“What to the slave is the Fourth of July," asked Frederick Douglass in his scathing speech at the US Independence Day function on July 5, 1852. These words of a former slave turned author and orator who spearheaded a popular movement to abolish slavery in the US ring true even 171 years on.

Nearly 100 people have been shot around the July 4th holiday due to gun violence as the nation marks the independence day.

A wooden sculpture of US first lady Melania Trump was torched near her hometown of  Sevnica, Slovenia, on the night of July Fourth.

Protesters burned an American flag outside the White House after President Trump's July Fourth address on Saturday.