The original draft of the Declaration of Independence mentioned as inalienable rights “Life, Liberty and Fish Tacos”. Button Gwinnett got them to change it. “I never cared for fish tacos” he said.
Abraham Lincoln piloted a river boat up the Mississippi all the way from Atlanta to Washington D.C. battling hurricanes and pirates the whole way. He arrived at 11:59 pm on July 4 1776, just in time to sign the Constitution (it wouldn’t have counted otherwise).
After Aaron Burr slew Alexander Hamilton, Burr wasn’t charged formally with any crime since it was generally agreed that Hamilton was an obnoxious twat who got what was coming to him.
Bad ass! I think if more people knew this story, Lincoln could very well become a household name. Thanks for sharing!
Well, Lincoln was my grandfather, so I like to spread the word about his accomplishments. His son John Wayne (my father) was also a notable figure in American History, having freed the slaves and killing Hitler.
Just before the “shot heard round the world”, all the patriots stood up to sing the national anthem, and, realizing that one had not been written yet, turned to Francis Scott Key and urged him to come up with something quickly. He complied, and as the patriot forces’ voices soared in unison to sing “Stayin’ Alive”, Key thought to himself: “Oh, say that’s off key. . .hmmm.”
Although Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had been friends and colleagues when they were younger, they came to absolutely hate each other during the years of bitter partisanship between the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans. As the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence neared, matters finally came to a head. Adams had always been bitter that Jefferson received primary credit for the Declaration of Independence, and, enraged at the thought of the accolades Jefferson’s name would soon be receiving across the country, Adams challenged his old rival to a duel. Jefferson, who still regarded the Alien and Sedition Acts as treason against the ideals of the Revolution, readily agreed.
The two men agreed to settle things once and for all on the fateful anniversary: July 4, 1826. Meeting one last time in the little town of Crosswicks, New Jersey, the two old titans of American politics–Adams was 90, Jefferson 83–fought a bloody duel to the death. The fight was brutal; the duel commenced with the single-shot pistols of the day, then, with both men badly wounded, both charged forward–“Thomas Jefferson survives! Damn him! I’ll drag him to hell with me!” howled Adams–and the two ex-Presidents started hacking at each other with their daggers as the stunned onlookers watched in horror. Soon, both men were dead.
The scandal was so great–two of the country’s most revered leaders dead at each other’s hands, and on the nation’s 50th birthday no less–that influential Americans wasted no time in spreading a cover story that the two men had “just by sheer coincidence” both happened to die on the very same day, and on the 50th Independence Day no less, at their homes in Virginia and Massachusetts. Nowadays, few people know the shocking truth.
Yeah, Martha told Ben to go fly a kite.
Most folks know that Ben Franklin created our nation’s first fire department, which was considerate of him since he was our nation’s first arsonist.
There was no Revolutionary War. The originaly 13 colonies were kicked out of the British Empire for reasons related to personal hygiene.
The Boston Tea Party was a fraternity hazing event during Rush Week that got out of hand.
“One if by land, two if by sea”, was actually a drinking game.
Benjamin Franklin was deathly afraid of potatoes. This became a problem when George Washington sent him to Ireland in hopes of stirring up an anti-British revolution there to split the British forces and ensure an early victory. Franklin solved this by taking his famous ‘French Leave’: He went to Paris instead, and charmed the French into helping us win the war.
Franklin loved to act the consummate tourist; however, he was bound to report on what he was doing for the country abroad and how the French were responding to his proposals. Sadly, Franklin’s French letters prevented him from seeing many of the Paris sites he otherwise would have been destined for.
George Washington was known to weep openly. However, he was such a dignified man his weeping could be used to great effect; he once halted a rebellion within his own ranks by weeping at the conspirators.
To begin with, we had no Navy. We had to hire fishermen and whalers to interdict British shipping and prevent the Royal Navy from bombarding our cities and land forces with their feared long-range guns. The flaw in this plan was that most of those fishermen and whalers were also in the pay of the British, as most Royal Navy captains lacked the technical expertise required to sail faster than the wind. The famed ‘Nantucket Sleighride’ was the complex navigation required to appear to be fighting the British while actually telling them where to deposit the payment for bringing more redcoats ashore.
The entire Saratoga Campaign was initially sparked by British Private Thomas Atkins being thrown out of a theater in Saratoga, New York, an insult which severely damaged his ear.
“Molly Pitcher” wasn’t the first woman to fight in the American military; he was the first transvestite to serve in comfortable clothing.
The Declaration of Independence was delivered to George III on April 1, and was meant as a rather obvious April Fool’s Day prank. Who knew the king would take it seriously and send troops?
James Madison was a visionary who including “no excessive ATM fees” in his original draft of the Constitution. Unfortunately, this passage was deleted when the other delegates had no idea what he was talking about.
It’s now believed that the American Revolution was fixed. The British let themselves be beaten by a weaker opponent in order to run up the odds in the Napoleonic War.
Thomas Jefferson was named after the television characters Thomas Magnum and George Jefferson.
Monticello, the famous site of the original White House, was originally made entirely out of peanut butter. At the time it burned down after a hoop rolling party got wildly out of hand (thus paving the way for the Washington Monument which now stands in its place), the house happened to be hosting a hoard of Hershey’s bars. It was in the wreckage of this disaster that Benjamin Franklin first invented Reese’s peanut butter cups (Reese being his baptismal name, after St. Reese, patron saint of being awesome.)
Ah, St. Reese, the man who invented the hammock. Of course, his version had a second piece to it: A woven cup holder stretched between two ropes, to hold your beer. (He didn’t invent beer; he did invent the little thing that goes on your beer to give you a soft, warm place to grip.)
Thomas Jefferson invented many things to help him manage his plantation; her name was Sally Hemmings and her many, many children. Their mechanical inclination lives on to this day in the form of Hemmings Motor News, the classic car publication.
James Madison was quite senile later in his life and, influenced by Moby Dick and his own experiences as a renegade whaler-for-hire, became deathly afraid of a cetacean taking political office. (He was also terrified of a ‘black planet’; historians still haven’t figured that one out.) However, as he could not spell, this fear lead to an unofficial ban on any Welsh person holding any office higher than Representative. Scalia has interpreted this to mean that no Cornish person may ever cast a tie-breaking ballot in either house of Congress.
Only 64 percent of the founding fathers were Jewish? I was tought that my ancestors founded America and then I looked at my tree.
Well, I guess I know why I mysteriously get excited as Hannukah approaches.
At the battle of Trenton Alexander Hamilton became so incensed at running out of cannon balls that he grabbed a fence rail and began running up to each hessian shouting “BOOM!” and beating them over the head. The tactic worked so well the patriots saved a fortune in black powder and used the excess funds to create the board game Stratego wherein Hamilton was honored with his own game piece originally titled BOOM but later changed to a bomb symbol when it became known he could not actually deflect bullets with his nipples as he had claimed prior to the Burr duel.
Leon Shingledown originally road into battle backwards mooning the Brits shouting “kiss my red ass you pansy red petticoat wearing pillow biters” but ceased to do so when a sabre glanced off his calloused cheek alerting him to the possibility of another likely route the blade could have taken. From that point on he used his massive turgid appendage to bludgen oncoming cavalry.
In the painting ‘Washington crossing the Delaware’ his aforementioned appendage went unnoticed for decades because it was thought to be an oar. However, when noticed, it was painted out by prudish DAR members thus destroying the only known portrait of his manhood.
The Battle of Bunker Hill was not fought on Breed’s Hill. In fact there was no battle at all but only bottles, so many of which were emptied that everyone’s eyes were bloodshot to the point that there were no whites of the eyes visible to fire upon.
This is precisely why it is an indictment on the Australian education system that a course in civics is not taught during secondary school. 
In colonial New England, a young man was sentenced to hanging for having sex with a variety of farm animals. Before sentencing was carried out, he was forced to watch the execution of his former lovers (this one is quite true, actually).