Time goes so fast when you're having fun -- has it been five years already?

It has. Exactly half a decade ago, yours truly launched the first independent web site devoted exclusively to anything and everything about the National Lacrosse League -- news, games, stats, and history alike.

In 1998, there was a (barely) tolerable quantity of indoor lacrosse news sources. There were fan sites covering a specific team (often tremendously well), field lacrosse sites which gave an occasional nod to the box game, a couple online newspapers, and the painfully awful be-lax.com, the official web site of the NLL.

Nowhere, though, could NLL fans find a complete, league-wide review of the league which wasn't sugarcoated by a public relations department.

Enter the Outsider's Guide, one season into the "new era" of professional lacrosse (with new teams, a new ownership structure, and a new look at its own future).

I launched the relatively small site -- seven news articles, some team pages, and a handful of supporting material such as the final standings -- on the American Independence Day. (Insert your own symbolic interpretation here)

In five years, the mission statement hasn't changed. We still nudge the league when needed, for whatever difference (great or small) it might have produced along the way, and we still provide the most comprehensive indoor lacrosse coverage of any web site or magazine, to inform the current fans and to educate the incoming fans.

I can hardly wait to see what the next five years bring forth.

Here are a few random thoughts (some lacrosse-related, some not) in tribute of this site's fifth anniversary and the 227th anniversary of something much greater...

Around the NLL in 1998

When the Outsider's Guide was previewed to twenty-one of the online lacrosse community's biggest names, it had just six articles, all but one of which dealt with the 1998 NLL Championship Series or its subsequent coverage on ESPN2.

The Philadelphia Wings had just claimed their fifth league title, sweeping the Baltimore Thunder in a best-of-three series (the only time the title was not awarded after a single-game final). The Buffalo Bandits and Rochester Knighthawks also qualified for the playoffs, beating out the Ontario Raiders on a tiebreaker. The New York Saints and Syracuse Smash rounded out the list of competing franchises, while the Boston Blazers were sitting out what was supposed to be a one-year suspension of operations. Boston never returned.

Two days before this site went public on 4 July, Syracuse fired head coach Kevin Alexander and replaced him with a three-headed monster -- Freeman Bucktooth running the offense, Steve Scaramuzzino handling the defense, and Patrick Donahue teaching the fine arts of recovering loose balls and winning faceoffs. The trio produced 50 percent more wins than Alexander; instead of another 2-10 campaign, the Smash improved to 3-9.

On launch day, big news rolled in -- the top prospect in the upcoming NLL Entry Draft did not tear his anterior cruciate ligament practicing for the upcoming World Lacrosse Championship, as was feared. He did tear a different ligament, though, and would miss the World Games. Casey Powell, the anointed next superstar of the NLL, indeed went first overall, selected by Rochester. The hot prospect, as we all know by now, fizzled out and hasn't been seen in the box since 2000.

Later that summer, Ontario goaltender Bob Watson suffered a severe eye injury in an OLA game; the United States won the World Games in a championship-game overtime thriller against Canada, with plenty of NLLers on each side; and Toronto Maple Leafs executive Bill Watters led a group of investors in buying the aforementioned Raiders and moving them to Toronto, becoming the Rock.

The reviewers

It's remarkable how much has changed online over the past five years -- especially the people. In looking at the list of reviewers from 1998, only a handful (John Sapello of WingsZone and Glen Dundas of the Unofficial OLA Site, to name a pair) can still be considered major players in the online lacrosse community. A few have faded in prominence but still remain. Several drifted away from the sport completely.

However, plenty has stayed the same. The review team in 2000 (for the Outsider's Guide's redesign) was almost entirely comprised of fans who are still around and still prominent. Five of the eighteen wrote articles for this site within the past year, and most of the others still contribute in other ways.

Happy Birthday

As far as our records show, no active NLL player was born on 4 July. A few come "one away," though -- Ottawa Rebel forward Kevin Lunnie turned 27 yesterday, while tomorrow, Rochester's Jeremy Hollenbeck celebrates number 33 and Calgary's Ryan Campbell is 26.

Elsewhere in the world of sports, two well-known team owners celebrate birthdays today. Al Davis (NFL's Oakland Raiders) is 74, while George Steinbrenner (MLB's New York Yankees) is a year behind.

Others born on the 4th of July include United States president Calvin Coolidge (1872), cartoonist Rube Goldberg (1883), jazz musician Louis Armstrong (1900), advice columnists (and twins) Abigail Van Buren and Ann Landers (1918), playwright Neil Simon (1927), and news personality Geraldo Rivera (1943).

Happy Trails

We're pleased to report no known NLL-related deaths on the Fourth of July, but there is one legendary story which is too interesting to pass up. In 1826, United States presidents, longtime friends, and political rivals John Adams and Thomas Jefferson each passed away, fifty years to the day after they signed the Declaration of Independence. Adams' last words were, "Thomas Jefferson still survives." Jefferson, though, died earlier that day, hours after asking an attendant at his deathbed, "This is the Fourth?" (it was actually still 3 July when he asked, but the attendant, wanting to be of comfort, replied in the affirmative)

Another president, James Monroe, died five years later, on 4 July 1831. Chemist Marie Curie (who discovered radium) died of leukemia, brought on by her research, on this day in 1934.

Happy Anniversary

A remarkable number of interesting events happened on 4 July over the years. Many were timed to coincide with Independence Day, but many others were not. A brief list of events:

1054: The brightest known supernova (Crab Nebula) begins to appear. Chinese astronomers record the occurrence, the exact date of which is uncertain.
1802: United States Military Academy officially opens at West Point, NY.
1817: Construction of the Erie Canal begins.
1845: Texas Congress votes to join United States. The same day, writer Henry David Thoreau begins his experiment of living at Walden Pond.
1862: Lewis Carroll creates Alice in Wonderland.
1881: Booker T. Washington establishes the Tuskegee Institute.
1884: The Statue of Liberty, a gift from France, is presented to the United States in Paris.
1894: Elwood Hayes test-drives an automobile, at the blistering speed of six miles per hours. Also, the Republic of Hawaii is established.
1910: Jack Johnson becomes boxing's first black heavyweight champion, knocking out Jim Jeffries, who is white. Footage of this fight is subsequently banned in many American cities.
1938: The author's favorite ballclub moves into Shibe Park permanently, but the Boston Braves get the better of the Fightin' Phillies, 10-5.
1939: First baseman Lou Gehrig's number four is officially retired by the New York Yankees. Gehrig, dying of a disease which would later bear his name, delivers the famous line, "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth."
1956: Independence National Historical Park is established in Philadelphia.
1960: The American flag gains its fiftieth star, officially marking Hawaii's admittance to the Union in late 1959. Also, famous slugger Mickey Mantle hits his 300th career home run.
1983: New York Yankees pitcher Dave Righetti no-hits the Boston Red Sox, only the third time in Major League history (and first since 1912) that a no-hitter was thrown on 4 July.
1993: South African leaders F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela receive the Liberty Medal at Independence Hall in Philadelphia for their roles in the end of apartheid.
1997: NASA's Mars Pathfinder lands on the red planet.

The biggest anniversary of the day, however, concerns a rather famous piece of parchment, but it was much more than a list of grievances against King George III (which, at its core, it was). The Declaration of Independence, approved by the Second Continental Congress on 4 July 1776, challenged the existing world order, declaring that the divine right to govern belongs with the people and not with a king -- quite a radical idea for its time -- and that due to George's tyranny, the Colonists had the duty (and not just the right) to revolt. Two hundred twenty-seven years later, the world has been improved upon in countless ways by the Declaration of Independence and what came forth from it, and will long continue to do so. Take a few minutes today and read the Declaration of Independence, especially if you never have before. It is an incredible read, not only for its historical significance but also for the powerful message it contains.

Historical sources include Anyday - Today in History, Encarta On This Day, New York Times On This Day, and Yahoo! News - Today in History.