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Happy 4th of July America
On July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress (which was made up of delegates of the 13 original colonies) passed a resolution to become independent from the rule of King George III and Great Britain. Apparently feeling a need to explain why Congress voted for independence, Congress debated the contents of a document for two days following the July 2 vote. The document was drafted by the Committee of Five (John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston.) On July 4, 1776, Congress approved the wording of the document. That document, dated July 4, 1776, was titled “The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America. ” We now know it as the Declaration of Independence.
The part of America’s Declaration of Independence that is universally recognized is its second sentence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Ice Bucket Challenge, ALS and New Bills in Congress
(Illustration by © voinsveta)
Remember back in the summer of 2014 when golf pro celebrities began a “the ice bucket challenge” by either pouring a bucket filled with ice water on their heads or paying $100 (or both) to raise awareness of amyotrophic sclerosis (ALS), sometimes known as Lou Gehrig’s disease? By the end of the summer of 2014, over 2million videos were seen on social medial, especially Facebook, showing ice water being poured onto the heads of millions of people.
ALS is a terrible disease striking about 2 people per 100,000 per year in the U.S. and U.K. alone. ALS strikes normally when a person is in his or her early sixties. It attacks the muscle system, making them weak at first and then causing issues with speaking, swallowing and later breathing. Sadly, the average time which its victims survive is 2 to 4 years from onset.
Happy Thanksgiving 2016
©Michael Flippo
Happy Thanksgiving 2016
Fall Back
Daylight Savings Time (DST) officially ends Sunday, November 4 at 2:00 am. This means that clocks in most states in the continental United States must “fall back” by one hour. The state which does not observe is Arizona. Outside of the continental U. S., Hawaii, does not observe DST.
The concept of DST is really a ritual of setting clocks forward one hour in the spring so that during the warmer months there is less daylight in the morning and more daylight in the evening. This act is known as “springing forward”. In the fall, the reverse occurs; that is, clocks “fall back” by one hour.
DST actually is a federal law. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 was the last legislative act to become law. This Act was just one of many federal legislative efforts to deal with the concept of national time. During World War I, the U. S. Congress passed the Standard Time Act of 1918. Interestingly, when War World I ended, the Act was abolished. During World War II, President Roosevelt created “war time” which ended in 1945 at the close of the war. Following the close of the war, there was a lack of any federal time regulation for about 20 years. Then in 1966, the Uniform Time Act was passed by the U. S. Congress at the urging of the transportation industry. In 1986, another act, called the Uniform Time Act was passed after input from the National Bureau of Standards which studied the effect of a year long law (in 1974-1975) which mandated national observance of DST.
