Everyone must know by now that we are celebrating our 250th birthday on July 4 this year. It’s called the semi quincentennial. To be honest, this number does not seem that large— think $250 dollars, or 250 days (1.46 months), or 250 months (20.8 years)—but, considering what our country has been through for this duration—this number is HUGE! To wit… during the last 250 years the U.S. has:
- Fought in approximately 13 major wars, in addition to hundreds of military interventions, proxy fights and armed conflicts;
- Experienced two major plague epidemics;
- Grown in population from 2.5 million to 348 million;
- Processed 12 million immigrants through Ellis Island. (Roughly 40 percent of all Americans can trace one of their ancestors through this immigration station);
- Seen a shrinkage of the number of its farms – from 5,647,800 in 1950 to 1,865,000 in 2025 (down 15,000 farms from 2024);
- Had 12,591 individuals serve as Representatives, Senators or in both capacities (since Congress first convened in 1789);
- Developed 63 national parks;
- Witnessed major medical breakthroughs, including the smallpox vaccine (1799), anesthesia (1846), the EKG (1914), corrective heart surgery for children (1938), pap smear (1945), kidney transplant (1952), oral contraceptives (1954), the polio vaccine (1955), human limb attachment (1962), early onset Alzheimer’s Disease gene (1987), laser tattoo removal (1988), triple organ transplant (1995), blood stem cells (2004), cholesterol mechanism (2006), cardiac hypertrophy reversal (2013), and how COVID causes loss of smell (2020), among a myriad of other medical breakthroughs.
- Founded more than 30,000 colleges and universities; the College of Charleston, in South Carolina was founded exactly 250 years ago. Harvard was founded in 1650;
- Seen the liberation of slaves, and the right for women to vote;
- Witnessed Congress’ passing, in 1920, of The Volstead Act, making it illegal to “manufacture, sell, barter, transport, import, export, deliver, furnish or possess” alcohol. The act was repealed in 1933 and immediately allowed breweries to reopen, created thousands of jobs and provided governments with much-needed tax revenue to help combat the Great Depression.
Statue of Liberty Timeline
1667 – Isaac Bedloe, a Dutch colonist, obtains a colonial land grant for a small island later known as Bedloe’s Island.
1808 – The U.S. Army begins construction of a star-shaped fort on Bedloe’s Island.
1865 – Edouard de Laboulaye proposes that France give the United States a Statue representing liberty for its centennial.
1870 – Frederic Auguste Bartholdi becomes the sculptor of the statue.
1884 – The Statue is completed in France.
1885 – Joseph Pulitzer leads a fundraising campaign that raises over $100,000 to build the pedestal for the Statue. The Statue arrives in New York and is placed in storage for a year while the pedestal is completed.
1886 – The Statue is formally unveiled.
1903 – Words from Emma Lazarus’ poem, “The New Colossus,” are added to the base of the Statue.
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
1956 – Bedloe’s Island is renamed Liberty Island by a joint resolution in Congress and signed into law by President Eisenhower.
