Today is the 239th anniversary of the Boston Massacre

[bluestateguy]

http://www.findingdulcinea.com/news/on-this-day/March/British-Soldiers-Kill-5-in-Boston-Massacre.html

British soldiers had been stationed in Boston since October 1768, when they were sent to enforce the Townshend Acts of 1767. The colonists saw the soldiers as invaders, causing hostility and frequent skirmishes.

The Boston Massacre began on a cold March night as a small dispute between British sentry Hugh White and a wig-maker’s apprentice who claimed that a soldier had not paid for a wig. White struck the boy with his musket, prompting a group of men and boys to mob the soldiers, taunting them and throwing stones, ice and other objects.

As the crowd around White became larger and increasingly violent, other skirmishes broke out nearby. Capt. Thomas Preston marched his men from the Main Guard to White’s aid, forming a tight semi-circle around him, as the crowd continued to pelt the soldiers. One colonist, possibly a mulatto sailor named Crispus Attucks, knocked down soldier Hugh Montgomery.

Montgomery rose, fired his musket into the crowd and shouted, “Damn you, fire!” The other soldiers, despite orders from Preston not to fire, did so. Attucks was struck with two bullets in the chest and was the first of three to die that night. A fourth died the following morning and a fifth two weeks later. About another half-dozen were wounded.

[Occam Bandage]

1. Damn lobsterbacks.

[LostinVA]

2. History is always written by the victors

Most of what we learned in school about this is literally laughable. The occupation of America was one thing, but lionizing a a mob of drunken thugs is another.

Both Unsolved History and teh HBO John Adams miniseries did a great job showcasing this incident, and its aftermath.

[Sequoia]

3. I've always found tar and feathering someone to be horrifying.

Torture really. T&F'ing a a dummy is one thing, but a human...well, that could kill a person.

[LostinVA]

4. The John Adams miniseries did a GREAT job of showing that it IS torture

The Age of Reason, eh?

[Sequoia]

5. Okay, that does it. I have to rent them.

Don't get HBO.

[LostinVA]

6. Oh, do -- it's terrific