I was curious about what may have happened on July 4th of 1775 instead of on 1776, and came across a website that has lots of interesting dates from American history.

Here's the site:

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gwhtml/gwtimear.html

One date interesting to me was August 23, 1775, when King George declared that the colonists were in a state of rebellion.

There's a lot of interesting information listed on the site regarding the American Revolution for anyone who's interested in a quick read-through.