The US celebrated its Independence Day with colourful parades and brilliant fireworks display with President George W Bush marking the occasion by welcoming 72 new citizens.
NEW YORK: The US celebrated its Independence Day with colourful parades and brilliant fireworks display with President George W Bush marking the occasion by welcoming 72 new citizens, including Indians.
On the 232nd anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on Friday, more than three million people watched the biggest fireworks display in New York which was carried live on the television.
The 30-minute dazzling show saw some 35,000 shells being fired more than 1000 per minute. The show included new nautical fireworks that float on water and others which undergo several transformations after they are fired.
The high prices of petrol had reportedly had an effect with hundreds of families deciding to spend the day in picnic spots near their homes rather than going to far off places as had been the practice.
Bush, making his final July 4 appearance before the expiry of his term in January next year, addressed a ceremony at Monticello, the home of the third US President Thomas Jefferson, where 72 people, including several Indians, became naturalised US citizens.
On the occasion, the Parade weekly carried messages by presumptive presidential candidates -- Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama.
"Patriotism is deeper than its symbolic expressions, than sentiments about place and kinship that move us to hold our hands over our hearts during the national anthem," McCain wrote. "It is putting the country first, before party or personal ambition, before anything."
Obama, who was with his family in the western state of Montana, said patriotism was a "gut instinct" for him. "It's not just the recitations of the pledge of allegiance, the Thanksgiving pageants at school, or the fireworks on the Fourth of July, but how the American ideal wove its way throughout the lessons my family taught me."
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