as well as racing’s largest prize. The record for most Indianapolis 500 victories – four – is shared by three drivers: Al Unser, A.J. Foyt, and Rick Mears.

In its early days, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was paved with 3.2 million bricks. Today, Indy 500 driver’s race on an asphalt surface.

The Log Cabin

When settlers arrived on the wild American frontier, their first task was to build a home. More often than not, they built a log cabin. These simple homes were common on the frontier because they were sturdy and easy to build. One person, using just an ax and a knife, could do the job. No nails were needed.

The first log cabins in America were built near the mouth of the Delaware River in the late 1630s. They were erected by settlers from Sweden and Finland, where log cabins had been built for hundreds of years. The cabins caught on quickly with other New World settlers. The typical log cabin had just one or two rooms. The walls were made of logs laid horizontally and notched at the ends, so that they interlocked where they met at the corners.

Mud, clay, stones, and chips of wood filled gaps between the logs. Rough-cut boards or tree bark served as roofs.

As the U.S. became industrialized, the log cabin came to symbolize all the hardships and virtues of pioneer life. Politicians boasted that they had grown up in log cabins on the frontier. Three presidents really did: James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, and James Garfield.

President William Henry Harrison, elected in 1840, was called “the Ohio farmer” and used the log cabin as a symbol in his campaign. But he was actually born in a mansion in Virginia.

Fisk Jubilee Singers

“The magic of their song kept thrilling hearts,” the African-American leader W.E.B. Du Bois said of the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University.

The “Jubilees” were the first choral group to perform slave spirituals such as “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” for white audiences. Their thrilling concerts made them world famous in the 1870s.

The first “Jubilees” were nine students at Fisk University, in Nashville, Tennessee. Fisk had been founded in 1866 to educate former slaves, and in 1871, George L. White, Fisk’s treasurer, organized the choral group. The Jubilees’ concerts were so popular in Nashville that White thought they might help the school with the financial troubles that plagued its early years. He took the Jubilees on a national tour, which was a great success. Mark Twain, the famous author of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, said, “I think that in the Jubliees and their songs America has produced most perfect flower of the ages.” The chorus toured American and Europe for several years and raised $150,000, an enormous sum in those days.

England’s Queen Victoria was so delighted by the Jubilee Singers that she commissioned a painting of the choral group.

The Fisk Jubliee Singers still rank among the nation’s top choral groups. The university invites all students to audition for the group. But it cautions that “only the finest voices on campus are chosen.”

You can learn more here.

The Phonograph

President Rutherford B. Hayes couldn’t believe his ears---a box was politely asking about his health! Hayes had invited Thomas A. Edison, the famous inventor from New Jersey, to the White House to demonstrate his latest invention. The device was called a phonograph and it could both record and replay sound. It amazed Americans and many people thought it was a trick.

But Eidson’s phonograph was no trick. The “record” was a sheet of tinfoil wrapped around a metal cylinder. A disc with a needle in it was set vibrating by the sound of the human voices, causing the needle to make grooves of varying depths in the tinfoil as the cylinder rotated. A second disc-and-needle unit was employed to play back the sound; as the second needle traveled over the same grooves, its disc vibrated, recreating the sound.

Eidson charged admission to people who wanted to hear his early phonographs play”Yankee Doodle”, and sold several hundred tinfoil phonographs. But he considered them oddities, and concentrated on other projects. Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, improved on Edison’s idea, introducing wax-covered cylinders. Recorded disks, or “records,” were the idea of German inventor Emile Berliner. Millions of records could be stamped from a single master disk. They were first marketed in the United States in 1893. And Americans were soon cranking up phonographs to listen to their favorite singers and dance to the newest tune.

Samuel Gompers

Long hours, low pay, and unsafe working conditions were the rule for most American workers in the late 1800s. Samuel Gompers helped change that by bringing thousands of workers together in unions to bargain for better treatment from employers.

Born in England, Gompers came to the United States with his family in 1863. He learned his father’s cigarmaking trade and joined the Cigarmakers’ Union. He became president of that union in 1874. In those days, unions were small and served only skilled workers in specific trades. Gompers realized that unions would be stronger if they banded together. In 1881, he helped found a federation of labor unions that became the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1886.

Gompers was president of the AFL until his death. Under his presidency, membership grew to four million. Gompers pressed for higher wages, fewer hours, and better working conditions. He believed that these goals should be won by collective bargaining, not strikes. Unlike some labor leaders, he was not very interested in political change. His purpose was to make life better for American workers. While Gompers led the AFL, average wages increased 205 percent and the average workday was shortened to nine hours. Because of his imporant role in their struggle, he is known as the “father of the modern labor movement.”

Ocean Liners

You spend the day soaking up the sun, swimming in the pool, and playing shuffleboard. Then you join friends in the “Garden Lounge,” where tea is served among the towering palm trees and Greek statues. After changing into formal clothes in your stateroom, you make your way along the thickly carpeted corridors to the main dining room, where you have been invited to be a guest at the captain’s table. After a superb dinner, you dance to the romantic music of the ship’s orchestra.


No form of transportation has ever been more glamorous than the ocean liners that carried passengers between the U.S. and Europe. They heyday of those “floating palaces” was from 1900 to 1940. Aboard such ships as the Aquitania (which carried 4,000 passengers), the Normandie (pictured here), and the Queen Elizabeth, those who could afford the passage were treated like royalty. In 1912, the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank, killing 1,500 people. But on most crossings, seasickness was the only peril. During World War II many of the huge liners were used as troop transports. After the war, new ships like the United States kept transatlantic service alive. But gradually jet aircraft, which were faster and cheaper, replaced the queens of the sea. Today, ocean liners are used mainly for pleasure cruises.


In 1952, the United States won an award for the fastest ocean crossing: 3 days, 10 hours, and 40 minutes from New York to England.

Oh Those Flappers!

Young and rebellious, they wanted to live a very different life from that of their mothers. They were known as “flappers,” and with their boyfriends---their “sheikhs”----they were the “flaming youth” of the period known as the Roaring Twenties.


Instead of ankle-length skirts, heavy black stockings, and long hair piled on top of their heads, the flappers wore short skirts, rolled-down silk stockings, and bobbed hair. They used lipstick and rouge and learned the latest dances of the “jazz age,” such as the Charleston and the Black Bottom. And they adopted many customs previously reserved for men, including smoking, drinking, and driving. “She will never knit you a necktie,” wrote one journalist about the flapper, “but she’ll drive you from the station in her little sports car.”


Of course, not all young American women were flappers. Many were too conservative or too timid for such open persuit of pleasure. But the flappers symbolized the restlessness of a changing America that was reexamining its social structure and its values. When the stock market crashed in 1929, bringing about the Great Depression, the era of the flapper ended as suddenly as American prosperity.


The word “flapper” originally meant a bird that was too young to fly. By the late 1800s, it was used to describe any young girl. By 1920, it came to mean a free-spirited young woman.