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The "shot heard round the world" is a phrase that refers to the opening shot of the battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, which sparked the American Revolutionary War and led to the creation of the United States. It originates from the opening stanza of Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1837 poem "Concord Hymn".
Crispus Attucks (c. 1723 – March 5, 1770) was an American whaler, sailor, and stevedore of African and Native American descent who is traditionally regarded as the first person killed in the Boston Massacre, and as a result the first American killed in the American Revolution.
Major John Simpson (December 1, 1748 – October 28, 1825) was an American Revolutionary War soldier from Deerfield, New Hampshire. He is one of several men traditionally described as having fired the first shot on the American side at the Battle of Bunker Hill. [1]
The Lexington Battle Green, also known as Lexington Common, is the historic town common of Lexington, Massachusetts, United States. It was at this site that the opening shots of the Battles of Lexington and Concord were fired on April 19, 1775, starting the American Revolutionary War. Now a public park, the common is a National Historic Landmark.
The war continued for seven years after those first shots were fired, even past the July 4, 1776, adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Nikki Walsh, the museum curator at the park, also said there was plenty to learn from the lead-cast musket balls that ranged in size from .40-caliber to .70-caliber.
It was important to the early American government that an image of British fault and American innocence be maintained for this first battle of the war. The history of Patriot preparations, intelligence, warning signals, and uncertainty about the first shot was rarely discussed in the public sphere for decades.
According to the proclamation, on Dec. 13, 1774, Paul Revere arrived in Portsmouth to let citizens know that British forces were to arrive.
While the first shots of the exchange, like all shots that had found their targets earlier that morning at the skirmish in Lexington, had come from the British, it was the colonists' retort that Emerson had intended to memorialize. That first ever wartime attack by the colonial forces of the American Revolutionary War came at the order of the ...