Published: July 06, 2008 04:53 pm            

Monica Green: How did you celebrate your Independance Day?

Friday the nation celebrated its 232nd Independence Day, most commonly known as Fourth of July. Families and friends gathered to celebrate independence by barbecuing, boating and other forms of traditional entertainment.

I remember celebrating the Fourth when I was younger. Every year my family went to my grandparents to shoot off fireworks. Without fail, our parachute men always got stuck in the trees. Now that we’re older we all like to go watch fireworks shows.

But I’ve never really stopped to think about the meaning of the Fourth. To those of us in the working world, it means one of six days out of the year we are off.

But the meaning goes much deeper, of course, because it is the celebration of America’s independence.

The U.S. Census Bureau created a list of interesting facts about the Fourth that I came across and decided to share.

In 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was approved, an estimated 2.5 million people lived in the nation, compared with 304 million this year.

One of the staple items of Fourth of July is food. But have you ever stopped to think about where the food you’re eating came from?

Texas has something to be proud of this Fourth of July. The Lone Star state produced an estimated 6.8 billion pounds of cattle and calves in 2007. That accounts for 1⁄6 of the nation’s total production.

Texas is also one of only six states in which the revenue from broiler chickens was $1 billion or greater from December 2006 to November 2007.

Texas also ranks high in watermelon production, with more than 400 million pounds grown last year.

What about the main event? Fireworks. Some $207 million worth of fireworks were imported from China in 2007, and Japan bought $3.8 million worth of America's fireworks. The U.S. exported $14.9 million worth of fireworks in 2007.

Thirty-one places can boast about being more patriotic than others because they are named “Liberty.” Liberty, Mo., is the most populated “liberty” place, with 29,581 people in July 2006.

Other places with patriotic names include 31 places with the name “Eagle,” 12 places with “Independence” and nine places with “Freedom.”

But there is only one “Patriot,” Patriot, Ind., with a population of 192.

After reading that article, I knew more useless facts than I ever needed to, and now you do too. Hope you had a good Fourth!

        

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