Thinking Out Loud: The Shot Heard Around the World

We’re infants on the world stage and today is a birthday of sorts

The first words of today’s Thinking Out loud were originally to be “The Driving World is Coming to a Disappointing End. We have cars that drive themselves and cars most cannot drive.” It was to be a solemn salute to the apparent death of stick shift transmissions. It’ll show up next week.

An abrupt change happened when this mornings news reminded us that today, April 19, 2025 is the 250th anniversary of the opening shots of the Revolutionary War. That caused Thinking Out Loud to actually start thinking.

Two thoughts immediately interrupted the typing. First, do schools still teach enough history that current generations even know the Revolutionary War was fought? Are the why and who of the conflict understood by anyone not sporting gray hair? That’s a question worth asking because not long ago I did a “man in the street” type of interview with five 25-year-olds in our dining room and the results were shocking. The questions asked included “When was WWII fought and who was fighting it?” Dates ranged from 1910s to 1970, and they had us fighting the English, the French, Germany was on our side, etc., etc.!!

The second thought that floated to the top and onto the keyboard was a question about the age of our nation. 250 years sounds like a long time, but, when compared to the rest of the world, it’s not. When it comes to major nations, it’s barely a flicker in time.

If you ever have a chance to visit Westminster Abbey in London (completed in 1269 AD), as you come in the door, notice what you’re walking on. The massive entry hall is floored with tombstones of dignitaries most dating to the 14-1500s or before and all of whom are under the stones. Then, where the two main halls cross in the middle of the enormous building, turn left. On your right, there will be a shoulder high “island” that has a wooden fence on its top edge surrounding it. Inserted into that fence are coffins and sarcophagi containing past kings, etc. I don’t remember seeing a single date past about 1300. So, our continent wouldn’t even be discovered for another two hundred years when the incredible building was finished. 250 years of England’s history wouldn’t even put a dent in how long they have been a successful country (although they did have their hiccups)! America, and the USA in particular, are infants on the world stage. More important, the nation we now know as the United States is not actually 250 years old.

The first shot of the Revolutionary War was fired today in 1775 but that only started the war (FYI, no one knows for sure who fired the first shot at Lexington, us or them.). We didn’t become an actual nation until the Constitution was ratified in 1788 and put in operation in 1789. So, as a formal nation, we’re only 236 years old. In the major cities of Europe and England, a 236-year-old building is considered a “new build”. The only major countries of any size younger than we are is Canada (1867) and Australia (1901). To put us in perspective, Arizona didn’t became a state until 1912. It was a territory until then.

When looking deeper into how the US became as we see it on maps today, it’s highly probable most of us have forgotten how so much land wound up under our umbrella. We gray dogs had seen all of this in high school history classes but, almost to a person, we’ve forgotten most of it. I was surprised to see how much of it I had forgotten even though history was a big deal, when I was growing up.

Following their defeat in the Revolutionary War, Britain ceded most of the land between the Atlantic and the Missouri River to the US in 1783, which is about a third of the present US. The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 gave us everything from the Missouri to the northern, western states like Montana and Wyoming in the northwest and Oklahoma to the south. The Republic of Texas, which included about half of what would become New Mexico and Colorado came on board in 1845, which many Texans still regret :-). Most of the rest of everything west of Texas (California, etc.) to the Pacific was ceded to the US as the result of the Mexican-American War in 1848. The Spanish via Mexico had already developed a lot of that country, especially California but much of the rest was still Indian Territory.

If you add that together and see it as the United States we know today, we’re only 177 years old and that ignores Hawaii and Alaska being added in 1959.

We sometimes lose sight of how huge our country is and how rapidly we managed to occupy it even thought all of the initial exploration was done on foot. The Revolutionary War started in 1775 with the entire slug fest being waged by the original 13 colonies in an effort to free themselves from British rule. The colonies formed a very narrow band of “civilized” land that was entirely east of the Appalachian Mountains. Very little was known of what lay on the other side of those mountains. Daniel Boone is credited with making the first treks through the Cumberland Gap in the late 1760s and set up a trail into what would become Kentucky in 1775, just in time for the war to begin.

It wasn’t until the Louisiana Purchase happened that Congress began to wonder what was really out “there”. They funded the 1804-1806 Lewis and Clark expedition to the Pacific and then knew for a fact how massive the continent was. This gave rise to the concept of Manifest Destiny that drove the rest of the century. Under Manifest Destiny the US saw itself as having a “divinely ordained” right to expand its control across the entire continent. All of it. The century-long push west to occupy and acquire everything along the way wasn’t always pretty but was bound to happen.By the 1890s, when Manifest Destiny had run its course, the U.S. was as we see it today.

The process of developing the U.S. started 250 years ago today when a determined Crown sought to disarm the population over which it thought it had control. Many battles later they found it was impossible to subjugate a population that valued freedom so highly.

The 24 hours that began on April 18^th 1775 and bled over into the 19^th are an interesting adventure tale. This is the best source I’ve found. Go to the end of this for hour-by-hour commentary Here.

PS. The most important piece of today’s news? A scientific-investigation of the famous “5-second rule” of picking up dropped food stuffs is proven to be valid. Snatching it back up and popping it in our mouths won’t kill us. Now, that’s a fact worth knowing! ‘Explains why I’m still alive!