March 5.
1770. The Boston Massacre occurs. In Boston, Massachusetts, the British have posted a heavy presence of troops, which grates on the colonists' nerves, especially as they often board at the houses of the residents of the city. The troops are there to help enforce the Townshend Acts, which were very unpopular laws designed to take the judiciary out of colonial control and enforce the right to tax colonists. An incident between colonists and troops sparks rioting and attacks on the troops, who fire in self defense, killing five civilians.
The troops who fired were eventually indicted for murder. The colonial government decided to give them a fair trial, so the British could not complain, but no Boston lawyers were willing to represent them for fear of losing clients and being effectively career suicide. Into the breach steps brilliant lawyer, leading patriot and future President John Adams, in the interests of upholding the rule of law. Adams' defense results in several troops being found innocent, and only two soldiers being found guilty of the lesser crime of manslaughter. The events, however, highlight and exacerbate the ongoing tension between the colonies and the mother country -- tensions that would result in the American Revolution in a just a few short years.
The site of the Boston Massacre, which I walk by every day:
1836. Samuel Colt makes the first production revolver, a .34 caliber.
1946. In a speech at Westminster College, Missouri, Winston Churchill descirbes the latest events in Europe and with the Soviet Union in particular. In it, he coins the term "Iron Curtain"
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Winston Churchill
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an "iron curtain" has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow. |
At first, the speech is not well received in the West, especially by the public, whose memories of the Soviet Union's alliance with the West against the evils of Nazi Germany are still fresh. Eventually, however, it becomes clear that Churchill's insight was correct.
1953. Soviet dictator Josef Stalin dies.