Another Pinwheel

 

The phrase “the shot heard ‘round the world” comes from the opening stanza of Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1837 poem "Concord Hymn". It refers to the opening shot of the battles of Lexington and Concord April 19, 1775 – which, in Emerson’s opinion – started the American Revolutionary War and led to the creation of the United States. Most people consider the Revolution’s first victim to be Crispus Attucks, a sailor of mixed African and Indigenous ancestry. Crispus was in a crowd of sailors hurling snowballs and insults at a small group of British soldiers March 5, 1770. The soldiers fired their muskets into the crowd, killing Crispus and four others. The event is known as the “Boston Massacre.” It’s easy, in retrospect, to say the US came about because of war, the war was started by a battle, and the battle happened because five people were shot five years earlier. But you know, it’s never just ONE thing.