January 14 · This Day in America
In the Maryland State House at Annapolis, a thin and weary Congress does the last small act of a long war: it ratifies the Treaty of Paris. Britain has already agreed to it. The fighting stopped years ago. But under the treaty's own terms, the peace is not real until Congress signs — and through a bitter winter the delegates could barely gather the nine states needed to make a quorum. On this day they have them. With a vote, the King of Great Britain's recognition becomes binding fact: the United States is free, sovereign, and independent, stretching west to the Mississippi. The men who fought for a country on a promise now have one on paper, ratified by their own hands. Eight years after Lexington, the war is not just won. It is finished, and lawful, and theirs.
Source: guides.loc.gov
Also on this day · 1967
On the Polo Fields of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, tens of thousands gather for a "Human Be-In" — poets, students, dropouts, the curious. Allen Ginsberg chants, the Grateful Dead play, Timothy Leary tells the crowd to turn on and drop out. There is no headliner and no point beyond being there together. The press takes notice. Six months later the country has a name for what it saw coming: the Summer of Love.
Source: americanhistory.si.edu