Today in History: July 4

1803: The Jefferson Administration announces the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France, for $15 million.  The purchase, one of the largest real estate deals in history, nearly doubles the size of the young United States.

1817: Workers at Rome, New York, begin construction of the Erie Canal.  By connecting the Great Lakes to the Atlantic, it will ensure that New York, not Montreal, becomes the commercial capital of North America.

1826: Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both die on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.  The same day, songwriter Stephen Collins Foster is born at Lawrenceville, a town that is now part of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

1837: The first long-distance railroad ever constructed, the 82-mile-long Grand Junction Railway, opens for business.  The highly profitable line, which will never pay a dividend below 10 percent, connects Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Stafford, Crewe, and Warrington to the existing Liverpool & Manchester line.

1840: The first passenger steamship to cross the Atlantic, the Cunard Line’s paddle-wheeled RMS Britannia, leaves Liverpool en route to Halifax, Nova Scotia.

1845: Henry David Thoreau begins his experiment in Wilderness living by moving into a cabin on Walden Pond, a full fifteen minute walk from downtown Concord, Massachusetts.

1862: Ten-year-old Alice Liddell asks Charles Dodgson, who is with her on a boating picnic party, to tell her a story.  He invents one about a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit-hole.

1872: Small-town lawyer John Calvin Coolidge, Jr., is born at Plymouth, Vermont.  He’ll become one of the few American presidents who finds it possible to keep his mouth closed when he has nothing to say.

1881: The Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University, opens at Tuskegee, Alabama.  Much of the construction of the original campus buildings is done by students, who perform the work in exchange for education.

1946: The United States grants independence to the Philippines.