Independence Day: Three US presidents died and one was born on 4 July

Sorry to rain morbidity on America's Independence Day parade, but did you know that three US presidents have died on 4 July? Coincidence?!

Of course it is. But that doesn't make it any less of a curiosity, even more so that all three were Founding Fathers of the United States of America, and that two went in the same year.

Independence Day celebrates the 1776 Declaration of Independence when America decided to cut loose from the British Empire and go it alone (bet you regret that now we've got Queen Betty The Sequel as head of state and you've got a semi-sentient satsuma).

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on Independence Day in 1826, on the 50th anniversary, which must have been one hell of a party.

Adams was the second US president, serving from 1797 to 1801. Jefferson followed as the third president, from 1801 to 1809. Adams was 90 when he died at Quincy, Massachusetts. Jefferson was younger, at 83, when he died at Charlottesville, Virginia.

American politician Daniel Webster, who was twice secretary of state and a senator, thought the two men's deaths on Independence Day was a divine intervention.

"It cannot but seem striking and extraordinary," Webster said, "that these two should live to see the fiftieth year from the date of that act - that they should complete that year - and that then, on the day which had fast linked for ever their own fame with their country's glory, the heavens should open to receive them both at once.

"As their lives themselves were the gifts of Providence, who is not willing to recognise in their happy termination, as well as in their long continuance, proofs that our country and its benefactors are objects of His care?"

Well, quite. What better way to show your love and appreciation for something than harvesting a couple of souls?

And then, yet more proof that god loves America - another presidential death! Exactly five years later, James Monroe joined them. Monroe was the fifth US president, serving between 1817 and 1825, before he died on 4 July, 1831, aged 73, in New York City.

"Three of the four presidents who have left the scene of their usefulness and glory expired on the anniversary of the national birthday, a day which of all others, had it been permitted them to choose [they] would probably had selected for the termination of their careers," reported the New York Evening Post on 5 July, 1831.

It's not all presidential death on 4 July, however. One president was born on Independence Day: Calvin Coolidge in 1872. He was the 30th president, serving from 1923 to 1929. Coolidge died aged 60 in Northampton, Massachusetts.