1Tadeusz Kosciuszko
American Revolutionary War hero, Polish General Tadeusz Kosciuszko. After the war, before returning to Europe, he left Thomas Jefferson his will, dedicating his pay and estate to buy the freedom of black slaves and educate them for independent life and work. The will was never executed.
2. Thomas Jefferson conducted the first legitimate archaeological dig in history and proved that the massive burial mounds were created by Native Americans, not the "lost race" of white people previously thought.
3. Thomas Jefferson created his own Bible, 46 pages long, using a razor he cut and pasted selected verses. It excluded angels, references to the Trinity, and all miracles by Jesus including the resurrection.
4. In addition to being fluent in English, Greek, Latin, French, Italian and Spanish, Thomas Jefferson also studied Arabic, Gaelic, and Welsh, and remains the most multilingual President of the United States.
5. Thomas Jefferson invented the swivel chair and sat on the first one while writing much of the Declaration of Independence.
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6Declaration of Independence
In the original draft of the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson had written,"We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable." It was Benjamin Franklin who changed "sacred" to "self-evident" to champion rationality as opposed to religious providence.
7. Thomas Jefferson proposed a bill that punished male rapists with castration.
8. Jefferson had his own version of the Bible that omitted the parts of the bible that were "contrary to reason" including the resurrection and other miracles. He was only interested in the moral teachings of Jesus and nothing more.
9. Thomas Jefferson tried for years to send a giant stuffed moose to a French count to counter claims that the North American climate made all animals (including people) weak and feeble.
10. Thomas Jefferson proposed in 1784 to end slavery in all the territories, but his bill lost in Congress by one vote.
11Constitution
Thomas Jefferson argued that because no generation has a right to bind subsequent generations, the Constitution should expire every 19 years.
12. In 1962, President Kennedy invited 49 Nobel Laureates for dinner at the White House. Kennedy remarked, "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."
13. A doctor attempted to use drugs to keep James Madison alive so he could die on the 4th of July. He declined and thus would die six days short of the fourth and would not share the same death date as John Adams (1826), Thomas Jefferson (1826) and James Monroe (1831) who all died on July 4.
14. Thomas Jefferson witnessed the destruction of the Bastille in 1789.
15. John Adams defended the Redcoats Involved in the Boston Massacre despite the inclinations of the mob: famously saying, "Prisoners must be judged solely based on the evidence produced against them in court and nothing else."
16Treaty of Tripoli
The Treaty of Tripoli, submitted By John Adams States "the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."
17. 10 of first 12 US Presidents were slave owners and the only two who weren't slave owners were the father and son John Adams and John Quincy Adams.
18. John Adams, who would go on to become the second President, defended in court the soldiers who committed the Boston Massacre, earning acquittals for six of the eight.
19. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
20. The President John Adams had a dog in the White House named Satan.
21Opium
John Adams once said that if we learned there was no God or life after death, we should all just take a bunch of opium.
22. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams visited William Shakespeare's house together and chipped off a piece of his chair as a souvenir.
23. July 2, 1776, was the day the United States declared independence from Great Britain. John Adams wrote a letter to his wife saying "the Second of July, 1776, will be the most memorable in the history of America."
24. John Adams felt that though independence and a free government sounded appealing in theory, he feared "that in every assembly, members will obtain an influence by noise, not sense. By meanness, not greatness. By ignorance, not learning. By contracted hearts, not large souls.”
25. George Washington refused to accept a salary while in office, and instead, simply asked to be reimbursed for his expenses at the end of the war.
