America Celebrates Fourth of July

July 5, 2000 -- New Yorkers have a way of picking out tourists: anyone looking up.

But when 150 tons of fireworks are exploding overhead, even the most jaded longtime city dwellers were forced to look toward the sky.

“This is the biggest fireworks show in the world, ever,” exclaimed Jean McFaddin, director of the Macy’s Fireworks 2000 extravaganza.

More than 60,000 shells — three times the number last year — were shot into the air from fourlocations in the city’s waterways. And hundreds of thousands of people turned out to watch the red, white and blue rockets pop from 13 barges in New York Harbor. Each barge represented one of the original colonies.

But the show wasn’t just in the sky the fireworks capped off the daylong OpSail parade of tall ships and naval vessels.

A Show for the Gods

Accompanying the pyrotechnics was a soundtrack including Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” patriotic standards like “Stars and Stripes Forever” and awhimsical section that includes the noises of whistles, birds andbees.

The show, run from a command site at the midtown Water Club on the East River, ended in a fiery tribute to the Statue of Liberty from two barges in the Verrazano Narrows between Staten Island and Brooklyn. A third barge by Lady Liberty herself delivered a thunderous six-minute salute.

Because the show was staged from so many different locations, no one on the ground could see all the pyrotechnics.

“The person who will see best is God,” McFaddin said. “Only the heavens will see the whole show.”

Jostling for a Spot

Elsewhere around the nation and around the world, Americans celebrated their independence with less hubris — but just as much gusto.

Many set off their own fireworks, disregarding safety warnings and realizing John Adams’ 18th-century fantasy.

The founding father wrote to his wife Abigail that the Declaration of Independence “ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore.”

In Washington, D.C., hundreds of thousands of people packed the National Mall as fireworks lit up the Washington monument, which officially reopens later this month after a long facelift.

Broadway star Audra McDonald sang the national anthem to open the party, and soul star Ray Charles also performed.

Big Boom in Beantown

And in Boston, some 400,000 people — many of them die-hards who arrived before the gates opened at 6 a.m. to stake out a spot — showed up at the Esplanade along the Charles River for the traditional Boston Pops concert and fireworks display.

“I just love this day,” said the Rev. Veronica Lanier, 82, who has been coming for 35 years. “It’s such a celebration, and I love having reason to celebrate.”

But Griffin’s Wharf in Boston, usually the scene of a rather rowdy reenactment of the Boston Tea Party, hosted a more somber Independence Day ceremony. About two dozen Native Hawaiians and their supporters gathered where American colonists threw British tea into the Boston Harbor in 1773 to protest colonial rule.

But this time, the Hawaiians threw garlands of the Hawaiian plant ti — pronounced “tea” — into the harbor to draw attention to how Hawaiians lost their 11-island kingdom in 1893, and to protest conditions of poverty among the Native Hawaiian population.

“Hawaii should never have been taken away. Never,” said activist Ronald “Bodie” Kaluhiokalani. “We had the understanding that we would have our 11 islands back, and it never happened. It’s very, very sad what they did to our queen.”

Different Kind of Celebration

About 200 North Carolina residents, including Gov. Jim Hunt, trooped north to Canada for an Independence Day party in Ottawa. The celebration at the ambassador’s residence — designed in part to promote tourism and trade with Canada — featured North Carolina food, entertainment and culture.

In Baltimore, two whistling and humming turtles made a big hit at the American Visionary Art Museum’s annual pet parade at Inner Harbor — even if they did confuse the occasion and perform “Happy Birthday” instead of “Stars and Stripes Forever.”

Jamoca, a Yorkshire Terrier dressed like a sailor from an Operation Sail 2000 ship, won a five-foot-long dog biscuit for the best costume.

Golf Cart Parade

In Chattanooga, Tenn., meanwhile, members of the Alhambra Shriners Club decorated dozens of golf carts with red, white and blue in honor of the nation’s birthday, forming what could well be the longest golf-cart parade on record.

“We have had this for every year, because we don’t do fireworks,” Shriner Wiley Heard told ABCNEWS. “And it’s just gotten bigger and bigger every year, so I called the Guinness Book of World Records to ask them if there was anything documented as far as the longest golf cart parade, and there’s not.

“They said document it, send it to them with times stamped, and they would send it back and let us know if we’re in,” Heard said. “So probably we’ve got a good chance of getting in it and being number one.”

Tragic Moments

Unfortunately, not everyone’s holiday celebrations passed without accidents and disasters.

At Baltimore’s PSINET Stadium, the Summer Sanitorium Tour featuring rockers Metallica, Korn and Kid Rock was marred by the death of one fan, who was killed when he fell from the upper deck of the stadium.

California Highway Patrol said 29 people were killed in automobile accidents over the holiday weekend, and authorities reported 1,290 arrests for suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol.

Land of the Free

However, many Americans managed to remember the solemnity and grandeur of the occasion.

In Philadelphia, seven descendants of John Hart and John Morton, two of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence, wore white gloves as they tapped the Liberty Bell thirteen times, once for each original colony. The copper-and-tin bell, made in 1753, bell chimed in response, as did other bells throughout the country, in a ceremony called “Let Freedom Ring.”

And half a world away, at Camp Bond Stele in Kosovo, even a task force policy forbidding beer didn’t dampen a July 4 celebration that included hotdogs and hamburgers, fireworks and even the Los Angeles Lakers’ cheerleading squad.

But “it’s also a day of reflection,” Specialist Bill Putnam from Seattle told ABCNEWS. “It’s a time to think about what we’ve got and others don’t. Especially being here in Kosovo, for the last, almost seven months now. It’s certainly been an eye opener for me about what I have back home.”

ABCNEWS Radio’s Tom Macdonald and Soddy Daisy and The Associated Press contributed to this report.