Every Day Is Special: Revere

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April 18 - Paul Revere Day (a.k.a. Patriots' Day) in the U.S.A.

Posted on April 18, 2022

This is an update of my post published on April 18, 2011:

Ever heard of the “midnight ride of Paul Revere”? Well, it started on the evening of April 18, 1775. Today riders in Massachusetts will reenact this famous event, with one horseman playing Paul Revere riding from Boston to Lexington, and another playing William Dawes riding from Roxbury to Lexington.

Nobody wants to be so precise as to have the
re-enactment rides be at midnight!

Notice that today's reenactment will in fact be day rides, unlike the original nighttime rides. Also, the Boston Marathon is run on Patriot's Day, so today is also called Marathon Monday.

Happy running, riding, and spectating to all the citizens of Boston and environs!

Here are some links for the rest of us:

Watch a video to hear the poem Paul Revere's Ride, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Read an account of the ride in Revere's own words.

Remember that Paul Revere lived an entire life, beyond just this one legendary ride. He was a silversmith and engraver as well as a Sons of Liberty member / patriot.

Also on this date:

National Animal Cracker Day

Author Monteiro Lobato's birthday

World Amateur Radio Day

Independence Day in Zimbabwe

Jewelry designer and model Tina Chow's birthday

Birthday of mountain man (explorer, climber, geologist, cartographer) Ardito Desio

Ask an Atheist Day

International Day for Monuments and Sites

Birthday of lawyer Clarence Darrow

Birthday of biologist Bernard O. Dodge

Anniversary of the death of Einstein

Flag Day in Ireland

(Easter Monday)

Easter Monday

Dyngus Day

White House Easter Egg Roll

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for:
April holidays
April birthdays
Historical anniversaries in April

And here are my Pinterest boards for:
May holidays
May birthdays
Historical anniversaries in May

March 23, 2013 - Anniversary of an Influential Speech

A lot of history books written for kids quote a phrase here or there that paint a simple, heroic picture of particular bits of history. “The British are coming, the British are coming!” is an example. Some history books have Paul Revere shouting these words of warning as he rode his horse from Charlestown to Lexington in April of 1775.

But in actual fact, Revere rode as silently as he could, since the British were actually already there: the countryside was filled with British army patrols, and most of the American colonists still considered themselves British citizens and were loyal to the King. Instead of shouting a message to all, Revere stopped at the house of pretty much every “Patriot” – by which I mean “rebel,” those who wanted to declare independence from England and fight, if necessary, for the right to do so. In a low voice, Revere told each of the Patriots, “The Regulars are coming out,” referring to the regular, official British army. Many of the Patriots jumped onto their horses and rode to tell their neighbors with the same warning. By the time Revere reached Lexington, around midnight, there may have been 40 or more horsemen riding as silently as they could manage while still giving the not-famous warning.

Almost a month before that famous ride, another event had spurred another oft-quoted phrase: “Give me liberty, or give me death!” Today is the anniversary of the that quote.

On this date in 1775, a man named Patrick Henry spoke to the other men (yes, they were all men!) in the Virginia House of Burgesses. As a group, they were undecided as to whether or not to mount a military force against the British. The British Parliament had been making a larger and larger proportion of the American colonists angry, with the Sugar Act, the Currency Act, the Stamp Act, the Quartering Act, the Declaratory Act, the Townshend Revenue Act, the Tea Act, and five acts called, together, the Intolerable Acts. British soldiers had even fired on American colonists, killing five, in the Boston Massacre. Colonists had passed resolutions, had boycotted British goods, had fought back by attacking a British ship (check out the Gaspee Affair!), and had protested with the Boston Tea Party.

It seemed to many that war was inevitable. Others probably still hoped to remain a part of Great Britain or to separate peacefully.

Patrick Henry apparently thought that the colonists had to take action. Right away. And so he used his oratorical skills to change the undecided's minds.

Would it surprise you to know that we don't really know for sure what Patrick Henry said that day? Nobody was filming or taping the speech (of course! since the technology did not yet exist!), but nobody wrote it down right away, either. Forty-two years after the speech was made, a biographer named William Wirt tried to recreate the speech using oral histories. This is Wirt's recreation of the very end of Patrick Henry's speech:

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”

And, Wirt writes, the entire crowd jumped up and shouted “To arms! To arms!”

Here's what we know:

This speech did apparently move enough of the men to pass a resolution to commit Virginia troops to the Revolutionary War.

Henry was known as a hypnotic orator. Thomas Jefferson said about his speeches, “Although it was difficult, when [Henry] had spoken, to tell what he had said, yet, while speaking, it always seemed directly to the point. When he had spoken in opposition to my opinion, had produced a great effect, and I myself had been highly delighted and moved, I have asked myself, when he ceased, 'What the devil has he said?' and could never answer the inquiry.”

In other words, Patrick Henry was able to move people by appealing to their emotions, but it was hard to remember just what he had said. His speeches were probably not as strong on logical argument as we might hope.

Henry was also known to appeal to people's fears of Indian and slave revolts in order to manipulate them. I found Henry's words (according to Wirt) “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?” to be terribly, terribly ironic, since Patrick Henry purchased at least 78 slaves during his lifetime! I imagine he wasn't trying to move his own slaves to revolt against their chains with these same words!

Also on this date:

Pakistan Day

National Puppy Day

World Meteorological Day

Anniversary of the coining of the word “okay” (America's “Greatest Word”)

Earth Hour 8:30 – 9:30 p.m.

January 1, 2012 - New Year's Day and Patriots' Birthdays

New Year's Day is the most widely celebrated holiday in the world (although not everyone celebrates on the same day!).

Of course, some babies are born on this auspicious day every year, as well. Today we celebrate the birthdays of Paul Revere and Betsy Ross, two famous American “patriots.”

What the word patriot means is “one who is loyal to one's country.” Interestingly, Americans tend to use the word for historical figures who were actively rebelling against their country – because Britain was the ruling nation of the American colonies. So early American patriots were people who were loyal to the idea of a new nation – but were not a bit loyal to their actual country. Right?

Paul Revere (born on this day in 1735) was a silversmith. He is most famous for alerting Colonial militia that the British forces were approaching Concord. During the Revolutionary War, he acted as a courier and printed local currency; he also set up a powder mill that produced tons of gunpowder for George Washington's Continental Army. He opened a hardware store, served in the Massachusetts militia, and became a foundryman. (That means he learned to make iron and brass and other metal castings.) His company, Revere Copper and Brass, Inc., grew to be quite large.

One reason that Revere is so famous for one little event in his exciting and varied life is that his “midnight ride” was dramatized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem “Paul Revere's Ride.”

Betsy Ross (born Elizabeth Griscom on this day in 1752) was a seamstress. She is credited with sewing the first American flag, but there isn't evidence that this story is true. She was one of several flag makers in Philadelphia, and she changed the six-pointed stars to easier five-pointed stars. However, in 1857, twenty years after Ross's death, her grandson William J. Canby presented a paper claiming that she had made “with her hands” the first flag of the United States. The story appealed to Americans who were eager for stories about the Revolutionary War and thirsty for patriotic role models for girls, so the story was quickly accepted and widely retold.

And quite probably false.

The take-away from both of today's famous birthdays is that history contains exaggeration and even myth. We can learn and enjoy popular history, but we can also dig a little deeper to see what evidence says about our past.

For more about New Year's Day, see this and this other earlier posts.

April 18, 2011 - Paul Revere Day –

A.K.A. Patriots' Day (U.S.)

Ever heard of the “midnight ride of Paul Revere”? Well, it started on the evening of April 18, 1775. Today riders in Massachusetts will reenact this famous event—the 234^th such reenactment!—with one horseman playing Paul Revere riding from Boston to Lexington, and another playing William Dawes riding from Roxbury to Lexington.