Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five
Like the poem says, it was on this date in 1775 that Paul Revere (along with William Dawes and Samuel Prescott) alerted American colonists that the British troops were on the move. When the British arrived in Lexington the next morning, colonial Minutemen were waiting for them. The “shot heard ’round the world” was fired, and the first armed conflict of the American Revolution was underway.
In a weird lil’ coincidence, the fighting would end exactly eight years later, on this date in 1783.
Earliest event listed on Wiki is “1025 – Bolesław Chrobry is crowned in Gniezno, becoming the first King of Poland” and the most recent are two events from 2007: “The Supreme Court of the United States upholds the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act in a 5-4 decision” & “A series of bombings, two of them being suicides, occur in Baghdad, killing 198 and injuring 251.”
A few other things that happened on this date:
1506 – St. Peter’s Basilica has its cornerstone laid.
1906 – Over 3,000 people die in the San Francisco earthquake and fire.
1994 – NAFTA goes into effect.
Happy birthday to Conan O’Brien, Rick Moranis, Mike Vickers, Grandmaster Flash, and Country Joe McDonald