Commentary: The 'shot heard 'round the world' started more than a war

Commentary: The 'shot heard 'round the world' started more than a war

On April 19, 1775, the American Revolution began after more than a decade of growing disputes between the American colonies and the British government. As Ralph Waldo Emerson eloquently put it in his famous 1837 poem “Concord Hymn”:

Get ready: It’s the 250th anniversary of the Revolutionary War

The battles have just begun

The Shot Heard Round the World

APRIL 7, 2025 – In the spring of 1775, the world order was in question. After decades of onerous taxation by the British, independent-minded American colonists sought to throw off the yoke of their cross-Atlantic governors and were prepared to do so at the point of the bayonet. Such were the tinderbox conditions on the fateful morning of April 19, when colonists from across the state of Massachusetts assembled to confront the British in a series…

On April 19, 1775, the “Battle of Lexington and Concord” (Battles of Lexington and Concord) broke out in the Massachusetts Colony, beginning the first major battle of the American War of Independence. On the same day, 250 years later, the battlefield will soon host a grand reenactment.