America 250: 7 important dates for the Declaration of Independence
5. Declaration of Independence officially adopted — July 4, 1776
Now, the date everyone remembers, the Fourth of July, marks the anniversary of the Continental Congress' official adoption of the Declaration of Independence.
The influential document, a list of grievances against British rule, would effectively give rise to a whole genre of literature drawn from by later revolutionaries in many other nations.
“In the first half-century or so after 1776, declarations of independence appeared from Vermont to Chile and from Haïti to Paraguay,” wrote historian David Armitage.
“Across the twentieth century, nationalists from Czechoslovakia to Korea claimed their sovereignty using the Declaration’s language. The authors of Israel’s Declaration of Independence in 1948 likewise worked from a copy of the American original.”
