MIKE GRACIA

During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress
passed a resolution stating that “two Battalions of Marines
be raised” for service as landing forces for the recently
formed Continental Navy.

The resolution, drafted by future U.S. president John Adams
and adopted in Philadelphia on November 10, 1775, created
the Continental Marines and is now observed as the birth
date of the United States Marine Corps.

John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826)

June 14, 1777: During the American Revolution, the
Continental Congress adopted a resolution stating
that “the flag of the United States be thirteen alternate
stripes red and white” and  that “the Union be thirteen
stars, white in a blue field, representing a new Constellation.”       

       
The national flag, which became known as the “Stars and Stripes,
” was based on the “Grand Union” flag, a banner carried by the Continental Army in 1776 that also consisted of 13 red and white
stripes. According to legend, Philadelphia seamstress Betsy
Ross designed the new canton for the Stars and Stripes, which
consisted of a circle of 13 stars and a blue background, at the
request of General George Washington. Historians have been
unable to conclusively prove or disprove this legend.

With the entrance of new states into the United States after independence, new stripes and stars were added to represent
new additions to the Union. In 1818, however, Congress enacted
a law stipulating that the 13 original stripes be restored and that
only stars be added to represent new states.

Elizabeth Griscom Ross
(January 1, 1752 – January 30, 1836)

April 19, 1775: At about 5 a.m., 700 British troops, on a mission
to capture Patriot leaders and seize a Patriot arsenal, march into Lexington to find 77 armed minutemen under Captain John Parker waiting for them on the town’s common green.

Suddenly, a shot was fired from an undetermined gun, and a cloud
of musket smoke soon covered the green. When the brief Battle of Lexington ended, eight Americans lay dead or dying and 10 others
were wounded.

         
British Major John Pitcairn     Captain John Parker

On the cold, snowy night of March 5, 1770, a mob of American
colonists gathered at the Customs House in Boston and began
taunting the British soldiers guarding the building.

The protesters, who called themselves Patriots, were protesting
the occupation of their city by British troops, who were sent to
Boston in 1768 to enforce unpopular taxation measures passed
by a British parliament that lacked American representation.

British Captain Thomas Preston, the commanding officer at the
Customs House, ordered his men to fix their bayonets and join
the guard outside the building.

The other soldiers began firing a moment later, and when the
smoke cleared, five colonists were dead or dying—Crispus
Attucks, Patrick Carr, Samuel Gray, Samuel Maverick and
James Caldwell—and three more were injured.

Although it is unclear whether Crispus Attucks, an African
American, was the first to fall as is commonly believed, the
deaths of the five men are regarded by some historians as
the first fatalities in the American Revolutionary War.