“Now we just need your John Hancock”
That phrase you often hear when you have to sign a document is a celebration of one of history’s most famous signatures.
And today, National Handwriting Day, commemorates the birthday of John Hancock (1737), the first signer of the Declaration of Independence. (As president of the Continental Congress, he got first dibs.)
With a blank space, he made sure to make his name large, legible and ornate. It stands out among the 56 signatures.
Hancock apparently did it as a defiant message to the British king, and so that British ministers could read his name “without spectacles.”