On March 5, 1770, an argument over an unpaid wig between a teenage apprentice and a British sentry escalated into a deadly confrontation on King Street. This episode strips away the mythology of the Boston Massacre to examine the tense, occupied city of Boston after the Townshend Acts and how a single panicked moment changed history.

We walk through the ringing bells, the crowd of hundreds, Captain Thomas Preston’s detachment, and Private Hugh Montgomery’s first shot. Then we follow the information war, from the Patriot pamphlet rushed to London to Paul Revere’s famous engraving, and the courtroom drama in which John Adams defended the soldiers, winning acquittals and invoking the benefit of clergy for two convicted of manslaughter.

• How the Townshend Acts and the death of Christopher Seider set Boston on edge
• Why church bells signaling fire drew a massive crowd to King Street
• How Paul Revere’s engraving reshaped the event into political propaganda
• John Adams’ legal strategy and the controversy over how he described the crowd
• How Patrick Carr’s deathbed statement helped shape the dying declaration exception