The Stamp Act Congress, which met in New York City from October 7 to 25, 1765, was the first gathering of representatives from several American colonies to devise a unified protest against British taxation. The congress adopted petitions to the British government spelling out the colonial grievances that would eventually lead to the Revolution while simultaneously laying the groundwork for future cooperation between the colonies. It was the forerunner of the Continental Congresses that would meet nearly a decade later to coordinate resistance to British polices.

The costs of fighting the French and Indian War (1754–1763) had left Great Britain burdened with an immense debt. British officials believed that the American colonists, who had benefited from the war by the expulsion of the French from Canada, and who were being protected from their Native American neighbors by British troops, should pay part of the expenses.

The first measure designed to increase revenues from the colonies, the Sugar Act of 1764, imposed import duties on foreign molasses while tightening enforcement of customs laws to reduce smuggling. Although many Americans disliked the Sugar Act, opposition was limited because the colonists accepted the British government’s right to impose trade duties. But the next colonial revenue law, the Stamp Act, provoked fierce opposition

For the complete article, encylopedia.com

      IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

---

The 56 signatures on the Declaration appear in the positions indicated:

Column 1
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton

Column 2
North Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton

Column 3
Massachusetts:
John Hancock
Maryland:
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton

Column 4
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean

Column 5
New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark

Column 6
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Massachusetts:
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
New Hampshire:
Matthew Thornton

source: internet

1512 – Michelangelo’s paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel were first exhibited to the public.

1604 – “Othello,” the tragedy by William Shakespeare, was first presented at Whitehall Palace in London. 

1611 – “The Tempest,” Shakespeare’s romantic comedy, was first presented at Whitehall Palace in London. 

1755 – At least 60,000 people were killed in Lisbon, Portugal by an earthquake, its aftershocks and the ensuing tsunami.

1765 – The British Parliament enacted The Stamp Act in the American colonies. The act was repealed in March of 1766 on the same day that the Parliament passed the Declaratory Acts which asserted that the British government had free and total legislative power of the colonies.

1800 – U.S. President John Adams became the first president to live in the White House when he moved in.

1848 – The first medical school for women, founded by Samuel Gregory, opened in Boston, MA. The Boston Female Medical School later merged with Boston University School of Medicine.

1856 – The first photography magazine, Daguerreian Journal, was published in New York City, NY.

1861 – Gen. George B. McClellan was made the general-in-chief of the American Union armies.

1864 – The U.S. Post Office started selling money orders. The money orders provided a safe way to payments by mail.

1870 – The U.S. Weather Bureau made its first meteorological observations using 24 locations that provided reports via telegraph. 

1879 – Thomas Edison executed his first patent application for a high-resistance carbon filament (U.S. Pat. 223,898).

1890 – African-Americans are disenfranchised. The Mississippi Plan, approved on November 1, used literacy and “understanding” tests to disenfranchise black American citizens. Similar statutes were adopted by South Carolina (1895), Louisiana (1898), North Carolina (1900), Alabama (1901), Virginia (1901), Georgia (1908), and Oklahoma (1910). blackfacts.com

1894 – “Billboard Advertising” was published for the first time. It later became known as “Billboard.”

1894 – Russian Emperor Alexander III died.

1898 – Allen, C. W. Self_leveling table Nov. 1, 1898 Patent No.613,436 blackfacts.com

1904 – The Army War College in Washington, DC, enrolled the first class.

1911 – Italy used planes to drop bombs on the Tanguira oasis in Libya. It was the first aerial bombing.

1936 – Benito Mussolini made a speech in Milan, Italy, in which he described the alliance between Italy and Nazi Germany as an “axis” running between Berlin and Rome.

1937 – “Hilltop House” was aired for the first time on CBS Radio.

1937 – “Terry and the Pirates” debuted on NBC Radio.

1940 – “A Night in the Tropics” was released. It was the first movie for Abbott and Costello.

1944 – “Harvey,” by Mary Chase, opened on Broadway.

1947 – The famous racehorse Man o’ War died.

1949 – In Washington, 55 people were killed when a fighter plane hit an airliner.

1950 – Two Puerto Rican nationalists tried to assassinate U.S. President Harry Truman. One of the men was killed when they tried to force their way into Blair House in Washington, DC.

1952 – The United States exploded the first hydrogen bomb on Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

1954 – Algeria began to rebel against French rule.

1959 – Jacques Plante, of the Montreal Canadiens, became the first goalie in the NHL to wear a mask.

1963 – The USSR launched Polyot I. It was the first satellite capable of maneuvering in all directions and able to change its orbit.

1968 – The movie rating system of G, M, R, X, followed by PG-13 and NC-17 went into effect.

1973 – Leon Jaworski was appointed the new Watergate special prosecutor in the Watergate case.

1979 – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini urged all Iranians to demonstrate on November 4 and to expand their attacks against the U.S. and Israel. On November 4, Iranian militants seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took 63 Americans hostage.

1981 – The U.S. Postal Service raised the first-class letter rate to 20 cents.

1985 – In the village of Ignacio Aldama, 22 members of a Mexican anti-narcotics squad were killed by alleged drug traffickers.

1987 – Deng Xiaoping retired from China’s Communist Party’s Central Committee.

1989 – Tens of thousands of refugees to fled to the West when East Germany reopened its border with Czechoslovakia.

1989 – Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega announced the end of a cease-fire with the Contra rebels.

1993 – The European Community’s treaty on European unity took effect.

1994 – The Amazon.com domain name was registered.

1995 – In Dayton, OH, the Bosnian peace talks opened with the leaders of Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia present.

1998 – Nicaraguan Vice President Enrique Bolanos announced that between 1,000 and 1,500 people were buried in a 32-square mile area below the slopes of the Casita volcano in northern Nicaragua by a mudslide caused by Hurricane Mitch.

1998 – Iridium inaugurated the first handheld, global satellite phone and paging system.

Official update

What: Visibility one-quarter mile or less in dense fog.

Where: Eastern Kitsap County, City of Seattle, Downtown Everett / Marysville Area, Eastside, Lowlands of Lewis and Southern Thurston Counties, Lowlands of Pierce and Southern King Counties, Olympia and Southern Puget Sound, and Shoreline / Lynnwood / South Everett Area.

When: Until 11 AM PST in some areas this morning.

Impacts: Low visibility could make driving conditions hazardous.

Additional Details: Localized freezing fog may also occur as temperatures fall into the 30s for many locations.

Summary: If driving, slow down, use your headlights, and leave plenty of distance ahead of you.

Issued By: NWS Seattle WA

Safety tips

Driving in Fog:

Slow down and allow extra time.

Use low-beam headlights and fog lights if available.

Avoid high-beam lights to prevent glare.

Maintain a safe distance from other vehicles.

Follow road lines to stay in your lane.

In extremely dense fog, turn on hazard lights and pull into a safe location. If not possible, pull off the road, turn off all lights except hazard lights, set the emergency brake, and take your foot off the brake pedal.

Marine Navigation in Fog:

Fog is dense if visibility is less than 1 mile (1.6 kilometers).

Visibility categories

Very Poor: Less than 0.5 nautical miles (0.93 kilometers)

Poor: 0.5 to less than 2 nautical miles (0.93 to 3.7 kilometers)

Moderate: 2 to 5 nautical miles (3.7 to 9.3 kilometers)

Good: Greater than 5 nautical miles (9.3 kilometers)

Slow down to avoid collisions.

Turn on all running lights, even during the day.

Listen for sounds of other boats, fog horns, and bells from buoys.

Use radar and GPS or navigation charts to locate your position.

If disoriented, stay put until the fog lifts, ensuring you are in a safe location.

Know the horn and bell sounds to warn others in dense fog.

Have a compass to determine your direction.

Stay out of shipping lanes as large ships cannot see you.

Hazard information

Fog, particularly when dense, can be hazardous to drivers, mariners and aviators. Fog contributes to numerous travel accidents every year. Restrictions in visibility resulting from fog can also impact takeoff and landing procedures and requirements for pilots, and can be the cause of weather-related aviation delays.

Radiation Fog
Forms at night when the ground cools rapidly, causing the air above it to cool and reach its dew point. This type of fog is common in valleys and low-lying areas.

Advection Fog
Occurs when warm, moist air moves over a cooler surface, causing the air to cool to its dew point. This type of fog is often seen along coastlines.

Valley Fog
Forms in valleys, typically during the winter, when cold air settles in the valley and cools the air to its dew point.

Upslope Fog
Develops when moist air is forced to ascend a slope, cooling as it rises and forming fog.

Freezing Fog
Occurs when the temperature is below freezing, and the fog droplets freeze upon contact with surfaces, creating a layer of ice.

Ice Fog
Found in polar and Arctic regions, this fog consists of tiny ice crystals rather than water droplets.

Steam Fog
Forms when cold air moves over warmer water, causing the water to evaporate and then condense into fog as it mixes with the cold air.

Federal Hall in New York City where the Stamp Act Congress took place. The Stamp Act Congress met in the Federal Hall building in New York City between October 7 and 25, 1765. It was the first colonial action against a British measure and was formed to protest the Stamp Act issued by British Parliament on March 1765. The Stamp Act Congress was attended by 27 representatives of nine of the thirteen colonies. Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia were prevented from attending because their loyal governors refused to convene the assemblies to elect delegates. New Hampshire did not attend but approved the resolutions once Congress was over.

Congress approved thirteen resolutions in the Declaration of Rights and Grievances. It is important to note that colonists, at that point in time, were not intending on separation from the crown. In the first resolution, they stated their allegiance to the king and its Parliament. They declared and affirmed that they were entitled to the rights and liberties of all British subjects. Most importantly they asserted their right to “No taxation without representation” and that because of their circumstances, America was three thousand miles away, they could not be represented in the House of Commons in Britain. The only bodies legally able to impose an internal tax were their respective legislatures whose members were elected by the public.

The Stamp Act Congress declared the Stamp Act duties as extremely bothersome as the scarcity of specie made its payment impractical. Local profits would suffer from the payment of the duty ultimately affecting transatlantic trade. Congress also supported the boycott of British goods.

The colonists also wanted to reassert their right to trial by jury as an inherent right to all British subjects in the colonies and limit the jurisdiction of Admiralty Courts. These courts could try a case anywhere within the British Empire; cases were decided by judges instead than by juries. In addition, judges and naval officers were paid based on the fines they levied leading to abuses.

The colonial petition was rejected on the basis of having been submitted by an unconstitutional assembly. The Stamp Act was eventually repealed primarily based on economic concerns expressed by British merchants.

However, parliament in order to reassert its power and constitutional issues over its right to tax its colonies passed the Declaratory Act.

Colonies sent the following delegates to the Stamp Act Congress:

From Massachusetts: James Otis, Samuel Adams, Oliver Partridge and Timothy Ruggles.
From Rhode Island: Henry Ward and Metcalf Bowler
From Connecticut: William Johnson, Eliphalet Dyer and David Rowland.
From New York: Phillip Livingston, William Bayard, John Cruger, Robert Livingston and Leonard Lispinard.
From Pennsylvania: John Morton, George Bryan and John Dickinson.
From New Jersey: Hendrick Fisher, Robert Ogden and Joseph Gordon.
From Delaware: Caesar Rodney and Thomas McKean.
From Maryland: Edward Tilghman, Thomas Ringgold and William Murdock.
From South Carolina: John Rutledge, Thomas Lynch and Christopher Gadsden.
Secretary: John Cotton
President: Timothy Ruggles from Massachusetts

Resource: stamp-act-history.com

image from wiki