Those old dudes could throw down. Be careful …

We like to think that everything is getting better, faster, cooler and more awesome as technology advances. We do everything far more excessive than we did in the past — so of course we can party harder than our ancestors, right?

Wrong. Those old dudes could rage. 

Just days before they signed off on the Constitution in 1787, the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention threw the fuck down at a local pub. According to a bill found and  preserved from that night, they drank:

54 bottles of Madeira (fortified wine)

60 bottles of claret (red wine)

8 bottles of whiskey

22 bottles of porter

8 bottles of hard cider

12 bottles of beer

7 bowls of alcoholic punch.

For just one night.

There's no way you and your buddies could pull off something like that without ending up in the hospital. 

As it turns out, everyone in ye olden times could put your frat brothers to shame. A study by The Atlantic found:

Americans hit a peak of 7.1 gallons of pure alcohol per person per year in 1830. By comparison, in 2013, Americans older than 14 each drank an average of 2.34 gallons of pure alcohol.

On average, people drank three times more than we do nowadays, and they can't even walk to the grocery store to pick up a 30-rack with just two-hours pay from Taco Bell. Crazy. 

So if we hopped in the time machine tomorrow, George Washington would call us a bunch of pussies, chug an entire bottle of wine and then push us in the dirt. Happy 4th!