Today we celebrate King George III

What's that?

Yes. Today we celebrate King George III.

By declaring the colonies (that's us) in open rebellion over a year before the Declaration of Independence he gave the Founding Fathers nothing to lose. By the time of the signing of the Declaration, the Redcoats had been driven from Boston and were closing on New York. Not long after that they were chasing our dimuntive Colonial Army through New Jersey. But thanks to George Washington's - ahem - strategic withdrawals, and a victory over the Hessians in Trenton, we quickly wrapped up the Revolution in - What's that? - 1783 with the signing of "the" Treaty of Paris.

By losing nearly 1% of the population (25,000) it was the costliest war in United States history, by percentage, excluding the Civil War.

Of course we showed them in the War of 1812.

What's that?

The Declaration of Independence is one of the most significant and well-reasoned documents in world history. But would the Continental Congress have drafted it in peacetime?

We'll never know.