20 BIZARRE July 4th Traditions That Were BANNED and Forgotten Forever

PART 2:

The word sham was more of a hope than a fact. In 1833, one of these battles in Boston killed three spectators when projectiles veered off their intended path. Shrapnel injuries were so common that almost no one was surprised anymore. And here’s the part that really gets you. Sham battles were the most popular 4th of July event in many cities.

The real risk of someone getting hurt or killed created genuine tension that drew massive crowds. The practice was not outlawed in most states until sometime between 1905 and 1915 as part of the safe and sane 4th of July movement. Number three, powder monkeys. Children carrying gunpowder for pocket change. You have probably heard about child labor in 19th century factories.

But few people know that during 4th of July celebrations, boys between the ages of 8 and 14 had a specific and dangerous job. They were called powder monkeys. Their job was simple, run from the gunpowder storage buildings to the shooters and cannon operators carrying supplies. It paid between 25 and 50 cents a day, which seemed like good money for a child considering that an adult earned between one and two dollars.

 The problem is obvious, children running around with gunpowder near fire. Severe burns were the most common and hospital records document the deaths of these boys in at least four states between 1880 and 1910. This was exactly the kind of tragedy that fueled the safe and sane 4th of July movement. Reformers used photographs of burned children as a central argument for changing the way the holiday was celebrated.

The job only disappeared when the commercial production of professional fireworks replaced amateur displays. Number four, artillery cannons fired in public squares killed pedestrians. This one will catch you by surprise. For much of the 19th century, several American cities had a custom that seems insane today.

On holidays like the 4th of July, local authorities placed real military cannons in public squares and fired celebratory salutes. And we are not talking about fireworks or theatrical charges. These were real gunpowder charges that launched cast iron projectiles. If the cannon was even slightly misaligned, those projectiles could travel enormous distances and hit anyone in their path.

Boston city records document three pedestrians killed during a single holiday salute in 1870. Baltimore recorded four people seriously injured in 1884. >> [music] >> The same pattern repeated in many different places. It was only when the number of victims became impossible to ignore that cities began banning the practice one by one over the following decades.

 Number five, free firing into the air. Every armed citizen fired at the same time at noon. Imagine the scene. It is noon. A cannon fires in the center of town, and then every armed citizen points toward the sky and pulls the trigger at the same time. This really happened in dozens of American cities during the 19th century.

It was called a popular salute and was treated as a civic tradition, almost like a community ritual. Everyone took part. Men, women, even teenagers with shotguns. The noise was deafening. Now, think about the obvious. Bullets go up and bullets come back down. People were killed by projectiles falling back to the ground.

 These cases even had their own name, holiday tragedy. And the most surprising part is that no one was held criminally responsible for those deaths. Starting in 1880, larger cities began banning the practice because of the growing number of victims. By around 1920, it had already disappeared from urban areas. But in the rural South, the story was different.

Isolated communities kept the custom alive on a smaller scale until the 1950s, when it finally faded into obscurity. Number six. Imagine leaving your house on a holiday and coming face-to-face with your mayor being impersonated by a drunk neighbor wearing ridiculous clothes. This actually happened. The so-called Horribles parades began in Boston around the 1820s and worked like this.

 Ordinary residents dressed up as local politicians known for being corrupt or incompetent and marched through the streets while the entire town watched and laughed. It was organized public humiliation. Local newspapers even published lists ahead of time revealing who would be targeted that year. There was no court and no trial.

 It was the community itself telling you to your face that you were a joke. The tradition spread to several cities across the American Northeast and lasted nearly a century. In the 1920s, political groups began pressuring officials to put an end [music] to the parades claiming they were disrespectful to authorities. And it worked.

 The parades gradually faded away until they disappeared completely. The detail no one likes to admit is the real reason why the tradition was eliminated precisely because it bothered the people who needed to be bothered. Number seven. Mandatory public reading of the declaration by the mayor with a fine for refusing. This is going to surprise you.

 For much of American history, hundreds of cities across the country had local laws requiring the mayor or a local judge to read the entire Declaration of Independence out loud on the 4th of July. It wasn’t a suggestion. It was a legal requirement. And in some jurisdictions, a mayor who refused to do the reading could be formally fined.

 The ceremony lasted between 10 and 15 minutes and was considered the most important moment of the entire holiday. People gathered in the town square or in front of the courthouse to hear every word of that document. It was the central civic event of the day. What happened next is interesting. >> [music] >> Throughout the 20th century, the tradition simply started dying out.

 No law was passed to end it. No one voted against it. People just stopped demanding it and mayors stopped doing it. Today, only a handful of American cities still hold this formal public reading. Number eight. For much of the 19th century, American governors had a custom that sounds strange today. Releasing prisoners on the 4th of July.

The idea was simple. If the holiday celebrated freedom, why not give someone real freedom? The people who benefited were usually those jailed for things like unpaid debts, vagrancy, or petty theft. No one convicted of serious crimes was released. And this wasn’t limited to just one or two states. The practice took place across the entire country.

People at the time didn’t view it cynically. It was taken seriously as a patriotic gesture. But as the century came to an end, lawmakers began pushing to put a stop to the custom. The main argument [music] was that the practice encouraged minor crimes around the holiday because people knew they might be pardoned soon afterward.

State by state, the tradition was phased out during the 1890s. Some governors resisted. In Ohio, 4th of July releases continued until 1903, when the last governor to keep the custom finally gave in to political pressure and ended the practice for good. Number nine. Burning effigies of British kings and ministers decades after the revolution.

Imagine burning a dummy of your neighbor in your backyard every year. Now imagine the entire country doing it for more than a century. That was exactly what happened on the 4th of July. Right after the American Revolution, people began making dummies representing King George III and burning them in public squares as part of the celebration.

It made sense at the time. The country had just fought against the British Crown. The problem was that no one stopped doing it. The tradition continued for decades, even after the generation that had fought in the war had died. When the War of 1812 came along, the practice gained new momentum. Cities in the Northeast burned dummies of the British Prince Regent in the streets.

The tradition only truly died out when World War I put Americans and the British on the same side in the trenches. It became hard to justify burning an effigy of the guy who was fighting alongside you. And just like that, a tradition that had lasted about 140 years simply came to an end. Number 10. While families set up picnic tables and children lit fireworks, in some American states, the 4th of July had another kind of spectacle scheduled.

Records from Missouri between the 1840s and 1870s show a pattern that kept repeating. Local authorities deliberately chose Independence Day to carry out public executions. The reason was practical and calculated. The 4th of July already brought large crowds into town, so the government took advantage of that guaranteed audience to make sure as many people as possible watched the hanging.

The idea was simple. The more people who saw it, the greater the deterrent effect on anyone thinking about committing a crime. >> [snorts] >> And no one at the time saw any contradiction in that. For that society, executing a convicted criminal was considered an act of protecting collective freedom. Freedom and the gallows side by side on the same holiday.

The practice did not end because of any debate over the strange symbolism of it all. It ended only because public executions in general were outlawed across American states as the decades passed. Number 11. Until the early 1900s, the 4th of July was the most popular date for weddings in the United States.

 Couples lined up at courthouses starting at dawn waiting for their turn. Justices of the peace sometimes performed dozens of ceremonies back to back in a single day. The logic was simple. The date represented independence [music] and a new beginning in life. And couples wanted to carry that meaning into their marriage. It was almost a superstition.

Getting married on that day was seen as a sign of good luck and prosperity for the couple. But as the 20th century went on, the holiday took on a different meaning in people’s minds. It stopped being about individual new beginnings and became a day for family, backyard barbecues, fireworks, and community. And here is the surprising part.

 Today, the 4th of July is one of the least popular wedding dates in the entire country. The date that was once considered the luckiest day to get married has become one of the days couples avoid the most. Number 12. Greased pig races were official events with cash prizes. Imagine showing up at a 4th of July fair in the 1800s and the main event wasn’t fireworks.

 It was a pig covered in grease being released into an arena while grown men tried to catch the animal with their bare hands. >> [music] >> It had an official name, the greased pig contest. And it wasn’t some backyard game. Local newspapers advertised the event alongside horse races and shooting competitions. There were paying spectators, grandstands, and cash prizes for whoever managed to hold on to the animal.

In many small and medium-sized towns across the United States, this was the highlight of the Independence Day celebration. The pig slipped around, the crowd shouted, and the chaos became legitimate entertainment. The event survived for decades until animal protection organizations began gaining political influence in the 1920s and pushed for it to be banned.

>> [music] >> The last documented greased pig contest held as part of an official 4th of July celebration took place in Iowa in 1934. Number 13, alcohol endurance contests were sponsored by local governments. It sounds like a joke, but it isn’t. In several Midwestern American cities between 1850 and 1890, local governments organized competitions to see who could drink the most for the longest time.

This was part of the 4th of July program alongside parades and fireworks. The winner received a trophy, money, and made the local newspaper. He was treated like a hometown hero. The event appeared on the official holiday schedule approved by City Hall. No one saw a problem with it. Alcohol was part of the culture, not a moral issue.

Then prohibition came in 1920 and changed everything. The same government that funded these competitions began arresting anyone who sold a bottle of beer. In less than a generation, civic pride became a federal crime. When prohibition ended in 1933, no city brought the competitions back. Alcohol had changed categories in people’s minds from entertainment to a problem.

 Number 14, ringing every bell in town for 24 hours, required by local law. Imagine living in a town where the law required every church to ring its bells non-stop on the 4th of July. It wasn’t an optional tradition. It was a city ordinance with penalties for anyone who failed to comply. Towns created formal schedules with bell ringers working in shifts to make sure no bell ever went silent.

In places like Boston, the ordinance required the ringing to begin at sunrise and continue until nightfall. Now, imagine a densely packed city with dozens of churches ringing at the same time. The noise was enough to drive anyone crazy. Residents who lived near the towers felt the full impact for hours on end.

 In the 1880s, doctors began documenting that prolonged exposure to that level of noise caused neurological problems. That was enough for authorities to reconsider the requirement. City by city, >> [music] >> the mandate was repealed. The last cities abandoned the practice in the 1920s, ending a tradition that for decades no one had dared to question.

Number 15, for nearly half a century, the 4th of July wasn’t just about barbecues and fireworks. It was boxing day. The biggest fights were scheduled for the holiday because everyone had the day off. Arenas were packed and money was flowing. John L. Sullivan, the last champion of the old guard, fought some of his most famous bouts on that day.

But, in 1910, everything changed. Jack Johnson, the first black man to hold the heavyweight title, stepped into the ring on the 4th of July to defend his championship against Jim Jeffries, who had been brought out of retirement for the sole purpose of putting the belt back in the hands of a white man. Johnson dominated the entire fight.

What came next was chaos. Race riots broke out across the country. People died. And Congress’s response wasn’t to punish the violence, it was to ban the showing of boxing matches in movie theaters and public venues. The law remained in place for decades. 4th of July boxing didn’t end because of the sport.

 It ended because America couldn’t stand seeing a black man win on its holiday. Number 16. On the 4th of July, while white families set off fireworks and raised their glasses to freedom, enslaved people faced one of the hardest days of the year. Someone had to cook the feasts, serve the tables, >> [music] >> and clean everything up afterward.

Independence for some meant overtime for others. In 1852, Frederick Douglass was invited to give a speech at a holiday celebration in Rochester, New York. He accepted, but on one condition. He would speak on the 5th, not the 4th, on principle. And when he stepped onto the stage, he did not give the patriotic speech the audience expected.

 He asked directly, “What does the 4th of July mean to the slave?” Douglass said the holiday was a sham as long as 4 million people remained in chains in the same country that celebrated freedom. The audience fell silent. To this day, that speech is considered one the most important in American history. The contradiction Douglas exposed that day took another 13 years to begin being corrected with the passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865. Number 17.

Before electric lighting, fire was the only way to celebrate on a large scale. And on the 4th of July, cities in the American Northeast took that literally. Boston, New York, and Philadelphia had a tradition that sounds insane today. Massive bonfires lit in the middle of major streets. These weren’t little campfires.

 They were piles of wood, barrels, and debris burning right in the middle of urban areas surrounded by wooden buildings on both sides. Everyone knew it was dangerous, but no one stopped. Then, in 1893, one of those bonfires in Boston went completely out of control. >> [music] >> The fire spread from block to block and destroyed 11 entire city blocks before firefighters managed to contain it.

340 buildings were reduced to ashes in a single night. More than 1,200 people lost their homes. Boston banned urban bonfires immediately afterward. New York did the same in 1895 after a similar incident on a smaller scale. It took a catastrophe for the tradition to finally come to an end. Number 18. For decades, major American newspapers like The New York Times kept up a tradition that seems absurd today.

From the mid-19th century until around 1905, these newspapers published rankings comparing which American city could make the most noise on the 4th of July. And the remarkable part is that no one treated it like a joke. City government spent public money on extra cannons, bells, and massive amounts of fireworks just to make it to the top of the list.

In 1887, the mayor of Philadelphia even publicly declared that winning the competition was a matter of pride for the city. The contest went on like this for decades without anyone questioning it. But here is the interesting part. No law ever banned the practice. What happened was that the safe and sane 4th movement began gaining momentum in the early 20th century pushing for safer celebrations.

The newspapers simply stopped publishing the rankings. The loudest competition in American history was not ended by decree. It was silenced because public opinion changed. Number 19. In the 19th century, volunteer fire brigades in the United States had a strange problem on the 4th of July. Fireworks at the time were handmade with no standardization at all, and they often got out of control.

Fires broke out in the middle of the celebrations, and firefighters rushed to put out the flames while the crowd watched. Over time, the public began treating all that chaos as part of the show. People stood on the sidewalk cheering for the firefighters as if it were a competition. Some cities saw the potential and began organizing official demonstrations.

The firefighters themselves set fire to structures built for the occasion and then put them out in front of the audience. No one seemed to notice the obvious contradiction. The guys created the problem just to prove they knew how to solve it. This kind of spectacle spread through many communities and became a local tradition for decades until fire safety regulations and the rise of professional fire departments made the practice obsolete. Number 20.

Every 4th of July, small towns across the American West turned Main Street into a horse race track. No track, no fence, nothing. The horses charged down the main street at full speed while residents stood on the sidewalks, sometimes just inches away from the animals as they raced past. Anyone who didn’t get out of the way in time became the target.

 The course was simple. From one end of the street to the other. Bettors shouted from balconies and sidewalks. In Tombstone, Arizona in 1880, pedestrians were trampled to death during these races. The same thing happened in Dodge City in 1877. In total, there are records of deaths in at least 10 frontier towns because of these contests.

 And the most interesting part is that no law ended the tradition. The automobile did. Once cars began taking over Main Streets, there was no room left for horse racing. The machine that many people saw as progress simply made the street too dangerous for any kind of race.