Question of the Day: July 4th, 177?

A recent Marist poll suggests that a lot of Americans don't know the year we declared our independence. Some of them don't know the country we declared our independence from.

The poll did not go as far as to ask what the fight was all about. 

Marist's poll found only 58 percent of Americans know we cast off our ties to Great Britain in 1776. Another 26 percent are not sure of the year and 16 percent mentioned another date.

The same poll shows that one in four Americans don't even know we declared our independence from Great Britain.

So, now that the fireworks and the back-yard barbecues are over until Labor Day, here are some questions: 

1. How is this even possible?

2. What year were the first shots of the American Revolution fired? (Some scholars debate this point.)

3. Who was the "Tyrant" King we were so angry with, and why? Was Sam Adams merely a beer maker? Whose side were Benedict Arnold and Major Andre' on?

4. Why is Saratoga more than merely a great place to see summer thoroughbred racing? What happened at a place called Yorktown, on the Virginia Peninsula, in 1781.

5 Who wrote these words to live by:?

"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."

* And by extension, through enlightened U.S. Constitutional advances, "all people."