This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. This July 4th at Lowe's, get up to 45% off select major appliances. Plus, save $80 on a select Charbroil Performance Series gas grill.
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See Lowe's.com for more details. Visit your nearby Lowe's on East 17th Avenue in Hutchinson. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years. And now it takes form in a new way.
The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint. It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage. Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semi-q. That's usmint.gov/slash S-E-M-I-Q.
I'm U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. Mm-hmm. We all get distracted when we drive. whether it's from our phones, Or kids in the backseat bickering.
But how we handle these distractions can be a matter of life. or death. Before you get on the road for your next road trip, Please put your phones on silent. and take a mental note. to focus on driving.
Paid for by Nitza. This is a Michelin message. And generally in Michelin messages, you hear some. And some But not this time. This time, you will just hear this.
Because at Michelin, we innovate on the road and beyond by creating a prosthetic strap designed to improve the mobility of people with prosthetics. Just a few more steps, and John will reach the summit of Mount Rainier. It's time to start your engines because TNT is back in the saddle as your home for NASCAR this summer. With drivers jockeying for positioning in the standings and battling it out in the in-season challenge, you aren't going to want to miss a second of the heart-pumping, rubber-burning action. It all goes down this Sunday at the Chicagoland Speedway where anything can happen.
Watch the NASCAR Summer Series Sunday at 5 p.m. Eastern on TNT and stream on HBO Max. And we continue with our American stories. The Declaration of Independence is one of, if not the most important, documents. in American history, and for that matter, world history.
and it goes deeper than just its historical relevance. For most Americans, their very idea of what constitutes our core values comes directly from the words in the Declaration. But for all of its weight and power, we don't hang a replica of the original on our walls. That's because the document is nearly faded into oblivion. We hang a copy, a readable copy, on our walls.
And we can thank an immigrant for that. Theodore Omen. Here to share the story of the man who made America's favorite copy of the Declaration is Mark Hill.
So, Theodore Ollman was born in 1892. Interestingly enough, he actually lived very close to Franz Ferdinand's castle. Franz Ferdinand, who many may know. It was the assassination of him and his wife in 1914 that started World War I, and ignited World War I.
So when Oman grew up, it really wasn't the freest country in the world. They did have a government, but the Austro-Hungarian Empire was trying to maintain control, and the last thing they wanted. was for democratic ideas to be taught. But Oman did have a teacher who taught her class about the Declaration of Independence. and he thought it was the greatest document ever written.
Another important thing that happened in his life as he was growing up in Bohemia is he was taught about the art of lithography from his grandfather. The process was Taking a Image And transferring that image onto a metal plate, which sometimes was made out of zinc or some other materials. And they would burn the image into the plate. From a negative, in this case, a glass negative, they would shine a light through it. And you'd lay down the ink, and the ink would only adhere to where you wanted it to adhere.
So, in this case, it would only adhere to the script. And he mastered that skill set. Um as is evidenced by the workmanship of what he created, which is arguably The most lifelike replica of the Declaration of Independence ever made. He basically created a replica of the Declaration as to how it looked. when it was signed.
And how he did that is Pretty amazing. He eventually comes to America in 1912 at the age of 20. He's a civil engineer. He's building roads and bridges. and he's also a map maker.
By trade. He used his lithographic skills to make maps. He ends up meeting his wife in Keokuk, Iowa. He was building a road there. Her name was Georgia.
They had two kids, they had six grandchildren. and they ended up making their home in Memphis, Tennessee. Eventually, he drives up to Washington, D.C. to see the Declaration in person. And he was very excited.
But when he got there and he looked at it, he was actually shocked at the condition it's in. It's worn, it's faded. Many of the names of the signers can barely be read.
Some of them can't be read.
Some of the script is very faded.
So he goes back home to Memphis and he decides to use his skills as a lithographer to create what he ended up referring to as Omen's authentic restoration of the Declaration of Independence. He ends up finding and purchasing what's known as a stone print.
So William Stone made 200 copies in 1823 per the direction of James Monroe, who was president at the time. It's believed, it's not known for sure, but when William Stone made. those 200 copies Uh, they believe he used a wet process, which means he laid the document onto a copper plate, and when he drew it back, some of the ink was peeled off the original document, you know, left onto the copper plate. That's most likely what started the degradation of the declaration. It's been missed, it was mishandled for many years, but that's most historians believe that's why it's in the shape it's in today, where you can barely read some of the names of the signers.
But he ended up finding in a little antique shop a really interesting. Copy of the Declaration and he bought it. It ended up being a stone print. He did his research and found out it was a stone print.
So that's what he used to perfect the script of his work.
Now, That's one part of it. If you see a stone print, they're pretty boring. I mean, the script is perfect, but there's no, you know, the background isn't the same as the original. And that's what Ollman wanted to create. He wanted to he knew that the original was but was written on a piece of animal skin, and the cracks and crevices are unique to that animal.
So, how do you get the background match both the script and the background?
So he did some research and found out there was a guy named L. C. Handy who took pictures of the Declaration outside his case in 1903.
So he went to L. C. Handy's widow and he purchased a set of negatives from her.
Okay, and that's what gave him the ability to recreate in its exact likeness the background. of the declaration.
So he used the stone print to do the script. He used the LC handy negatives to get the background. When he was done with the stone print, he actually donated it to the Library of Congress, which is really amazing because those are very valuable. There's only 40 or 50 known in existence. He thought that the American people should have it, so he did donate it back to the Library of Congress.
It took him probably, I know it took him at least five years to create this first masterpiece because the glass negatives, glass positives, The crates that hold those plates and the boxes actually have dates written on them that are five years prior to when he actually printed his works. Oman did, after many years of work, a lot of money, a lot of time, he ended up printing about 30,000 copies in 1942 of what, again, what he referred to as Oman's authentic restoration of the Declaration of Independence. And he recouped some of the money he spent making it by selling them to companies who would overprint their company name and logo at the top, and then they would use them as gifts for customers and clients.
So he was able to recoup some of the costs. When I purchased the collection, there were only 1,200 of his original lithographs of the Declaration remaining. A few years after he gets done printing the Declaration, he started working on a replica of the US Constitution. And I know that took him at least four years. And that was really interesting what he did there.
He took all four pages of the US Constitution and he shrunk them down in size. He added the Bill of Rights, which he printed at the bottom. And he sized the entire piece to be very similar to the size of the declaration. And the reason he did that was so that they were symmetrical and they were pleasing to the eye when you framed them and hung them on the wall. And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by Aron Monty Montgomery.
And our own Reagan Habib. And a special thanks to Mike Hill. He's the curator and overseer of the Omen Estate. And what a story. This guy grows up in the Austria-Hungary Empire.
But he had a teacher who taught him about the Declaration of Independence, and from those thousands of miles away, he develops a deep. Deep appreciation of the Declaration. Comes to America in 1912, civil engineer, map maker, but he used his lithograph skills to bring the Declaration of Independence to life. When he went to DC, he was horrified at the condition it was in. It had faded, you could barely read the signers of the Declaration's signatures.
It took him years to create this masterpiece. And thank goodness he created 30,000 of them and they live on. And now with the age of digital technology, people would say, oh, yawn. But no, Jan, this was the life work of this man and out of appreciation for what our founders did back in 1776. The story of the immigrant who created the best copy of the Declaration of Independence here.
on our American stories. Liberty has never been just a word to we Americans. It has guided every one of our endeavors for the past 250 years. And now it takes form in a new way. The 2026 Semi-Quincentennial Coin and Metal Program from the United States Mint.
It celebrates the founding ideals that have long shaped our coinage. Available one year only, this historic collection features new coin designs, limited edition releases, and reissues. Shop new official coins at usmint.gov forward slash semi-q. That's usmint.gov/slash S-E-M-I-Q. I'm U.
S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. The sound of a seatbelt. It's one of the most important sounds in our car. It means everyone is ready and everyone is safe.
The more our kids see us put on our seatbelts, the more natural it is for them to put theirs on too. Make it a priority. Buckle up every time. Hear the sound? Make it a habit.
Paid for by NHTSA. The United States is about to mark its 250th anniversary. And so on the Global Story Podcast from the BBC, we're telling surprising tales of American influence on the world stage and in ordinary people's lives all across the globe. We have this ability to export our story, and a lot of people have bought it. I feel like the American Dream is alive, but not well.
From the BBC, it's the United States at 250. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or find us on YouTube. Anyone can now use AI to build software for work, but AI can't make your team adopt that software.
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