The Ten Oddest American Patriotic Facts

 

America's patriotism is steeped in quirky history, from revolutionary quirks to modern symbols. Here are ten odd facts that highlight the nation's eccentric spirit.

One: In 1917, the government briefly tried to rename hamburgers “liberty sandwiches” to avoid the German association.

Two: The back of the Declaration bears an upside-down message: "Original Declaration of Independence dated 4th July 1776."

Three: Three U.S. presidents—John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Monroe—died on July 4th, adding eerie coincidence to the holiday.

Four: The Liberty Bell hasn't rung since 1846, but it's symbolically tapped 13 times each Independence Day to honor the original colonies.

Five: The Liberty Bell is one of the most famous cracked objects in history—yet the crack people recognize today was actually a repair attempt that failed, leaving the bell permanently silent.

Six: The 50-star American flag was designed by 17-year-old Robert Heft for a school project, earning him a B- until it was adopted.

Seven: Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration on a "laptop"—a portable writing desk that fit over the lap.

Eight: Americans devour about 150 million hot dogs on July 4th, making it the biggest hot dog day of the year.

Nine: Six U.S. flags stand on the moon from Apollo missions, proving patriotism reaches extraterrestrial heights.

Ten: Benjamin Franklin preferred the turkey over the bald eagle as the national bird, arguing the turkey was more respectable and less prone to stealing.

A Rifleman in Normandy

Gold, Murder and Monsters in the Superstition Mountains

The Pledge of Allegiance

 

The Pledge originated in  1892, when Francis Bellamy, a former Baptist minister, penned it for The Youth's Companion magazine as part of a Columbus Day celebration marking the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival. Bellamy's original version reads: "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." It was designed to foster national unity amid post-Civil War healing and waves of immigration, promoting "true Americanism" through public education.

 Over the decades, the Pledge evolved. In 1923-1924, "my Flag" became "the Flag of the United States of America" to clarify loyalty. Initially accompanied by the Bellamy Salute—an extended arm gesture reminiscent of the Roman salute—it was changed in 1942 to the hand-over-heart position due to its similarity to the Nazi salute during World War II.

 In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation inserting "under God" to differentiate the U.S. from "godless" communism during the Cold War.

Secrets of American History

Murder in Colonial Virginia

Eight Hours for What We Will by Roy Rosenzweig

The values of nineteenth century America were largely white Anglo-Saxon values that stressed Protestant self-reliance and Victorian respectability. Men worked and subdued the frontier (both literally and figuratively), while the woman’s domain was religion (moral uplift) and the home. Education, self-cultivation and upward mobility were the hallmarks of Anglo Saxon values. The central theme of this value system was Progress (expressed in terms of material progress) versus primitivism.

According to Larry May in his book Screening Out the Past, immigrants presented a disorganizing element into American society because they brought with them other (less restrictive) value systems. In the view of the white Anglo-Saxon majority, immigrants needed to be Americanized in order to, “make no trouble for the right minded” (May, 15). The workplace was one area in which the immigrant must be bent to (industrial) discipline. The other area was leisure. The middle class wanted to control immigrant leisure, and as Roy Rosenzweig points out in Eight Hours for What We Will leisure became a battleground between groups with different value systems. 

For immigrants, amusements constituted an important counterweight to the rigors of industrial discipline. Movies were particularly appealing to multi-lingual immigrants. Because movies were silent, they were universally available as an outlet for romance and adventure and formed the ground pattern of social life for the young (May, 38). The movies provided immigrants with a form of acculturation into American life. Although the middle class frowned on the low themes of the earliest movies, in general movies were much less of a threat to industrial discipline than were other amusements such as drinking in saloons. Immigrants carved out leisure (and especially movies) as a public space apart from work where they could indulge hopes, dreams and aspirations. In embracing the culture of the movies (and its concomitant consumerism) so enthusiastically, the immigrant movie go-er accelerated the breakdown of old ethnic norms and the development of a more homogeneous society based on mass culture and consumerism. Consumerism offered the image of a homogenous population pursuing the same goals of living well and accumulating goods. The emergence of consumerism served to mask the transformation of the immigrant from person to commodity and tempered resistance to labor discipline.

The development of the movie industry itself was a tremendous social safety valve. The movie industry, in which immigrants were heavily represented, demonstrated that success could be had without a long laborious submission to the Anglo Saxon value system (May, 196). Success was democratized in the persona of the movie star who by talent and imagination could become an overnight success (May, 233).

In Eight Hours for What We Will, Roy Rosenzweig talks about alternative ethnic worker cultures as opposed to oppositional cultures. Rather than directly challenging the economic elite, the alternative culture passively resists. Initially immigrants found strength to passively resist industrial discipline within the traditions and norms of their ethnic communities, to paraphrase Rosenzweig’s book, “they found a different way to live and wished to be left alone with it” (Rozenzweig, 64). Mass culture appears to have taken the place of the immigrant neighborhood. The modern American citizen passively resists labor discipline by immersing in consumerism and the products of mass culture. Meaning is found in conspicuous consumption.

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Beyond Ethnicity: Book Review

Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture
By Werner Solors

Sollors uses American literature/culture to explain the continuous process of revitalization of the concept of Americanism” as new ethnic groups are assimilated into the existing mainstream. As new groups are assimilated they simultaneously modify the very nature of Americanism.

Sollors argues that there are two legitimizing strains in the formation of “Americanism”, one being descent and the other being consent. There is (and always has been) a tension between Americans who feel that they are legitimate Americans by right of birth and descent and those who feel that they are equally legitimate because they have chosen (consented) to be Americans. This tension is reflected in literature and culture. Sollors argues that it is cultural medium that provide a place for mediation between group norms and the socialization of new groups into the codes of American-ness. Sollors argues that the sense of national kinship between Americans is created by a process of cultural mediation. Forms, symbols and language do much to forge national identity. Out of a shared symbolic language ( the acceptance of the symbolic meaning for events) emerges a middle ground for the immigrant between assimilation (complete surrender to the new culture) and ossification (refusal to abandon Old World identification).

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