1776: The Declaration of Independence is signed. It will take 127 years before someone gets around to saying, “Hey, maybe we should preserve this thing.”

The Declaration of Independence can be fairly said to stand alongside the Magna Carta and Bill of Rights as the most important documents in the history of democracy. Its significance was understood from the moment it was signed, so one is left to wonder why its preservation was ignored for so long.

During the Revolutionary War, the Declaration of Independence was rolled up and toted around like a Thomas Bros. map, although, given the vicissitudes of war, that’s perhaps understandable. Less understandable is what came later. Water was spilled on it while it was being copied in 1823. Then it was tacked up on the wall at the U.S. Patent Office for about 40 years, where it was subjected to a strong northern light.

Is your city puting on a massive pyrotechnics display this weekend? Or maybe just your neighbor Carl? Either way, you can learn how to capture the moment in all its noisy, exploding glory with a digital camera.

Ideally, it pays to use a camera that offers some level of manual control over the settings. That way, you can dial in the best exposure, aperture and focus settings to achieve the best results.

But you can still take good photos of a fireworks display no matter what kind of camera you have. Yep, even the iPhone!

The strangest monument in America looms over a barren knoll in northeastern Georgia. Five massive slabs of polished granite rise out of the earth in a star pattern. The rocks are each 16 feet tall, with four of them weighing more than 20 tons apiece. Together they support a 25,000-pound capstone. Approaching the edifice, it's hard not to think immediately of England's Stonehenge or possibly the ominous monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Built in 1980, these pale gray rocks are quietly awaiting the end of the world as we know it.

Because so many swaps are informal, the size of the small business barter economy is hard to gauge. But Bob Meyer, publisher of Barter News in Mission Viejo, Calif., was willing to take a crack at it. Meyer estimates that 1 million small businesses are involved in barter, either informally or through exchanges, with a volume of transactions approaching $20 billion annually. This figure combines the $10 billion that IRTA attributes to exchange trades with Meyer's conservative estimate that informal barter accounts for another $10 billion.

The Catholic Church in America in the 19th century would have never featured an American flag anywhere in sight. This trend began in World War I: the German parishes were pressured to show their loyalty to the state and its war.

Each equipped with $48,000 worth of GPS components, electronic maps, and wearable computers, troops of the Army's 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division are heading to Afghanistan as part of the resurrected Land Warrior program. The Army is hoping the revised, eight-pound set of gear will be more beneficial than when the $500 million program was canceled in 2006.

As the latest futuristic military program to be made real, Land Warrior gear will allow troops to identify comrades and enemies on the battlefield, receive updated objectives, locate buildings and find the nearest exit--all through a head-mounted eyepiece.

This is the long-awaited realization of the Army's 15 year plus program to help out troops who were previously buying their own walkie-talkies and GPS units to stay in contact with their team.

The problem is, not everyone finds it helpful.

In 2005 I wrote a profile of an old friend, Tim Kehoe, a toy inventor who’d spent 10 years trying to solve what should be an easy problem: How do you make colored soap bubbles that don’t stain whatever they break on? If you’re thinking, “Oh that’s easy, just do X,” you’re wrong. Tim tried X. Didn’t work. In fact, it blew up the kitchen and permanently colored the dog.

But as of today, you can buy his colored bubbles, called Zubbles, at zubbles.com and through his iPhone app. And even if you’re not a bubble man, these things will blow your mind. Thanks to some seriously novel chemistry, the stain they appear to leave when they break vanishes in seconds. If only he could make pizza sauce do the same thing.

“When the crown remained closed, it might have suggested that those ideals were also closed,” says Erica Doss, a professor of American studies at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., and the author of a forthcoming book on post-9/11 memorializing.

“To have her reopen suggests those ideals are being reopened or are being made more operational today,” Professor Doss says.

Yet the festiveness of the crowd, evident in Saturday’s parade of spongy, lime-green crowns, make it hard to believe that the crown nearly was not opened at all. Fire safety concerns about the 123-year-old narrow stairwell, lack of funding for improvements, and a 2004 National Parks Service report that only one-third of Lady Liberty’s estimated 3 million annual visitors braved the ascent induced a kind of apathy about reopening the crown.

The two attacks by drone aircraft took place today in South Waziristan