#24 Thing to Do in Dallas with Kids

See the Declaration of Independence at the Downtown Dallas Public Library. I know that I already posted about the awesomeness of the Downtown Public Library, but did you know that on the night of July 4, 1776 a limited number of copies were made of the Declaration of Independence. Today, there are 25 surviving copies and 1 of them is at the downtown branch of the Dallas Public Library! It is also the only original copy west of the Mississippi. I took Madeleine to see it and I learned that this document is the first time that the name United States of America appeared in print.

The copy of the Declaration of Independence is in there! There was no one around, we had a private showing!

I took a picture...

The Dallas copy was found in storage in Leary's Book Store in Philadelphia in 1968 when the book store closed after 132 years in business. It is thus deemed "The Lost Copy." It was bought at auction.

There is also the original 1623 volume of Shakespeare's First Folio. According to the informational pamphlet, Shakespeare died in 1616 without publishing any of his plays and 2 of his friends published all 36 plays that they believed to be authentic to Shakespeare. Without this First Folio, plays like The Tempest, Macbeth, The Taming of the Shrew, As You Like It, or Twelfth Night would have been lost to obscurity. The Dallas Public Library copy belonged to a cleric on the Isle of Man in the 1700s and to a Philadelphia banker in the 18002. It is one of 250 copies that exist today.


and of course you have to visit the ipads on the children's floor!