What did the night sky look like on the 1st Independence Day 250 years ago?

What did the evening sky look like for Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and their contemporaries on July 4, 1776? As the United States marks its 250th birthday, many astronomy enthusiasts may be asking exactly that. If you stepped outside around 9 p.m. local time on July 5, 1776, the sky would look much as it does today. Only careful measurements would show that the stars were not in quite the same positions they occupy in 2026.To understand the sky more fully, it helps to look at how people