The Boston Massacre was the 1770 confrontation in Boston in which British soldiers fired into a colonist crowd.
The incident occurred on March 5, 1770, on King Street, outside Boston's Custom House. Tensions had risen because British troops were stationed in Boston to enforce unpopular parliamentary measures, including the Townshend Acts. A crowd gathered around a sentry, and the confrontation escalated as insults, snowballs, stones, and other objects were thrown.
Nine soldiers of the 29th Regiment of Foot were involved. The shooting killed five colonists, including Crispus Attucks, and wounded several others. The event quickly became a powerful Patriot symbol, even though the soldiers' legal cases produced mixed verdicts rather than blanket convictions.
Patriot leaders used the name “Boston Massacre” in speeches, newspaper reports, and commemorations. Paul Revere's widely circulated engraving helped shape public opinion, although it presented a strongly propagandistic version of the scene. The episode intensified colonial opposition to British rule and remains an important event on the road to the American Revolution.