At dawn on April 19, 1775, about 70 colonial militiamen stood in a thin line on Lexington Green in Massachusetts. Across the field marched a column of British Redcoats - roughly 700 trained soldiers. The militia captain, John Parker, reportedly told his men, 'Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.' Then a single shot cracked through the air. Nobody knows who fired it, but in seconds, eight Americans lay dead.
The British marched on to nearby Concord to seize hidden weapons, but the colonists had already moved most of them. At Concord's North Bridge, the Minutemen finally pushed back, and for the first time, American militia fired in formation at British troops. The Redcoats retreated, but as they marched the 18 miles back to Boston, colonial militia hid behind stone walls and trees and peppered them with gunfire the whole way. By the end of the day, the British had lost 273 men and the Americans 95.
A poet named Ralph Waldo Emerson later called the volley at Concord 'the shot heard 'round the world,' because it kicked off a revolution that would inspire other countries to throw off their kings too. The American Revolution would last another eight years, but it all began at sunrise on April 19 - when a handful of farmers and shopkeepers decided to face down the most powerful army on Earth.
