All-nighter tales: Life, liberty and the pursuit of caffeine

It was July 3, 1776. The Declaration of Independence was due the next day and they hadn't written a word. Benjamin Franklin had been working on his lab for ELE 001: Lightening, and nobody could get organized without him.

11 p.m. The group fell to bickering about something utterly irrelevant but related enough that they could justify it as "an important part of the project." Namely, they tried to decide what their group name should be. John Adams was adamant on "The Founding Bros," but Franklin vetoed it.

2 a.m. Robert Livingston and Roger Sherman gave up and went home. They had sat in a corner for two hours trying to be heard, but Adams would just babble over them about "this sweet, sweet party" he was going to throw for Independence Day.

4 a.m. Thomas Jefferson sat hunched over the paper. Adams had gone home "to brew some beer with my cousin, bros!" Franklin had gone downstairs to scribble anonymous, ad hominem rants in the margins of "Common Sense." Somehow, Jefferson always wound up doing the work.

8 a.m. Things were getting desperate. The 51 group members who had contributed fuck-all to the actual drafting had shown up to tell Jefferson to "chill out, bro; it'll get done."

9 a.m. Useless suggestions abounded. "Don't worry," John Hancock said, "we'll just make the font size huge." The founders argued. Hancock suggested that they take up half a page signing their names. "It's not like King George reads this stuff anyway."

10 a.m. Everyone had given in to the inevitable. They would hand in a shoddy piece of work at the last minute and hope that nobody noticed. "I'm pretty happy," Franklin said, as annoyingly optimistic as ever. "I think we have all the important stuff covered. Let's just sign the honor pledge and be done with it."