h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Tom Cruise birthday? I don't know.

July 4 1776 signing of the declaration of independence by the continental congress forming the United States.

Well according to a book I read recently, the Declaration was signed on 2nd July but Thomas Jefferson noted the date down incorrectly in his diary. So the Yanks should really be celebrating on 2nd!

24th August 1814 - for Brits - the day the British burnt down the White House.

Oh bah--someone just had to bring up the whole July 2 thing ;-P. You're right about the date technically being wrong--unfortunately we've been celebrating on the 4th so long that changing the date would not likely be well recieved. The only reason I even knew about it is because my mother is a history buff. Then again my knowledge of anything after the middle ages is sketchy at best ;-P.

The Declaration of Independence, which was drafted by Thomas Jefferson led him to a presidency and other important positions. Jefferson was asked his birthday to make it an American holiday, and replied that instead of making his birthday a holiday, make July Fourth a holiday instead. This led to the eventual creation of national independance day, though it probably would have happened anyway. Jefferson later died on July 4, the day he had helped make a holiday. To this day, no one is conclusively sure what his birthday is.

So perish traitors!

"So perish traitors"? Traitor to whom or what? Anyway, if he hadn't've died then he'd be far too old now to make serious sense. So perish everybody. In the final analysis everyone dies of heart failure.

I can't help feeling that a lot of countries could do with a constitution like the US's one, and with its Bill of Rights, (or 'Afterthoughts' as you might call 'em). Like Zimbabwe frinstance. The extra amendments or After-Afterthoughts just add obscurity - look at no 12 for electing people, complicated and doesn't even say anything about needing to be from a millionnaire family - except one or too that cast cats into pigeon groupings. Shame they changed their minds about no 18, I could have been a rich bootlegger by now.

Surely the celebration of the day of the death of a man whose birthday is unknown, is a singular act of acceptance that the inhabitants of the USA live in a country founded by traitors?

Anyone know what happened to the other dogs?

> I can't help feeling that a lot of countries could do with a constitution like the US's one, and with its Bill of Rights, (or 'Afterthoughts' as you might call 'em). <

Off hand the only other country I can think of with such an hide bound judiciary was the Mede/Persian one.

Is it possible for example to get reasonable medical treatment in the US if you are poor? I gather that the constitution has guaranteed not. From what I gathered by watching ER or whatever, a serious chronic illness would bankrupt most families. That can't be true can it?

As for the original piece of paper of renown, it was never applied to persons of a negro persuasion. What ammendments to it will there be to give back the property taken from the original inhabitants of the USA?

No, the day he died happened to be on a holiday. It wasn't a holiday because he died

One of the After-afterthoughts - from 1865 - did say that melanin-rich people could count just as much as the melanin-challenged. The 'original inhabitants' had spent centuries puttering about, mostly without sticking walls around their plots and any decent bits were carved into goldmines or emptied of buffalos and passenger pigeons. Not just the Lakotah got zapped either, millions of others over all of the Americas died off leaving their lands to the incomers by default. Kipling said "Who will return us our children?" Return the lost and land will be returned, no doubt

In the US's new role as community policeman against anyone they dislike, will they insist on other countries returning lands to the ethnics who got cleansed? Marsh Arabs. Tibetans. Croats. Serbs. Albanians. Palestinians. Chechnyans. Alsatians. And the rest over the last (say) thousand or two years.