The US commemorates 250th anniversary of the 'great American battle,' the Battle of Bunker Hill

NEW YORK (AP) — As the U.S. marks the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, it might take a moment — or more — to remember why.

Start with the very name.

“There's something percussive about it: Battle of Bunker Hill,” says prize-winning historian Nathaniel Philbrick, whose “Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution” was published in 2013. “What actually happened probably gets hazy for people outside of the Boston area, but it's part of our collective memory and imagination.”

“Few ‘ordinary’ Americans could tell you that Freeman’s Farm, or Germantown, or Guilford Court House were battles,” says Paul Lockhart, a professor of history at Wright University and author of a Bunker Hill book, “The Whites of Their Eyes," which came out in 2011. "But they can say that Gettysburg,D-Day, and Bunker Hill were battles.”

Bunker Hill, Lockhart adds, “is the great American battle, if there is such a thing.”

Much of the world looks to the Battles of Lexington and Concord, fought in Massachusetts on April 19, 1775, as the start of the American Revolution. But Philbrick, Lockhart and others cite Bunker Hill and June 17 as the real beginning, the first time British and rebel forces faced off in sustained conflict over a specific piece of territory.

A day-long reenactment of the battle got underway Saturday morning with the seaside city of Gloucester standing in for Charlestown. Organizers chose a state park some 35 miles (56 kilometers) from Boston to stage the battle because such activity is prohibited at the actual site.

Hundreds of onlookers watched as sharpshooters positioned on a rocky outcropping fired upon red-coated British sailors landing in the harbor. During the actual battle, British soldiers responded by setting a fire to drive them off and used the smoke to mask their movements.

“We’re in a volatile period, but this is a way that we can really celebrate our heritage and our diverse creation of what became America," said Andrew Lyter, a reenactor who was overseeing the smaller vessels.

“I teach history at a college, and this is really neat to engage with an audience that’s very interested in being here and learning about their history,” he said.

Bunker Hill was an early showcase for two long-running themes in American history — improvisation and how an inspired band of militias could hold their own against an army of professionals.

“It was a horrific bloodletting, and provided the British high command with proof that the Americans were going to be a lot more difficult to subdue than had been hoped,” says the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Rick Atkinson, whose second volume of a planned trilogy on the Revolution, “The Fate of the Day,” was published in April.

The battle was born in part out of error; rebels were seeking to hold off a possible British attack by fortifying Bunker Hill, a 110-foot-high (34-meter-high) peak in Charlestown across the Charles River from British-occupied Boston. But for reasons still unclear, they instead armed a smaller and more vulnerable ridge known as Breed's Hill, “within cannon shot of Boston,” Philbrick says. "The British felt they had no choice but to attack and seize the American fort.”

Abigail Adams, wife of future President John Adams, and son John Quincy Adams, also a future president, were among thousands in the Boston area who looked on from rooftops, steeples and trees as the two sides fought with primal rage. A British officer would write home about the “shocking carnage” left behind, a sight “that never will be erased out of my mind 'till the day of my death.”

The rebels were often undisciplined and disorganized and they were running out of gunpowder. The battle ended with them in retreat, but not before the British had lost more than 200 soldiers and sustained more than 1,000 casualties, compared to some 450 colonial casualties and the destruction of hundreds of homes, businesses and other buildings in Charlestown. Bunker Hill would become characteristic of so much of the Revolutionary War: a technical defeat that was a victory because the British needed to win decisively and the rebels needed only not to lose decisively.

“Nobody now entertains a doubt but that we are able to cope with the whole force of Great Britain, if we are but willing to exert ourselves,” Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend in early July. “As our enemies have found we can reason like men, now let us show them we can fight like men also.”

Rodrique Ngowi in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and Holly Ramer in Concord, N.H. contributed to this report.

Ed Knight, of Manchester, Vt., who portrays a Colonial soldier, stands among the encampment tents during a reenactment in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, Saturday, June 21, 2025, in Gloucester, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

A Colonial soldier is knocked to the ground by a British soldier during a reenactment in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, Saturday, June 21, 2025, in Gloucester, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

A Colonial soldier fires on the British during a reenactment in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, Saturday, June 21, 2025, in Gloucester, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Chris Silver, right, of Celina, Ohio, prepares to face the British during a reenactment in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, Saturday, June 21, 2025, in Gloucester, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

British soldiers on the beach engage a Colonial soldier during a reenactment in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, Saturday, June 21, 2025, in Gloucester, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

British and Colonial soldiers engage during a reenactment in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, Saturday, June 21, 2025, in Gloucester, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Colonial soldiers prepare to face the British during a reenactment in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, Saturday, June 21, 2025, in Gloucester, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

A Ukrainian drone strike killed one person and wounded three others in the Russian city of Voronezh, local officials said Sunday.

A young woman died overnight in a hospital intensive care unit after debris from a drone fell on a house during the attack on Saturday, regional Gov. Alexander Gusev said on Telegram.

Three other people were wounded and more than 10 apartment buildings, private houses and a high school were damaged, he said, adding that air defenses shot down 17 drones over Voronezh. The city is home to just over 1 million people and lies some 250 kilometers (155 miles) from the Ukrainian border.

The attack came the day after Russia bombarded Ukraine with hundreds of drones and dozens of missiles overnight into Friday, killing at least four people in the capital Kyiv, according to Ukrainian officials.

For only the second time in the nearly four-year war, Russia used a powerful new hypersonic missile that struck western Ukraine in a clear warning to Kyiv and NATO.

The intense barrage and the launch of the nuclear-capable Oreshnik missile followed reports of major progress in talks between Ukraine and its allies on how to defend the country from further aggression by Moscow if a U.S.-led peace deal is struck.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday in his nightly address that Ukrainian negotiators “continue to communicate with the American side.”

Chief negotiator Rustem Umerov was in contact with U.S. partners Saturday, he said.

Separately, Ukraine’s General Staff said Russia targeted Ukraine with 154 drones overnight into Sunday and 125 were shot down.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

This photo provided by the Ukrainian Security Service on Friday, Jan. 9, 2026, shows a fragment believed to be a part of a Russian Oreshnik intermediate range hypersonic ballistic missile that hit the Lviv region. (Ukrainian Security Service via AP)

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, second left, listens to British Defense Secretary John Healey during their meeting in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Danylo Antoniuk)