The Fourth of July weekend is always one of the most dangerous on the highways, primarily because there are a lot of festive celebrations involving alcohol.

Here’s hoping that everyone you know is safe and sound today.

Now, not being one to shy away from a good beer, you need not think I’m chastising any of our imbibing readership - neither am I encouraging them - but here is an interesting tidbit of history from our Founding Fathers - a few years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Fast forward to Sept. 17, 1787, the day of the signing of the U.S. Constitution. Of the 55 delegates who showed up for the Constitutional Convention that year, only 39 signed the document. Twelve people left early, and four refused to sign.

Why? Perhaps the answer lies in one other document that survived - the booze bill for a celebration party that took place two days before the historic signing.

According to the bill, the 55 people drank 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of claret, eight bottles of whiskey, 22 bottles of port, eight bottles of cider, and seven large bowls of alcoholic punch, “bowls large enough for ducks to swim in,” according to researcher Terry Brent in Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader.

From this era’s Fourth of July fireworks displays to the historic celebrations of our Founding Fathers, we do things in a big way in America.