“Practice makes perfect.”

What does it mean?

You have to practice a skill a lot to become good at it.

Where does it come from?

The proverb has been traced back to the 1550s-1560s, when its form was ‘Use makes perfect.‘ The Latin version is: ‘Uses promptos facit.’ It was first used in it’s current form in the United States of Americca in ‘Diary and Autobiography of John Adams’.

• Foer started writing his first novel, the critically acclaimed Everything is Illuminated, as part of his senior thesis at Princeton University, New Jersey.
• The New Yorker magazine included Foer on its list of “20 Under 40,” young writers who were world-changers.
• Foer became a vegetarian activist and wrote a satiric piece about cooking and eating dogs.

• It’s impossible not to notice the similarities between the characters Oskar Schell (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) and Oskar Matzerath, the protagonist of Gunter Grass’s The Tin Drum. They’re both intelligent kids of German descent coping with trauma (Oskar M. never leaves home without his drum) who conjure up fantasies to deal with the horrible events they’ve witnessed. Foer was hugely influenced by this novel.
• Jonathan Safran Foer gave the 2013 commencement address at Middlebury College in Vermont. NPR included it on its list of “The Best Commencement Speeches, Ever.”  Below, is the video of that speech:

It stars Theatre Arts Teacher Scot Pankey and his students and they totally did an amazing job!

Jonathan Vega, the video’s editor and producer, wrote on YouTube that Pankey was the real mastermind behind the now-viral video.

“This is a great example of how a bunch of technology students let go of their fears, trusted their teacher and got down to Uptown Funk,” Vega wrote.

A. Maceo Smith New Tech High School is a magnet school with a focus on project-based learning and as far as projects go this is a pretty good one.

On this day in 1954, Ellis Island, the gateway to America, shuts it doors after processing more than 12 million immigrants since opening in 1892. Today, an estimated 40 percent of all Americans can trace their roots through Ellis Island, located in New York Harbor off the New Jersey coast and named for merchant Samuel Ellis, who owned the land in the 1770s.

On January 2, 1892, 15-year-old Annie Moore, from Ireland, became the first person to pass through the newly opened Ellis Island, which President Benjamin Harrison designated as America’s first federal immigration center in 1890. Before that time, the processing of immigrants had been handled by individual states.

During the busiest year of operation, 1907, over 1 million people were processed at Ellis Island. With America’s entrance into World War I, immigration declined and Ellis Island was used as a detention center for suspected enemies. Following the war, Congress passed quota laws and the Immigration Act of 1924, which sharply reduced the number of newcomers allowed into the country and also enabled immigrants to be processed at U.S. consulates abroad.

After 1924, Ellis Island switched from a processing center to serving other purposes, such as a detention and deportation center for illegal immigrants, a hospital for wounded soldiers during World War II and a Coast Guard training center. In November 1954, the last detainee, a Norwegian merchant seaman, was released and Ellis Island officially closed.

Beginning in 1984, Ellis Island underwent a $160 million renovation, the largest historic restoration project in U.S. history. In September 1990, the Ellis Island Immigration Museum opened to the public and today is visited by almost 2 million people each year.

It was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States, when taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its fallout. The crash signaled the beginning of the 10-year Great Depression that affected all Western industrialized countries.

[button color=”blue” size=”small” link=”http://www.history.com/topics/1929-stock-market-crash” target=”blank” ]Stock Market Crash of 1929[/button][button color=”blue” size=”small” link=”http://www.history.com/topics/great-depression” target=”blank” ]The Great Depression[/button]

Here are some fun and interesting facts about this date:

• The Declaration of Independence began as a letter to King George to explain why the Continental Congress voted to declare independence from Great Britain
• 56 people signed the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson wrote the majority of it
• The Declaration of Independence has five parts. They are: the Preamble, the Statement of Human Rights, Charges Against Human Rights, Charges Against the King and Parliament, and the Statement of Separation and Signatures
• The Declaration of Independence was started on July 2, 1776 and the Continental Congress approved the final wording on July 4. The American colonies were declared free and independent states
• July 4 was officially declared a holiday in 1870, nearly one hundred years after the Declaration of Independence was written
• Both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, two of its founders of the Declaration of Independence died on July 4, 1826
• July 4 marks a day of liberation in both the Philippines and Rwanda. In the Southeast Asian nation, July 4, known as “Republic Day,” marks the date when the United States officially recognized the Philippines as an independent state in 1946

Happy Independence Day to everyone who celebrate it today!