Early this year, National Park Service archeologists working at Minute Man National Historical Park discovered five musket balls that were fired during the world-changing event known as “The Shot Heard Round the World” on April 19, 1775.

 Early analysis of the 18th-century musket balls indicates they were fired by colonial militia members at British forces during the North Bridge fight. 

April 19, 1775, marked the first battle of the American Revolution. On that day, 700 British soldiers marched from Boston to Concord to seize a stockpile of military arms and supplies. The expedition caused patriot leaders to raise the alarm and muster the militia. The scale of the response is truly staggering and hints at a surprising amount of organization. 

When did the American Revolution begin? At the North Bridge on April 19, 1775, with “the shot heard round the world”? In Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, with the Declaration of Independence? John Adams thought the Revolution was over by the time the first guns were fired. It “was effected in the minds and hearts of the people.”

Arguably, that crucial turning-point occurred in Concord two hundred fifty years ago, when on October 11, 1774, delegates from all over Massachusetts, roughly 243 representatives from close to 200 towns, including the District of Maine, gathered in the Congregational meetinghouse (now First Parish) to deal with “the dangerous and alarming situation of public affairs” touched off by Britain’s harsh reaction to the Boston Tea Party.