A Note From Bob
The day they actually signed
Sunday morning, and a quiet anniversary worth knowing about. The Fourth of July gets the fireworks, but July 4, 1776 was only the day Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. The engrossed parchment, the one under glass in Washington today, was signed by most of the fifty-six delegates on August 2, 1776. Two hundred fifty years ago today. John Hancock went first, and if the legend holds, he signed large enough for King George to read it without his spectacles. Today's featured quiz is about the men behind all fifty-six names. And once you have met the signers, a second quiz on the world that raised them, Colonial America, is waiting further down. Pour the coffee.
Trivia Question of the Day
In 1938, two teenagers from Cleveland sold all rights to a character they had invented in high school for $130, a check that covered thirteen pages of artwork at ten dollars a page. Their creation went on to earn billions. Who was the character?
The answer is at the bottom of this email.
Today's Featured Quiz
The Signers of the Declaration
They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, and for more than a few of them the bill came due. The youngest was twenty-six. The oldest was seventy. Two went on to the presidency, and both died on the same remarkable Fourth of July, fifty years after the signing. Fifteen questions on the fifty-six men who signed America into existence. How many of them do you really know?
The Answer
Superman
Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, classmates at Cleveland's Glenville High School, dreamed up the Man of Steel in the early 1930s and spent years failing to sell him. By the time Action Comics No. 1 finally reached newsstands in June 1938, the pair had signed away the rights to their publisher for $130. The character became one of the most valuable pieces of intellectual property on earth; a near-mint copy of that first issue sold at auction for six million dollars in 2024, and the original $130 check itself later fetched $160,000. Siegel and Shuster spent decades fighting for recognition, finally winning a pension and a permanent credit line from Warner in 1975. Today's second quiz is just below.
On This Day
On this day in 1790, federal marshals fanned out across thirteen states to answer a question the young republic had never asked of itself: how many of us are there? The first United States Census counted just under four million Americans, in a country whose largest city, New York, held about thirty-three thousand people. Nearly all of them were children and grandchildren of the colonial world, the 170-year story of Jamestown and Plymouth, Dutch traders and Quaker experiments, that made a nation possible. That world is today's second quiz. 15 questions.
Stay
Curious.
Bob
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