British troops fire into an unruly crowd in Boston, Massachusetts, killing five

27-year-old Thomas Jefferson begins constructing a mansion on a hilltop in Charlottesville, calling it Monticello ('little mountain')

Some fifty colonists, disguised as Indians, tip a valuable cargo of tea into Boston harbour as a protest against British tax

As a retaliation for the Boston Tea Party, the British parliament closes Boston's port with the first of its Coercive Acts

Delegates from twelve American colonies meet in Philadelphia and agree not to import any goods from Britain

Pioneer Daniel Boone and other backwoodsmen cut the road west that will bring settlers to Kentucky

Patrick Henry makes a stirring declaration – 'Give me liberty or give me death' – to the Virginia Assembly

General Gage sends a detachment of British troops to seize weapons held by American Patriots at Concord

Paul Revere is one of the US riders taking an urgent warning to Concord, but he is captured on the journey

The first shot of the American Revolution is fired in a skirmish between redcoats and militiamen at Lexington, on the road to Concord

Delegates from the states reassemble in Philadelphia, with hostilities against the British already under way in Massachusetts

Delegates in Philadelphia select George Washington as commander-in-chief of the colonial army

At Bunker Hill, overlooking Boston from the north, the American militiamen prove their worth against British professional soldiers

Delegates to the Continental Congress make a final bid for peace, sending the Olive Branch Petition to George III

Britain declares the colonies to be in a state of rebellion, and sets up a naval blockade of the American coastline

Yankee Doodle is the most popular song with the patriot troops in the American Revolution

George Washington raises on Prospect Hill a new American flag, the British red ensign on a ground of thirteen stripes – one for each colony

In Common Sense, an anonymous pamphlet, English immigrant Thomas Paine is the first to argue that the American colonies should be independent

George Washington drives the British garrison from Boston, and moves south to protect New York

The revolutionary convention of Virginia votes for independence from Britain, and instructs its delegates in Philadelphia to propose this motion

Virginia's motion for independence from Britain is passed at the Continental Congress of the colonies with no opposing vote

Thomas Jefferson's text for the Declaration of Independence is accepted by the Congress in Philadelphia

John Hancock is the first delegate to sign the Declaration of Independence, formally written out on a large sheet of parchment

George Washington, driven from New York by the British, retreats towards Philadelphia

George Washington defeats the British at Trenton at a psychologically important moment in the course of the war