1775: Captain John Parker ordered his Massachusetts militia not to fire unless fired upon. His British counterpart did the same, but still someone still fired, thus begining the Battle of Lexington. Meanwhile, Paul Revere, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott are captured by the British, but Preston escaped to warn the militia at Concord. This results in a standoff at Concord Bridge, followed by the British retirement to Boston with militiamen cutting them down all along the way, and the day ending with the British garrison holed up in Boston with New England militiamen surrounding the city.
Also today in history, in the U.S. and elsewhere:
531: Count Belisarius loses to the Sassanid Persians under Azarethes in the Battle of Callinicum, near Raqqa, Byzantine. Casualties on both sides are heavy.
1782: John Adams secured recognition of the United States by the Netherlands and purchased a residence in The Hague to serve as the first permanent United States Embassy.
1861: President Abraham Lincoln ordered a blockade of all Confederate ports.
1945: The U.S. Marines threw themselves at the Shuri Line for what proved to be a brutal see-saw brawl on Okinawa.
1951: Before he caould resign his command, General Douglas MacArthur is fired by President Harry Truman.
1961: The Bay of Pigs invasion failed, with 118 Cuban exiles killed and 1,202 captured by Fidel Castro's fast-reacting forces. Their American support had been so obsessed with "plausible deniability" that it amounted virtually to nothing in one of the most poorly planned and executed insurgencies of the 20th century.
