According to an AU professor, there’s more to celebrate on the fourth than one might think

Amy Weaver
Staff Writer
Published: July 3, 2008

The signing of the Declaration of Independence on this day 232 years ago isn’t the only reason July 4 is a significant historical date.

Auburn University History Professor Dr. Joe Kicklighter prefers to note that on July 4, 1826, John Adams, the second president of the United States, and Thomas Jefferson, the nation’s third president, both died. Adams and Jefferson were two of the founding fathers, but Kicklighter said they were on opposing ends of the political spectrum.

He called it “symbolically important” that the former presidents had their differences, reconciled and later died on the same day.

“Let’s not forget that Jefferson defeated Adams for a second term,” Kicklighter said. “And yet they were both there in the beginning.”

Other noteworthy events on this day in history:

1802 — The United States Military Academy opens at West Point, N.Y.
“It’s very much worth noting because that is one of our most illustrious institutions,” Kicklighter said.

1817 — Construction on the Erie Canal begins at Rome, N.Y.
“The building of the canal was a major aspect in the building of the country,” Kicklighter said.

1881— The Tuskegee Institute opens in Alabama.
“Booker T. Washington knew a lot about how to advance the causes he believed in,” Kicklighter said. “July 4 wasn’t a day for hoopla for many blacks back then.”

1927 — First flight of the Lockheed Vega, a six-passenger plane built by the Lockheed Company. The Vega became famous for its use by a number of famous pilots, including Amelia Earhart, whose historic flight across the Atlantic was in one, and Wiley Post, who flew his around the world twice. His plane, the Winnie Mae, is on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
“That’s some major figures in the history of aviation,” Kicklighter said.

1934 — Leo Szilard, a Hungarian-American physicist, patents the nuclear chain-reaction design for the atomic bomb. In 1945, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“I have always sensed he (Szilard) was very unhappy about what he had done, about what it could become,” Kicklighter said. “Once they thought more about the implications about what they were doing, they came to condemn it.”

1939 — In announcing his retirement from major league baseball, Lou Gehrig tells a crowd at Yankee Stadium that he considers himself, “the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” On June 13, Gehrig was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a degenerative disease of the nervous system. He would die two years later.
Kicklighter said Gehrig’s speech was a great event, but not necessarily historical. However, he said, “there wasn’t a dry eye in the house,” when Gary Cooper portrayed Gehrig and delivered the famous speech in the 1942 movie, “The Pride of the Yankees.”

1966 — President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Freedom of Information Act into United States law. The act goes into effect the next year.
“That was definitely noteworthy,” Kicklighter said. “There were so many things going on at the time, we didn’t realize it’s importance until much later.”

1997 — NASA’s Mars Pathfinder lands on the surface of the Red Planet. This was the first mission to Mars with a spacecraft carrying a rover. Sojourner was designed to conduct experiments on the surface.
Kicklighter said the event was significant in terms of the quest to learn more about life on Mars.