1976
The Year of the Tall Ships! The Bicentennial of the United States of America! Et Cetera. except it wasn't. well, it was the year of the tall ships. tall ships (full scale replicas of wooden sailing ships) sailed into New York harbor, into the port of Los Angeles, into the estuary of Washington, D.C. and a lot of other places - many of them did it right on 4 July 1976! Yea! Yippee! Hurray! yep. we called it our bicentennial, but if we'd gone back to 1776 and looked around, we'd've found no United States of America. We did have a Declaration of Independence. we had twelve colonies in rebellion. Georgia, I think, wasn't sure yet. "Y'all just go right ahead and be revoltin' if that's what you want. We'll sit this one out, see how you do. If it works out for you, maybe we'll join up. Have a good time now, bless your lil ole hearts!" we'd had the "battles" of Lexington and Concord in April of 1775, but there was no army at either except the British Army. The Army of the United States of America may not have come into being until 1841. A Continental Army had been declared in 1775, and put under the command of George Washington. there was a second Continental Congress who claimed to be running things. The Articles of Confederation which would create one government for these colonies weren't written until 1777. but in a real sense none of that matters. we needed a birthday, and we declared 1776 the year of our birth, and we put on a large-ish celebration and felt very patriotic in 1976. we love ignorance, and really don't care about details. 1976 it is then! yea us!
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