Happy fourth of July, you guys!
 

Since over here it happens a few hours earlier and all.

It says July 3rd on my calendar.

America won the War of Independence because everything happens six hours earlier in England, so you had plenty of time to prepare for it before it happened in the states. That's history, that is. ;)

I'd set of fireworks, but everything would catch on fire due to the drought :(

fireworks arent legal until jan 1st here.

planning on taking a beautiful girl to the lake. and enjoying my freedom.

I miss when my Grandfather was alive and we would go to his house on New Years and the 4th to just have at it with a ton worth of fireworks and sometimes some Tannerite

Bring out the fireworks!

best. day. in. the. FUCKING WORLD.

Today was OK for me. I played GTA 4 and passed the math placement exam for University

I went to a fireworks show and I'm now eating a meal of cheese pizza bagels and cherry Coke Zero.

hung out at the lake with my girlfriend. and then watched the fireworks late at night from the sunroom with her. it was pretty damn romantic.

You know, I've always wondered how the American Revolution is taught in schools on your side of the pond. Any insight?

Well, we don't get a lot of detail on it: nothing about individual battles or figures, really. It boiled down to that we were taxing the states without letting them have any say in parliament and that was shit of us so the states revoluted and the rest of history is this happening everywhere else except Australia and the Falkland Islands. :(

One thing that sadly isn't hammered into European students is that our entire history consists of fighting increasingly bloody and pointless wars against each other for hundreds of years at a time, so calling other countries "warlike" is ridiculous unless we're trying to speak from our position as experts in the field.

Wow, I'm a bit surprised by that. Even here, some teachers here will mention that while taxation without representation was clearly wrong, the expense of protecting the American frontier after the French and Indian/Seven Years War was driving the need for more tax revenue. Therefore, it wasn't that unreasonable to increase our taxes in order to pay for something that only Americans needed.

Just curious, what's the modern British take on the Opium Wars? Is there a way to put a positive spin on that?

Dunno. I was never taught about it, probably because the syllabus never went near that period.

You have to remember that the syllabus is designed by guilty middle-class white liberals, so anything where Britain might concievably have done something right and / or won is avoided.