50 Fun Facts About Boston Massacre

Despite being remembered as a massacre, the 1770 shooting by British soldiers in Boston killed how many colonists?

Only 5 people died: three on the spot and two later from their wounds. Patriot leaders made the word massacre stick anyway.

Which future US president served as the lead defense lawyer for the British soldiers charged after the Boston Massacre?

John Adams was already a leading Patriot weighing a run for office, yet he took the case and risked his reputation so the trial would be fair.

On the night of the Boston Massacre, the crowd pelted the British soldiers with clubs, stones and which other missile?

Snowballs were among the missiles that rained on the soldiers, and one thrown object knocked a private off his feet just before he fired the first shot.

The two British soldiers convicted after the Boston Massacre were branded with a hot iron on which body part?

The thumb was burned with a hot iron in open court, a mark that stopped a convict from ever claiming the same leniency twice.

Which Boston silversmith made the famous engraving that spread anger over the Boston Massacre across the colonies?

Paul Revere copied the scene from another artist's drawing without permission and had his print on sale three weeks after the shooting.

Which sailor of African and Native American descent is remembered as the first to die in the Boston Massacre?

Crispus Attucks may have been in Boston only briefly: he had just returned from a voyage to the Bahamas and was due to sail for North Carolina.

At the Boston Massacre trials, defense lawyer Josiah Quincy II faced prosecutor Samuel Quincy; how were the two related?

Brothers on opposite sides in court, the Quincys later split for good: Samuel sided with Britain and fled Massachusetts when war broke out.

Boston marked every March 5 as Massacre Day from 1771 until 1783, when which holiday replaced it?

Independence Day took over once the war was won: Boston's selectmen decided July 4 was a better date to mark than the anniversary of a shooting.

The best-known engraving of the Boston Massacre shows the British captain doing what, though a jury cleared him of it?

Ordering his men to fire is how the print shows him, but the jury was convinced he gave no command, and he walked free after a separate trial.

Which British monarch was on the throne when his soldiers fired on a Boston crowd in the Boston Massacre?

George III had been on the throne for nearly a decade, and the shooting is counted among the events that did most to turn colonists against him.

Two British soldiers escaped a murder conviction after the Boston Massacre but were found guilty of which lesser crime?

Manslaughter was the verdict because the evidence showed both men had shot straight into the crowd; their six comrades went free.

What sound, normally a fire alarm in colonial Boston, drew more people into the streets before the Boston Massacre?

Church bells rang across town, so many Bostonians ran outside expecting to fight a blaze and found a standoff with armed soldiers instead.

The Boston Massacre Monument stands in which downtown park, the oldest city park in the United States?

The Common has held the granite and bronze memorial since the 1880s, more than a century after the shooting it remembers.

The site of the Boston Massacre is a stop on which 2.5-mile walking route past the city's Revolutionary landmarks?

The Freedom Trail began as a journalist's 1951 idea for linking the city's landmarks on foot; by 1953 some 40,000 people a year were walking it.

After the Boston Massacre, Patriots and Loyalists rushed rival pamphlets overseas to sway opinion in which city?

London was the real audience: Boston's leaders even held back local copies of their own pamphlet so the jury pool would not be tainted.

Decades after the Boston Massacre, its first victim became a celebrated symbol of which 19th-century reform movement?

Abolitionism claimed him as a hero: in 1858 Boston activists started an annual day in his name to stress Black Americans' part in the Revolution.

Which wealthy merchant's sloop was seized in 1768, sparking a riot that helped bring British troops to Boston?

John Hancock's ship was taken on a smuggling charge; regiments began landing that October, and the friction they caused ended in the massacre.

On the Boston Massacre Monument, the bronze female figure of the Revolution crushes what object beneath her foot?

A crown, broken, lies under her right foot, while her raised hand holds a snapped length of chain and an eagle waits at her side.

Visitors to downtown Boston find the site of the Boston Massacre marked by what kind of memorial?

A circle of paving stones, cut from granite, marks the site; it was shifted in the early 2010s when the subway station below was rebuilt.

What public event is held beside the Boston Massacre site around the anniversary each March?

A reenactment replays the standoff between townspeople and redcoats near the spot where it happened, long staged by the Bostonian Society.

Open war came a few years after the Boston Massacre, beginning with battles at which two Massachusetts towns?

Lexington and Concord saw the first major clashes between British regulars and Patriot militia, on April 19, 1775.

From the balcony of which building did the acting governor promise the Boston Massacre crowd a fair inquiry?

The Old State House, finished in 1713, is the city's oldest surviving public building; the shooting happened a few steps from its east balcony.

Where in Boston did townspeople gather the day after the Boston Massacre to demand that the troops leave?

Faneuil Hall, with its grasshopper weathervane, hosted the angry town meeting; the first victim's body had been carried there to lie in state.

Edward Garrick, the apprentice whose insults to an officer set off the Boston Massacre quarrel, worked in which trade?

Wigmaking was the trade: Garrick accused the officer of leaving his master's bill unpaid, although the account had been settled the day before.

Days before the Boston Massacre, off-duty British soldiers seeking extra work brawled with Boston men of which trade?

Rope making was victim Samuel Gray's trade, and he had been in the brawls; the private who shot him had argued with him at the ropewalk days earlier.

Which British duties on imported glass, lead, paint and paper stirred the unrest behind the Boston Massacre?

The Townshend Acts took their name from Charles Townshend, the finance minister who proposed them; boycotts and riots in Boston followed.

Which British captain commanded the soldiers at the Boston Massacre and was tried separately from his men?

Thomas Preston retired from the army after his trial, and the lawyer who had defended him later recalled spotting him in England in the 1780s.

Which 11-year-old boy was shot dead by a British official in Boston eleven days before the Boston Massacre?

Christopher Seider's funeral drew more than 2,000 mourners, and the anger it stirred fed straight into the clash on March 5.

Which acting governor of Massachusetts calmed the Boston Massacre crowd and had the soldiers arrested by morning?

Thomas Hutchinson knew mob anger firsthand: rioters protesting the Stamp Act had ransacked his own mansion in 1765.

Which young Boston bookseller, later the first US secretary of war, warned the Boston Massacre sentry not to fire?

Henry Knox, then 19, told the sentry he would die for it if he fired; within six years he was hauling captured cannon to drive the British from the city.

In which Boston cemetery were the victims of the Boston Massacre buried together with public ceremony?

Granary Burying Ground also holds the boy killed eleven days before them, along with three signers of the Declaration.

After the Boston Massacre, the British regiments were pulled out of town to a fort at which spot in the harbor?

Castle Island held the fort then called Castle William, long a refuge for royal officials when the streets of the town turned against them.

Hugh Montgomery and Matthew Kilroy, the two privates punished for the Boston Massacre, were both born where?

Ireland was home to both men and to their captain, and one of the townsmen killed that night was an immigrant from the same island.

The famous engraving of the Boston Massacre hangs which grim sign on the building behind the British soldiers?

Butcher's Hall was the engraver's jab at the customs office, and he added a musket firing from one of its windows for good measure.

A doctor repeated a dying Boston Massacre victim's words in court, an early American exception to the rule against what?

Hearsay evidence is normally barred, but a judge told the jury that a man about to die had little reason to lie, least of all for the men who shot him.

Which Patriot newspaper in Massachusetts cast the 1770 Massacre as part of a scheme to crush colonial resistance?

The Boston Gazette, published by Benjamin Edes and John Gill, ran its account a week after the shooting and harped on the dangers of quartering troops in a city.

For the Boston Massacre trials, the silversmith behind the famous engraving also drew what to help the court?

A map of the bodies, marking where the victims fell, went to court as evidence while the same man's engraving was inflaming the public.

A servant swore that civilians had fired from a window during the Boston Massacre; what crime was he later convicted of?

Perjury cost him dearly: after the four accused civilians walked free, he was whipped and banished from Massachusetts.

Which Boston artist drew the Boston Massacre scene first, only to see a rival's copy reach the market before his own?

Henry Pelham sent the copier a furious letter accusing him of abusing his trust; the copy is the version history remembers.

Which centuries-old legal plea for first offenders let two soldiers convicted after the Boston Massacre avoid execution?

Benefit of clergy began as a shield for priests against the secular courts; by 1770 it gave a first offender one escape from the death penalty.

Which British commander-in-chief in North America sent regiments to Boston and withdrew one after the Boston Massacre?

Thomas Gage decided the troops were doing more harm than good and ordered the regiment involved out of Massachusetts two months later.

The 29th Regiment of Foot, whose men fired at the Boston Massacre, was later saddled with which grim nickname?

The Vein Openers was a jibe at the regiment for supposedly drawing the first blood of the American Revolution.

Which Boston Massacre victim, the last to die of his wounds, told his doctor that the soldiers had been provoked?

Patrick Carr lingered for more than a week, and his deathbed account, repeated to the jury by his surgeon, helped clear the soldiers of murder.

Which physician, later killed at Bunker Hill, twice delivered Boston's annual oration marking the Boston Massacre?

Joseph Warren gave his second oration in March 1775 with the town under military occupation, three months before he fell in battle.

Which prosecutor at the Boston Massacre trials went on to sign the Declaration of 1776 for Massachusetts?

Robert Treat Paine was hired by the town to prosecute, and he lies in the same graveyard as the victims he spoke for.

Which author wrote The Fifth of March, a novel featuring Boston Massacre soldier Matthew Kilroy as a main character?

Ann Rinaldi built her story around a private who, in real life, could not read or write and had joined the army at fifteen.

Ebenezer Richardson was convicted of murdering a boy days before the Boston Massacre; how did he escape punishment?

A royal pardon freed him, and a new post in the customs service followed, which Bostonians counted as one more grievance against Britain.

Beneath its picture, the famous engraving of the Boston Massacre carries eighteen lines of what?

Poetry fills the space under the picture, an original eighteen-line verse; the rival print it was copied from quotes a psalm instead.

Which 2015 History Channel miniseries dramatizes the Boston Massacre and the unrest that pushed Boston to revolt?

Sons of Liberty was billed by its own network as a dramatic interpretation of events and a work of historical fiction.

Samuel Maverick, a 17-year-old apprentice at the back of the Boston Massacre crowd, was fatally struck by what?

A ricocheting bullet found him even though he stood well behind the front of the crowd; he was learning the trade of an ivory turner.