I went looking for a serious story about America's 150th birthday and what 1926 made of the occasion. What I found instead was a fat man's race, an ambulance race immediately followed by a first aid demonstration, kayak capsizing contests, and a University of Chicago professor who wanted everyone to know they were celebrating the wrong date entirely.

One hundred years ago today, the day before the Fourth, newspapers were running the official holiday programs so people knew what to show up for. The schedule I found was in Seward Alaska, covers three days, and reads like someone was trying to fill every possible hour, regardless of whether the activity made any particular sense.

Saturday the 3rd opened with a smoker, admission 50 cents, followed by a dance at Odd Fellows hall.

Sunday the 4th had a dory race at 1pm, men's tug of war at 2, a baseball game at 3, and a marathon race at 6 with a first prize of $300 — plus, separately, a $60 suit of clothes given away by the sponsoring clothiers. The marathon winner would go home with enough money to live on for two months and enough clothes to look good doing it.

Monday is where things got interesting.

After the parade and oration, the afternoon filled up fast. There was a lots of running. Then a potato race for boys, a potato race for girls, an egg race for girls of any age, a sack race, a pie eating contest described in the program as "free for all" with first prize $3 and second prize $2. All fairly normal.

But then, a “fat man's race”, a “married woman's race”, a “women's nail driving contest”, a 220-yard race for men only, a bicycle race, a three-legged race for boys, a women's tug of war, and water sports with $50 in prizes. Incredible.

The Scout program ran separately in Key West, starting at 3 in the afternoon, and described itself as arranged to furnish the public with "clean entertainment, fun and excitement." Let's see how that held up.

3:15 — Three-legged race.
3:30 — Game, "Are you ready, brother?"
4:00 — Wheelbarrow race.
4:15 — Game, "Pick the Quarter."
4:30 — Peanut race.
5:00 — Watermelon eating contest.
5:15 — Ambulance race.
5:45 — First aid demonstration.

The ambulance race is at 5:15. The first aid demonstration is at 5:45. This is either extraordinarily poor scheduling or extraordinarily good planning. The program does not explain what an ambulance race involves, but if it’s what it sounds like, it will absolutely need the first aid demonstration to follow. I’m guessing "Are you ready, brother?" will also require a first aid demonstration afterwards.

But don’t worry, at 6:00 there’s a boxing match, described as "with challenge," likely meaning it was open to anyone who wanted to step in and fight. The Scouts called this clean entertainment. I mean they did have multiple ambulances and first aid available.

The evening closed with Scout oaths, songs, and yells at 6:30, and a balloon ascension contest at 7:00, which is the most serene possible ending to a schedule that passed through an ambulance race and an open boxing challenge to get there.

Meanwhile, in Chicago, a man named Marcus Jernegan was pouring cold water on everybody’s fun.

Jernegan was a history professor at the University of Chicago, and on July 3rd, 1926 — the day before a 150th birthday party that the entire country was organizing itself around — he gave a lecture at the university in which he argued that July 4th was, in his exact words, "an insignificant event in American history."

His argument, supported by John Adams's private letters, the Secret Journal of the Continental Congress, and newspaper clippings from 1776, went like this: America actually asserted her independence on July 2nd, when Richard Henry Lee's resolution was adopted by a vote of 12 colonies. New York didn't vote at all. The Philadelphia Evening Post announced on July 2nd that the colonies had been declared free and independent. John Adams wrote to his wife the following day, July 3rd, describing the action that had already been taken. On July 4th, the first printed document of the Declaration — bearing only John Hancock's signature as president of the Congress — was sent to the printer. The full signing by representatives of the 13 colonies didn't happen until August 2nd, and even then, six Congressmen didn't sign.

The July 4th date, Jernegan said, came from an error made in 1822, when a committee drawing up a report from the Secret Journal of the Continental Congress — which hadn't been made public until that year — attributed the unanimous declaration of August 2nd to July 4th. The date stuck. The error propagated. And for 150 years, by 1926, Americans had been celebrating the wrong day.

The Associated Press covered this speech and ran it nationally, which means that on the morning of July 3rd, 1926, Americans waking up to prepare for their 150th birthday celebrations could read, in their morning newspaper, that the whole enterprise was built on a clerical mistake.

Jernegan wasn't wrong. This is still historically debated. John Adams himself, in that famous July 3rd letter to Abigail, wrote that July 2nd "will be the most memorable Epocha in the History of America" and predicted it would be celebrated with "Pomp and Parade" and "Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more." He got the prediction right and the date wrong by two days, and somehow the date he got wrong is the one that stuck.

But here's the thing. On the same July 3rd that Jernegan was delivering his lecture in Chicago, somewhere else in America, organizers were printing programs that included a women's nail driving contest, an ambulance race, an open boxing challenge, and calling it a celebration of liberty.

Maybe the date was always beside the point. Maybe what people were actually celebrating was the ambulance race itself — the absolute commitment to doing something energetic and slightly dangerous together, on a specific day, every year, because it's ours and we said so.

Happy early Fourth.

– Chris