Shot heard round the world

"The shot heard round the world" is a phrase which refers to an event that precipitates or completes a major conflict or contest, most commonly the first gunfire at the beginning of a war. The phrase originated in a poem which describes the 1775 Battles of Lexington and Concord which opened the American Revolutionary War, but it has since been used to refer to other events, such as the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in 1914.

Skirmish at the North Bridge

The opening stanza of "Concord Hymn" is inscribed at the base of The Minute Man statue by Daniel Chester French, located at the North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts.

The phrase comes from the opening stanza of Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Concord Hymn" (1837) and refers to the first shot of the American Revolutionary War. According to Emerson's poem, this pivotal shot occurred at the North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts, where the first British soldiers fell in the battles of Lexington and Concord.

Historically, no single shot can be cited as the first shot of the battle or the war. Shots were fired earlier at Lexington, where eight Americans were killed and a British soldier was slightly wounded, but accounts of that event are confused and contradictory, and it has been characterized as a massacre rather than a battle.^[1] The North Bridge skirmish did see the first shots by Americans acting under orders, the first organized volley by Americans, the first British fatalities, and the first British retreat.

The question of the point of origin of the Revolutionary War has been debated between Lexington and Concord and their partisans since at least 1824, when the Marquis de Lafayette visited the towns. He was welcomed to Lexington hearing it described as the "birthplace of American liberty", but he was then informed in Concord that the "first forcible resistance" was made there. President Grant considered not attending the 1875 centennial celebrations in the area to evade the issue. In 1894, Lexington petitioned the state legislature to proclaim April 19 as "Lexington Day", to which Concord objected; the current name for the holiday is Patriots' Day.^[1]

Emerson lived in a house known as the Old Manse at the time when he was composing the "Concord Hymn," from which his grandfather and father (then a young child) had witnessed the skirmish. The house is located approximately 300 feet (91 m) from the North Bridge.

Assassination of Franz Ferdinand

The phrase "shot heard round the world" has taken on a different meaning in Europe and in the Commonwealth of Nations, countries that were part of the British Empire and formerly known as the British Commonwealth. It has become associated with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914, an event considered to be one of the immediate causes of World War I. Serbian Gavrilo Princip fired two shots, the first hitting Franz Ferdinand's wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, and the second hitting the Archduke himself. The death of Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, propelled Austria-Hungary and the rest of Europe into World War I.

Thomson's home run

In American baseball, the "Shot Heard 'Round the World" (usually spelled with an apostrophe) denotes the game-winning walk-off home run by New York Giants outfielder Bobby Thomson off Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca at the Polo Grounds to win the National League pennant at 3:58 p.m. EST on October 3, 1951. As a result of the "shot", the Giants won the game 5-4, defeating their traditional rivals in their pennant playoff series, 2 games to 1, though they eventually lost the World Series to the Yankees.^[2]

Widespread idiomatic use

The phrase "Shot heard round the world" continues to be a stock phrase in the 21st century, widely used to refer to extraordinary events in general.^[3] The following sections list some examples of this.

In sport

The phrase has been applied to several dramatic moments in sports history.

• In International Men's Ice Hockey, it refers to the winning goal of Paul Henderson in the final seconds of the 8th and final match to secure Team Canada's victory in the 1972 Canada-USSR Summit-series. The goal was made famous by a Frank Lennon photograph.^[4] In 1980, it was used to refer to the game-winning goal scored by U.S. Olympic team captain Mike Eruzione, putting the U.S. team in the lead for good with 10:00 minutes remaining against the highly favored Soviet Union Olympic team (the U.S. went on to win an improbable gold medal against Finland two days later). In 1987, it referred to the game-winning goal scored by Canada's Mario Lemieux with 1:26 remaining in the third and final game of the Canada Cup finals versus the Soviet Union.
• In National Hockey League (NHL), refers to the winning goal of Bobby Orr in the May 10, 1970 playoff game, when he scored one of the most famous goals in hockey history and one that gave Boston its first Stanley Cup since 1941.^[5]
• In the WWE's professional wrestling, the phrase "The Slam Heard Round the World" refers to a body slam made by Hulk Hogan of Andre the Giant to win Wrestlemania III.^[6]
• In golf, it is used most often to describe Gene Sarazen's albatross on the fifteenth hole at the 1935 Masters Tournament, which helped propel him into a 36-hole playoff with Craig Wood. Sarazen would win the playoff by five strokes.^[7]
• In ice skating, "The Whack Heard Around the World" was used to describe the incident of sabotage involving Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding.
• In college basketball, it refers to the last second three-point shot by Kris Jenkins of Villanova University against University of North Carolina which won the 2016 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship.
• In U.S. soccer, it is used to describe the goal scored by Paul Caligiuri for the United States men's national soccer team against Trinidad and Tobago in Port of Spain in 1989. The win propelled the team to the 1990 FIFA World Cup, helping to start a resurgence of American soccer, which has seen the U.S. appear in every World Cup since that time, including its hosting of the 1994 World Cup, which in turn led to the creation of Major League Soccer.^[8]

In popular culture

• Schoolhouse Rock! used "Shot Heard Round the World" as the title for their episode describing the American Revolution.^[9]
• "Seconds" by Human League uses the phrase as a refrain.
• The phrase is part of the chorus in the song "One Girl Revolution" by Superchick.
• Various sources have made the play-on-words "herd shot 'round the world" in reference to rocketry and cows.^[10][11]
• In the 2006 film Delirious the phrase is used by a Hollywood talk show host as a description of a photo taken by one of the film's main characters.
• On the 2009 album Love Drunk by the pop-rock band Boys Like Girls one of the tracks is titled "The Shot Heard 'Round The World".
• The 1986 album Bedtime for Democracy by the band Dead Kennedys contained a song called "Potshot heard around the world" which discussed the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing.
• The 1986 hit single "Yankee Rose" by Van Halen singer and frontman David Lee Roth features the phrase in its first verse.

In media

• During Live Aid in 1985; Freddie Mercury's sustained note during the audience interaction; and Duran Duran's Simon Le Bon's cracked falsetto note were dubbed: "The Note heard around the world" and "The Bum-Note heard around the world", respectively
• During the 2009 swine flu outbreak The New York Times referred to 'patient zero', a 5-year-old Mexican boy named Édgar Hernández, as the source of "Coughs Heard Round the World."^[12]
• In 2006, the phrase was used by Newsweek in describing then-Vice President Dick Cheney's accidental shooting of Harry Whittington while quail hunting in Texas.^[13]
• In a December 2010 article in The New York Times, EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow described the unprecedented online activism in support of Julian Assange by the collective Anonymous during Operation Payback as "the shot heard round the world — this is Lexington."^[14]
• In 2013, by Candy Spelling to refer to the shooting of Malala Yousafzai.^[3]
• In 2016 a headline in The Wall Street Journal referring to the results of the British referendum on Brexit was titled Britain Fires a Shot Heard ’Round the World.^[15]

References