Good luck with your ongoing progress, Em.

While I have some good British friends, I'm glad we dumped the good old Kingdom of Great Britain.

Have fun but be careful, folks. Firecrackers are dangerous. I don't know if it took us a while to appreciate the holiday hazards, but it makes me wonder what was behind this coincidental series of deaths:

In a remarkable coincidence, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the only signers of the Declaration of Independence later to serve as Presidents of the U.S., died on the same day: July 4, 1826, which was the 50th anniversary of the Declaration. Although not a signer of the Declaration of Independence, but another Founding Father who became a President, James Monroe, died on July 4, 1831, thus becoming the third President in a row who died on this memorable day.