It is the eighteenth of April, the legendary day on which Paul Revere road his horse across the Massachusetts countryside in order to warn the local patriots of the advancing British regulars.
As Longfellow said, "Hardly a man is now alive / who remembers that famous day and year." Actually, they're all dead---every last one of them, and their grandchildren, too. But the poem is still superb, one of the greater works of art regarding the American Revolution, I think, and in itself a very interesting piece viz. the shifting meter, the absolutely delightful rhyming scheme, etc.
I have no idea if it's public domain, so I'll just link to it here: "Paul Revere's Ride." Enjoy it!
(Additionally, check out the story of Sybil Luddington, a grossly under-appreciated yet still legendary American hero. People sometimes refer to her as the "female Paul Revere," but it's probably more accurate to say that the old boy was the "male Sybil Luddington," given that she road, oh, twice as far as he did, and she was sixteen to boot.)
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