Red White and Boom

The U.S. will be celebrating its 232nd Independence Day tomorrow. New Englanders started the struggle for independence from Great Britain* in 1775 and the U.S. managed to gain independence in 1776, within one year! Starting with Sepoy Mutiny in 1857, it took 90 years for India to gain independence from the British. I have a feeling that if we had more people like Bose, we would have gained independence a lot sooner.

Here are some interesting trivia about the (rapidly changing) US, in commemoration of the July 4th:

In 2002, US imported eight million dollars worth of (US) flags and 129 million dollars worth of fire works from China.

In 2002, 11.5% of the US population was foreign-born. Among the foreign-born population, 52 percent were born in Latin America, 26 percent in Asia, 14 percent in Europe and the remaining 8 percent in other regions of the world, such as Africa and Oceania.

* Whenever I hear the name Great Britain, I think of కొత్త రోడ్డు (Kotta Road; Kotta means "new" in Telugu) in Vizag! I used to wrongly think that they called the UK "Great Britain" because of its superiority when they named it so - I didn't know of the 1707 Union then. I used to wonder, "what happens if the country breaks up into small pieces?" It wouldn't be so great then? Along the same lines, I used to wonder which genius in VMC came up with the name కొత్త రోడ్డు? Sure, it would be a new road for a few months after building it. But it wouldn't be so new after construction of another major road? What were they thinking? I still feel that it is a weird and funny name.