Shot heard 'round the world

The stanza is inscribed at the base of The Minute Man statue by Daniel Chester French, located in Concord, Massachusetts and refers to the first shot fired against the British in Concord during the Battle of Lexington and Concord in 1775.

The "Shot heard 'round the world" is a phrase that has come to represent several historical incidents. The line is originally from the opening stanza of Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Concord Hymn" (1837), and referred to the beginning of the American Revolutionary War. This 1775 proverbial first shot was fired during an armed stand-off between British forces and local militia in Lexington, escalating into engagements at the Old North Bridge in the battles of Lexington and Concord.

Later, in Europe and the Commonwealth of Nations, the phrase became synonymous with the shot that killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand and plunged Europe into World War I. Since then, the phrase has also been used to allude to the importance of single actions in sporting and other cultural and social events.

Assassination of Franz Ferdinand

Main article: Assassination of Franz Ferdinand

In Europe and the Commonwealth of Nations, formerly known as the British Commonwealth, which is completely made up of countries (except for Mozambique and Rwanda) that were formerly part of the British Empire, the phrase "The Shot heard around the World" has become associated with Gavrilo Princip's assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, an event considered to be one of the immediate causes of World War I.

While Princip fired two shots, the first hitting Duchess Sophie, with the second hitting Archduke Franz, it was the death of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne that propelled Austria Hungary and the rest of Europe into what was known as the "War To End All Wars".

In sports

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

• In baseball, it refers to Bobby Thomson's game winning home run that clinched the 1951 National League pennant for the New York Giants.

• 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 Super-series. The goal was made famous by a Frank Lennon photograph. 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). 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 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.

• In college basketball, it refers to the last second shot by Ernie Calverley of the University of Rhode Island against Bowling Green State University which tied the 1946 National Invitation Tournament quarterfinal game and sent it into overtime. Rhode Island went on to win the game 82-79.

• In US soccer, it is used to describe the goal scored by Paul Caligiuri for the United States 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.

• In American football, it is used to describe a play in the 1964 American Football League Championship Game where Buffalo Bills linebacker Mike Stratton laid a particularly hard hit on San Diego Chargers wide receiver Keith Lincoln.

In popular culture

• Schoolhouse Rock also used the event in a song for their morning program in a song entitled "Shot Heard 'Round the World," as reference to the American Revolution.

• Seconds by Human League uses the phrase as a refrain.

• Various sources have made the play-on-words "herd shot 'round the world" in reference to rocketry and cows.

• 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 "The Dead Kennedys" contained a song called "Potshot heard around the world" which discussed the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing.

In media

• 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."

• In 2006, the phrase was used by Newsweek and other news outlets in describing then-Vice President Dick Cheney's accidental shooting of Harry Whittington while quail hunting in Texas.

• In a New York Times article in December 2010, 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."