In front of the Old State House, on a traffic circle in the busy intersection of Congress and State Streets, an unadorned circle of grey bricks marks the site of the Boston Massacre, where five colonists were killed by a British soldier in 1770. (The actual site is in the middle of the intersection, but, as guides are wont to tell tourists, don’t visit it unless you want to fall victim to “another Boston massacre.”)

The first victim of the Revolution was arguably Christopher Snider, a 12-year-old boy shot by a British loyalist after a protest over the trade acts. Two weeks later, on March 5, 1770, a mob protesting Snider’s death converged on the Old State House, throwing snow balls laced with stones and oyster shells at the soldiers, and later returning with bats and sticks.

Soldiers answered by firing their rifles into the crowd, and when the smoke cleared, five colonists lay dead, including Crispus Attucks, a former slave and whaler of Black and Native American descent.

The soldiers were later exonerated of the charges on the basis of self-defense. But the image of the “massacre” that stuck in the minds of the people was an engraving made by Paul Revere, which shows the soldiers firing unprovoked into a defenseless crowd.