On this day in military history....in 1770 and 1946

On this day in military history….in 1770. Five colonists are killed by British troops in what has been called the Boston Massacre. In the run up to the Revolutionary War, one of the factors was taxation without representation. British troops had been sent to Boston in 1768 to enforce the unpopular (duh!) taxation measures and on the night of 5 March, 1770, a group of American colonists had gathered outside the Customs House in Boston. They were taunting the British soldiers who were guarding the building. Seeing the crowd outside, the British troop commander ordered his men inside to fix bayonets and join the other soldiers guarding the building. The colonists responded by throwing snowballs at the soldiers. One thing lead to another, and in a precursor to the Battle of Lexington, a soldier accidentally discharged his musket after being hit by a snowball. At the sound of the gunshot, the rest of the soldiers started shooting into the crowd and when the dust settled, five American colonists, one of whom was an African-American, were lying dead on the snow. These five are considered as the first casualties in the American War of Independence.

On this day in military history….in 1946. Winston Churchill gives his “Iron Curtain” speech at Westminster College, in Fulton, Missouri. This speech and Ronald Reagan’s “Tear down this wall” speech are two the greatest speeches of the Cold War. It is no wonder that Winston Churchill was awarded honorary American citizenship.