Good morning everyone. Please follow the links to learn more intersting information about our Seal.
Enjoy your Sunday.
On This Day In History
Birthdates which occurred on July 03:
1423 Louis XI king of France (1461-83)
1567 Samuel de Champlain explorer (Lake Champlain)
1731 Samuel Huntington (Gov-Ct), Continental Congress pres
1738 John Singleton Copley Mass, finest colonial American artist
1828 John Austin Wharton, Major General (Confederate Army), died in 1865
1861 Peter Jackson heavyweight, boxing hall of famer
1874 Sir Apirana Turupa Ngata Kawaka NZ, Maori political/cultural leader
1883 Alfred Korzybski Poland, scientist (Science & Sanity)
1883 Franz Kafka Czech, author (Metamorphosis, Trial, Amerika)
1886 Raymond A Spruance, US admiral/fleet commander/ambassador
1893 "Mississippi" John Hurt, Played the straight natural Blues
1906 George Sanders Russia, actor (All About Eve-Academy Award 1950)
1909 Earl L Butz US Secretary of Agriculture (1971-76); a real Butz
1913 Dorothy Kilgallen Chic Ill, columnist (What's My Line?)
1925 Tony Curtis [Bernard Schwartz] Bronx NY, actor (Some Like it Hot)
1930 Pete Fountain New Orleans, jazz clarinetist (Lawrence Welk 1957-59)
1935 Harrison H "Jack" Schmitt Santa Rita NM, astronaut (Apollo 17)
1937 Tom Stoppard playwright (Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are dead-1968 Tony)
1940 Fontella Bass St Louis Mo, vocalist (Rescue Me)
1941 Gloria Allred feminist attorney
1943 Geraldo Rivera aka Gerry Rivers, nosey newsman (Geraldo)
1943 Norman E Thagard Marianna Fl, MD/astronaut (STS 7, 51-B, 30, 42)
1945 Michael Cole Madison Wisc, actor (Pete-Mod Squad)
1948 Paul Berrere rocker (Little Feat-Truck Stop Girl)
1949 Jan Smithers N Hollywood Calif, actress (Bailey-WKRP)
1951 Jean-Claude 'baby Doc' Duvalier deposed Haitian president-for-life
1962 Tom Cruise Syracuse, actor (Risky Business, Color of Money, Rainman)
1979 Lauren Alviti, Miss Rhode Island Teen USA (1997)
Although not a well-known founder, Charles Thomson was at the heart of the American Revolution. His story is a fascinating one.
http://www.rebelswithavision.com/CharlesThomson.com/
CHARLES THOMSON was active in colonial resistance against Britain for decades. Although Pennsylvania conservatives kept him from being elected a delegate to the Continental Congress, Thomson was chosen as its secretary in 1774, continuing until the federal government came to power in 1789. Thomson faithfully recorded the decisions that shaped the government.
He was Secretary of the entire pre-constitutional Continental Congresses from 1774 to 1789. On July 4, 1776 the original declaration of Independence was signed by only two people, Charles Thomson as Secretary and John Hancock as President of the Continental Congress. The original signed Declaration of Independence was then taken to John Dunlap, a Philadelphia printer. John Dunlap printed 500 Hancock/Thomson "typed signed" Broadsides which were distributed to the members of Congress and the King of England. The original Declaration of Independence that was actually signed by Thomson and Hancock, however, was lost in the fever of Freedom. On August 2, 1776 the delegates returned to Philadelphia to sign a newly prepared Declaration of Independence and for some known reason Thomson was not invited to sign.
For fifteen years, from time of Revolution to the ratification of the New Constitution, Congress would meet in Philadelphia and enact laws and issue orders. The sessions ended with the delegates returning to their respective States. Upon their departure one man was responsible for carrying on with the Government of the United States and his name was Charles Thomson.
Among Thomson's many accomplishments he is credited with creating the final design of the symbol of America, the Great Seal of the United States. The seal was adopted by the Continental Congress in July 20, 1782. Thomson's Great Seal of the United States, with only minor modifications, remains in use today 218 years later. In the center of the seal is an American eagle which holds in its beak a scroll inscribed “E pluribus Unum”; in one talon is an olive branch; in the other, a bundle of thirteen arrows. A shield with thirteen alternate red and white stripes covers the eagle’s breast, and over its head a cloud surrounds a blue field containing thirteen stars.
In 1808, after 19 years of work, he provided the first American translation from Greek of the oldest version of the Old Testament of the Bible. Few now remain of the original one thousand published editions of Thomson's four-volume 1808 translation. That same year, Thomson also published his translation of the New Testament.
Appleton's Biography
THOMSON, Charles, patriot, born in Maghera, County Derry, Ireland, 29 November, 1729; died in Lower Merion, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, 16 August, 1824. He was brought to this country with three other brothers by his father in 1740. The father died just in sight of land, and the young Thomsons were thrown on their own resources when they landed at New Castle, Delaware An elder brother, who had emigrated before them, gave them such aid as he could, and persuaded a countryman, Dr. Francis Allison, to take Charles into his seminary in New London, Pennsylvania Here he made rapid progress, and while yet little more than a boy he was chosen to conduct a Friends' academy at New Castle.
He often visited Philadelphia, met Benjamin Franklin there, and was brought to the notice of many other eminent men. His reputation for veracity was spread even among the Indian tribes, and when the Delawares adopted him into their nation in 1756 they , called him in their tongue "man of truth." Reverend Ashbel Green, in his autobiography, says that it was common to say that a statement was "as true as if Charles Thomson's name was to it."
He was one of the first to take his stand with the colonists, and he exercised immense influence, owing to the confidence of the people in his ability and integrity. He travel led through the country ascertaining the wishes of the farmers, and trying to learn whether they would be equal to the approaching crisis. "He was the Sam Adams of Philadelphia," said John Adams, "the life of the cause of liberty." He had just come to Philadelphia in September, 1774, with his bride, a sister of Benjamin Harrison, the signer, when he learned that he had been unanimously chosen secretary of the 1st Continental congress. "He was the soul of that political body," says Abbe Robin, the chaplain of Rochambeau. He would receive no pay for his first year's services, and congress presented his wife with a silver urn, which is still preserved in the family. He remained in this post under every congress up to 1789, not only keeping the records but taking copious notes of its proceedings and of the progress of the Revolution. When he retired into private life he made these notes the basis of a history of the Revolution but he destroyed the manuscript some time before his death, as he feared that a description of the unpatriotic conduct of some of the colonists at that period would give pain to their descendants.
(snip)
Something I ran across while doing a Google search on Charles Thomson
The Letters of Thomas Jefferson: 1743-1826
"A REAL CHRISTIAN"
http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jefl239.htm
To Charles Thomson Monticello, January 9, 1816
MY DEAR AND ANCIENT FRIEND,
-- An acquaintance of fifty-two years, for I think ours dates from 1764, calls for an interchange of notice now and then, that we remain in existence, the monuments of another age, and examples of a friendship unaffected by the jarring elements by which we have been surrounded, of revolutions of government, of party and of opinion. I am reminded of this duty by the receipt, through our friend Dr. Patterson, of your synopsis of the four Evangelists. I had procured it as soon as I saw it advertised, and had become familiar with its use; but this copy is the more valued as it comes from your hand. This work bears the stamp of that accuracy which marks everything from you, and will be useful to those who, not taking things on trust, recur for themselves to the fountain of pure morals. I, too, have made a wee-little book from the same materials, which I call the Philosophy of Jesus; it is a paradigma of his doctrines, made by cutting the texts out of the book, and arranging them on the pages of a blank book, in a certain order of time or subject. A more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen; it is a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call me infidel and themselves Christians and preachers of the gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its author never said nor saw. They have compounded from the heathen mysteries a system beyond the comprehension of man, of which the great reformer of the vicious ethics and deism of the Jews, were he to return on earth, would not recognize one feature. If I had time I would add to my little book the Greek, Latin and French texts, in columns side by side. And I wish I could subjoin a translation of Gosindi's Syntagma of the doctrines of Epicurus, which, notwithstanding the calumnies of the Stoics and caricatures of Cicero, is the most rational system remaining of the philosophy of the ancients, as frugal of vicious indulgence, and fruitful of virtue as the hyperbolical extravagances of his rival sects.
I retain good health, am rather feeble to walk much, but ride with ease, passing two or three hours a day on horseback, and every three or four months taking in a carriage a journey of ninety miles to a distant possession, where I pass a good deal of my time. My eyes need the aid of glasses by night, and with small print in the day also; my hearing is not quite so sensible as it used to be; no tooth shaking yet, but shivering and shrinking in body from the cold we now experience, my thermometer having been as low as 12 degrees this morning. My greatest oppression is a correspondence afflictingly laborious, the extent of which I have been long endeavoring to curtail. This keeps me at the drudgery of the writing-table all the prime hours of the day, leaving for the gratification of my appetite for reading, only what I can steal from the hours of sleep. Could I reduce this epistolary corvee within the limits of my friends and affairs, and give the time redeemed from it to reading and reflection, to history, ethics, mathematics, my life would be as happy as the infirmities of age would admit, and I should look on its consummation with the composure of one "qui summum nec me tuit diem nec optat."
So much as to myself, and I have given you this string of egotisms in the hope of drawing a similar one from yourself. I have heard from others that you retain your health, a good degree of activity, and all the vivacity and cheerfulness of your mind, but I wish to learn it more minutely from yourself. How has time affected your health and spirits? What are your amusements, literary and social?
Tell me everything about yourself, because all will be interesting to me who retains for you ever the same constant and affectionate friendship and respect.
Thomas Jefferson
To all our military men and women past and present, military family members, and to our allies who stand beside us
Thank You!
Madeline Murray O'Hair lost her head in her satanic pursuits. O the hilarity.
The federal courts have held that the motto symbolizes the historical role of religion in our society, Lynch, 465 U.S. at 676, formalizes our medium of exchange, see O'Hair v. Blumenthal, 462 F. Supp. 19, 20 (W.D. Tex.), aff'd sub nom. O'Hair v. Murray, 588 F.2d 1144 (5th Cir. 1978) (per curiam), and cert. denied, 442 U.S.930 (1979), fosters patriotism, see Aronow v. United States, 432 F.2d 242, 243 (9th Cir. 1970), and expresses confidence in the future, Lynch, 465 U.S. at 692-93 (O'Connor, J., concurring). The motto's primary effect is not to advance religion; instead, it is a form of "ceremonial deism" which through historical usage and ubiquity cannot be reasonably understood to convey government approval of religious belief. Allegheny, 492 U.S. at 625 (O'Connor, J., concurring); Lynch, 465 U.S. at 693 (O'Connor, J., concurring); id. at 716 (Brennan, J., dissenting). Finally, the motto does not create an intimate relationship of the type that suggests unconstitutional entanglement of church and state. O'Hair, 462 F. Supp. at 20. "After making [inquiries], we find that a reasonable observer, aware of the purpose, context, and history of the phrase "In God we trust," would not consider its use or its reproduction on U.S. currency to be an endorsement of religion. (Gaylor vs USA, 10th Cir. 1996)
"And as I end the refrain, slice off her head." [Cyrano de Bergerac, Act III Scene 2 Line 37]
The significance of the mystical number 13, which frequently appears upon the Great Seal of the United States, is not limited to the number of the original colonies. The sacred emblem of the ancient initiates, here composed of 13 stars, also appears above the head of the "eagle." The motto, E Pluribus Unum, contains 13 letters, as does also the inscription, Annuit Coeptis. The "eagle" clutches in its right talon a branch bearing 13 leaves and 13 berries and in its left a sheaf of 13 arrows. The face of the pyramid, exclusive of the panel containing the date, consists of 72 stones arranged in 13 rows.
There is no evidence that the final designers of the Great Seal, Charles Thomson or Philadelphia William Barton, were Masons. It is more likely that the seal designers of the Great Seal and the Masons took their symbols from parallel sources.
E Pluribus Unum means "out of many, one". It comes from a popular publication during revolutionary times entitled Gentleman's Magazine which carried that legend upon the title page. The magazine was well known to literate Americans of the time. The Gentleman's Magazine obtained the legend from an earlier and long out of print publication called the Gentleman's Journal which used the motto in 1692. And perhaps ultimately to Virgil, St. Augustine or Horace. It was first used extensively in the United States only after it was introduced on the Great Seal.
In 1946, Soviet school children presented a two foot wooden replica of the Great Seal of the United States to Ambassador Averell Harriman. The Ambassador hung the seal in his office in Spaso House (Ambassador's residence). During George F. Kennan's ambassadorship in 1952, a routine security check discovered that the seal contained a microphone and a resonant cavity which could be stimulated from an outside radio signal.
Great Seal Fact Sheet Bureau of Public Affairs Washington, DC April 1, 2002 In the Department of State, the term "Great Seal" has come to include not just the die, but the counter-die, the press, and the cover, or cabinet in which it is housed, as well. These stand in the Exhibit Hall of the Department, inside a glass enclosure which is kept locked at all times, even during the sealing of a document. The mahogany cabinet's doors are also kept locked and the press is bolted and padlocked in position except when in use. The seal can be affixed only by an officer of the Department of State, under the authority of its custodian, the Secretary of State. When there are documents ready for sealing, one of the officers carries them to the enclosure where the Great Seal is kept and prepares them for impressing.
First, a 3-3/4-inch, scalloped, blank paper wafer of off-white linen stock is glued in the space provided for it to the left of the document's dating clause. If ribbons are used in binding the document, they are run under the paper wafer and glued fast. Second, the document is inserted between the counter-die, with the wafer carefully lined up between them. Third, the document is held in place with the left hand and the weighted arm of the press is pulled sharply forward with the right hand, from right to left. This drives the die down onto the wafer, document, and counter-die, which impresses the seal in relief. The die is then raised, releasing the document and allowing for its removal. When an envelope containing letters of credence or recall is to be sealed, the wafer is impressed first, and then glued to the sealed envelope, leaving the envelope itself unmarked.
