Legacy
In commemoration of the centenary of the first successful armed resistance to British forces, Daniel Chester French, in his first major commission, produced one of his best-known statues (along with the Lincoln Memorial), the Concord Minute Man of 1775. Inscribed on the pedestal is the opening stanza of Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1837 Concord Hymn with the immortal words, "Shot heard 'round the world." According to the sculptor, the statue's likeness is not based on Isaac Davis as is widely claimed, the captain of the Acton militia and first to be killed in Concord during the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, but rather on the typical minuteman of the day.
Minutemen are portrayed in Paul Revere's Ride, a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Although historians criticize the work as being historically inaccurate, Longfellow understood the history and manipulated it for poetic effect.
The athletic teams of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst are nicknamed the Minutemen and Minutewomen.
The US Air Force named the LGM-30 Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, which was designed for rapid deployment in the event of a nuclear attack, the "Minuteman." The "Minuteman III" LGM-30G remains in service today.
Read more about this topic: Minutemen
Famous quotes containing the word legacy:
“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)