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Am I the only one who thinks that even .69 caliber (first off: nice) is a loving huge projectile? It just seems enormous even if it's spherical rather than what we think of when we think of bullet shaped
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May 19, 2019 16:39
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Milo and POTUS posted:Am I the only one who thinks that even .69 caliber (first off: nice) is a loving huge projectile? It just seems enormous even if it's spherical rather than what we think of when we think of bullet shaped iirc black powder firearms generally had larger projectiles but that's because the projectile traveled relatively slowly. modern smokeless powder propels a projectile much faster and that's why the bullets can be smaller.
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May 19, 2019 17:36
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Milo and POTUS posted:Am I the only one who thinks that even .69 caliber (first off: nice) is a loving huge projectile? It just seems enormous even if it's spherical rather than what we think of when we think of bullet shaped It is, but that's typical for black powder projectiles, especially early ones that still used round ball. There's a (practical) upper limit for how fast black powder can move a projectile, so what was commonly done was to just have very large projectiles so there's still a lot of kinetic energy going downrange even if it's not going very fast.
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May 19, 2019 18:06
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Milo and POTUS posted:Am I the only one who thinks that even .69 caliber (first off: nice) is a loving huge projectile? It just seems enormous even if it's spherical rather than what we think of when we think of bullet shaped It absolutely is, and there was a reason for that. To my understanding, the issue was that black powder actually burns rather slowly, as far as propellants go. So when you ignite it, the burning part at the rear will already be pushing the rest of the powder down the barrel before it had a chance to burn, to the point where some of it may just be pushed out the end without ever burning. And that's a bit of a problem when you try to make your bullet go fast. Say you take your average musket, and then just put twice as much powder in an attempt to make your bullet go faster. Assuming it doesn't explode, almost all of that extra black powder is just gonna fly out the end without making any difference. The issue that your projectiles would be under-calibre compared to the barrel also didn't help any, causing further loss of velocity in addition to accuracy. So at the time, if you wanted to make your bullet go faster (which meant longer range and better effect against armour), the most straightforward way was to just scale up the diameter of your gun, allowing more black powder to burn at the same time. When breech-loading guns became more common it was easier to make bullets that fit snugly into the barrel (meaning more velocity for a given load of black powder), so smaller calibres became more feasible, especially for shorter-ranged handguns. But high-velocity, long-ranged guns in a small calibre never really became practical until the much faster-burning smokeless powder was introduced.
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May 19, 2019 18:13
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Milo and POTUS posted:Am I the only one who thinks that even .69 caliber (first off: nice) is a loving huge projectile? It just seems enormous even if it's spherical rather than what we think of when we think of bullet shaped Yeah, that's an enormous bullet pretty much no matter what. I don't know if you've ever handled or fired a muzzle loader but the guns are pretty freaking big. The first personal firearms were basically tiny cannons; they'd be so long they could double as a pole arm and you had to have a pole to stand the drat thing on to fire it at all. There was no way to hold the thing like a gun for any reasonable period of time. The first guns basically ran entirely on brute force. The powder sucked, the guns never matched as they were hand made, they tended to explode, and they just chucked a chunk of lead at the other team at whatever speed the amount of powder you stuffed in happened to throw it. Smaller caliber weapons needed much more precision in manufacturing that was available at the time. People, being people, worked on it over time and eventually invented things like smokeless powder, interchangeable parts, and all of the innovations that make modern guns possible. Historical fun fact: "bullet proof" actually goes back to this era. You might think that a steel breast plate would never stop a bullet but at the time they totally could. The guns of the time didn't have nearly the kinetic energy coming out of them that modern guns do. To show that a breast plate could stop a bullet an armorer would literally have somebody shoot it. A divot where a bullet hit the armor and failed to go through was considered a maker's mark, in a way; it was something people looked for when they found themselves in need of armor. They'd even decorate them.
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May 19, 2019 18:29
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The last British person to be killed in a duel in England is buried in my home town. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Alexander_Seton The last lethal duel here was a few years later, but it was between two Frenchmen so it doesn't really count.
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May 19, 2019 19:10
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While we're talking about duels, how about Sir William Petty versus Sir Alan Brodrick: (One other source claims the duel was actually with Hierome Sankey, but I suspect that's an error based on Petty's separate dispute with him. Unless he used the same tactic with two opponents, I suppose.)
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May 20, 2019 13:19
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Something about that is extremely  And yeah, a lot of the people thinking guns automatically ruin fantasy settings really aren't aware that guns were around for centuries along with knights in plate armour and probably Shakespeare, they just sucked. And it wasn't even guns that made knights obsolete, it was pike formations.
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May 20, 2019 14:36
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Something about that is extremely And if we extend that to all gunpowder weaponry then we have the Chinese using them(especially rockets) even longer Really one of the things to keep in mind is that black powder could have potentially been discovered at pretty much any point in history if certain factors had collided just right(indeed it's possible that we could have never discovered it at all for the same reasons)
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May 20, 2019 19:11
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Ghost Leviathan posted:And it wasn't even guns that made knights obsolete, it was pike formations. It was a lot of things that made knights obsolete. When the weapons got better the armor had to get better. But that was more expensive and the black death killed of a lot of the knights serfs which meant that the knight lost a source of income. No problem, because the knight could just start to rob people! This was actually legal because the knight could declare a feud against persons and towns he wanted to rob. But then the population eventually gets fed up and kill the knights and burn down their castles and the various kings decides that hiring mercenaries is much easier all things considered.
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May 20, 2019 20:02
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The_White_Crane posted:While we're talking about duels, how about Sir William Petty versus Sir Alan Brodrick: Similarly, Abraham Lincoln was once challenged to a duel by political rival James Shields for writing letters to the editor of a newspaper under the name Rebecca calling out Shields' behavior toward women as an aside while discussing the bankruptcy of the Illinois State Bank. Shields found out it was Lincoln and eventually challenged him to the duel when Lincoln wouldn't retract his letter. Lincoln chose as the weapons the largest cavalry broadswords that could be found and then this happened: American Battlefield Trust posted:The day of the duel, September 22, arrived and the combatants met at Bloody Island, Missouri to face death or victory. As the two men faced each other, with a plank between them that neither was allowed to cross, Lincoln swung his sword high above Shields to cut through a nearby tree branch. This act demonstrated the immensity of Lincoln’s reach and strength and was enough to show Shields that he was at a fatal disadvantage. With the encouragement of bystanders, the two men called a truce. Twenty years later, during the Civil War, Shields was serving as a Brigadier General in the Army of the Potomac and that summer he delivered Stonewall Jackson his only loss during the battle of Kernstown. Lincoln demonstrated the end of their personal animosity by recommending Shields' promotion to the rank of Major General.
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May 20, 2019 20:27
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Lincoln was apparently a seriously strong man. I'd call that choice of duelling weapons a canny choice to play to his strengths moreso than a joking attempt to create an impractical duel.
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May 20, 2019 21:17
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If memory serves Lincoln knew he was freakishly strong but also couldn't actually fight for crap so his plan was to just terrify him out of the whole thing. People that knew him described him as a quiet, decent person that didn't like conflict all that much. But, you know, if you forced him into it he didn't gently caress around. Even then he'd rather settle thing whole thing without fighting. It seems that was his plan in that situation; choose a weapon that would actually fit what he did have and then demonstrate quickly that the duel would go very, very badly for the other guy if it actually happened. That was pretty much the "I could annihilate you right now if I wanted to but I'm choosing not to. Just walk away, bro" moment when he hacked the tree.
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May 20, 2019 22:42
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When Lincoln is portrayed in movies and tv, they never give him the proper accent. He had a heavy rural southern accent that he was teased a lot for. He probably sounded like Larry The Cable Guy.
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May 21, 2019 03:11
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ToxicSlurpee posted:If memory serves Lincoln knew he was freakishly strong but also couldn't actually fight for crap so his plan was to just terrify him out of the whole thing. He was actually a wrestler and might have 'invented' the chokeslam.
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May 21, 2019 03:23
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ChocNitty posted:When Lincoln is portrayed in movies and tv, they never give him the proper accent. He had a heavy rural southern accent that he was teased a lot for. He probably sounded like Larry The Cable Guy. Also his voice was noted as being noticeably high pitched. So imagine Larry the Cable Guy after he just inhaled helium and you're probably close to Lincoln.
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May 21, 2019 03:40
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FreudianSlippers posted:Also his voice was noted as being noticeably high pitched. Wasn't the high voice a clue that supported the supposition that Abe suffered from Marfan syndrome? As an aside to that, I enjoy reading or hearing about historical forensics such as: A guy put together a clue from Mozart's diary and a description of the symptoms leading to his death and figured ol' Wolfgang died from trichinosis. Another was a med student who deduced that he was reading the post mortem report of Edgar Allan Poe and concluded that Poe most likely died of encephalitis caused by rabies, not, as is widely believed, from extreme boozification.
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May 21, 2019 09:00
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dee eight posted:Wasn't the high voice a clue that supported the supposition that Abe suffered from Marfan syndrome? I imagine Poe's booze habits probably didn't help though Similarly if Lovecraft were alive today I'm sure psychologists and psychiatrists would have a field day sorting out the various mental illnesses and issues with his brain chemistry that he must have suffered from(which is part of why despite his many faults of character I've never been able to hate him like a lot of people these days do)
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May 21, 2019 09:11
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Milo and POTUS posted:Am I the only one who thinks that even .69 caliber (first off: nice) is a loving huge projectile? It just seems enormous even if it's spherical rather than what we think of when we think of bullet shaped There are a number of good reasons for bigger calibre with black powder. Ones is that black powder runs into diminishing returns on velocity at much lower speeds than smokeless powder. Because you can only get a bullet to go so fast, if you want to give it more momentum and kinetic energy, you have to have more mass. Then there’s the issue that a sphere is the worst shape to pack mass into a cylindrical bore. Modern bullets can get mass from length. Balls have to grow in diameter. Finally, modern bullets can expand and/or tumble to make big holes in flesh. Big holes incapacitate the enemy swifter and surer than small holes. When you can’t use any tricks to make the bullet act larger, you just make it larger.
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May 21, 2019 09:53
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Byzantine posted:He was actually a wrestler and might have 'invented' the chokeslam. The Carl Sandberg, in his biography posted:The two fighters, stripped to the waist, mauled at each other with bare knuckles. A crowd formed a ring and stood cheering, yelling, hissing, and after a while saw Johnston getting the worst of it. The ring of the crowd was broken when Abe shouldered his way through, stepped out took hold of Grigsby and threw him out of the center of the fight ring. Then, so they said, Abe Lincoln called out, “I’m the big buck of this lick,” and his eyes sweeping the circle of the crowd he challenged. “If any of you want to try it, come on and whet your horns.” Wild fist-fighting came and for months around the store in Gentryville they argued about which gang whipped the other.
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May 21, 2019 09:59
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Byzantine posted:He was actually a wrestler and might have 'invented' the chokeslam. BAH GAWD KING HE'S CHOKESLAMMED JEFFERSON DAVIS STRAIGHT TO HELL
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May 21, 2019 12:59
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dee eight posted:Wasn't the high voice a clue that supported the supposition that Abe suffered from Marfan syndrome? A lot of the "poe was a lech and a drunkard" stuff came post mortem from a dude who hated him. So I always put a big asterisk on him dying of boozing. Also wasnt there a theory he was pressganged by a vote group and hosed up by them too?
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May 21, 2019 13:40
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Barry Bluejeans posted:BAH GAWD KING HE'S CHOKESLAMMED JEFFERSON DAVIS STRAIGHT TO HELL IT WAS ME JEFFERSON! IT WAS ME ALL ALONG!
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May 21, 2019 17:13
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Mycroft Holmes posted:IT WAS ME JEFFERSON! IT WAS ME ALL ALONG! THAT'S GOTTA BE ABE, THAT'S GOTTA BE ABE!!!
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May 21, 2019 17:57
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chitoryu12 posted:I don't think the assertion that dueling pistols were inaccurate would have been true. Smoothbore weapons have a notorious reputation for inaccuracy, but this comes from military firearms. Black powder creates a ton of fouling in the barrel when fired because of how inefficiently it burns, which gradually makes it harder and harder to shove bullets down the barrel of a muzzleloading weapon. Because you can't stop to clean every 3 or 4 shots in a pitched battle, soldiers were issued slightly undersized bullets (the Brown Bess was nominally .75 caliber but usually fired a ball around .69 caliber) that would easily be shoved down even a filthy barrel. This came at the cost of a ton of windage (the gap between the bullet and the barrel) that reduced accuracy until a musket could barely hit a man-sized target at 100 yards. My understanding is that it depends upon the culture. In some periods and areas, dueling pistols would be intentionally inaccurate. The idea is simple. A gentleman asserts his honor by facing danger with courage and nobility. But a sufficiently skilled gentleman could engage in a duel without feeling that he was in danger. And without the danger, there could be no courage, and without courage there could be no honor. Thus, some cultures sought to limit the skill involved in dueling. At least in American dueling culture right before the civil war, there was an idea that aiming was dishonorable, and that maximum luck-based no-scopes were the proper way to duel.
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May 21, 2019 20:53
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Even when the guns were technically capable of accuracy, the sights were woeful.
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May 21, 2019 22:35
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Barry Bluejeans posted:BAH GAWD KING HE'S CHOKESLAMMED JEFFERSON DAVIS STRAIGHT TO HELL Mycroft Holmes posted:IT WAS ME JEFFERSON! IT WAS ME ALL ALONG! Aubergine Mage posted:THAT'S GOTTA BE ABE, THAT'S GOTTA BE ABE!!! See now I just want the battle hymn of the republic to start blaring and people to go "BAH GAWD THAT'S ABE LINCOLN'S MUSIC!"
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May 21, 2019 23:49
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Is Teddy John Cena?
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May 22, 2019 00:12
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Josef bugman posted:See now I just want the battle hymn of the republic to start blaring and people to go "BAH GAWD THAT'S ABE LINCOLN'S MUSIC!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvjOG5gboFU The tune with superior lyrics.
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May 22, 2019 00:37
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Platystemon posted:Even when the guns were technically capable of accuracy, the sights were woeful. golden bubble posted:My understanding is that it depends upon the culture. In some periods and areas, dueling pistols would be intentionally inaccurate. The idea is simple. A gentleman asserts his honor by facing danger with courage and nobility. But a sufficiently skilled gentleman could engage in a duel without feeling that he was in danger. And without the danger, there could be no courage, and without courage there could be no honor. Thus, some cultures sought to limit the skill involved in dueling. At least in American dueling culture right before the civil war, there was an idea that aiming was dishonorable, and that maximum luck-based no-scopes were the proper way to duel. At the typical distance it wouldn't really matter. You might not be able to make a perfect heart shot every time but you'd only be about 40 feet apart. Even a military pistol firing undersized balls down a dirty bore would be pretty easy to hit with. Making the gun intentionally so inaccurate that making a hit was luck would require either a bullet so small that it could be dropped straight down the barrel without a ramrod or a barrel that was damaged in some way. The historical record (most prominently actual dueling pistols from the era with all their kit) doesn't bear that out.
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May 22, 2019 12:47
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It's actually not trivial to hit a man-sized target at 40' with a handgun, in any case. If you have time to steady up and take aim, and are familiar with your gun, you can probably do it. If you're twenty paces, turning, and firing then you probably don't need any help to miss.
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May 22, 2019 14:55
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golden bubble posted:My understanding is that it depends upon the culture. In some periods and areas, dueling pistols would be intentionally inaccurate. The idea is simple. A gentleman asserts his honor by facing danger with courage and nobility. But a sufficiently skilled gentleman could engage in a duel without feeling that he was in danger. And without the danger, there could be no courage, and without courage there could be no honor. Thus, some cultures sought to limit the skill involved in dueling. At least in American dueling culture right before the civil war, there was an idea that aiming was dishonorable, and that maximum luck-based no-scopes were the proper way to duel. Only assholes actually aimed in a duel.
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May 22, 2019 16:47
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ArcMage posted:It's actually not trivial to hit a man-sized target at 40' with a handgun, in any case. If you have time to steady up and take aim, and are familiar with your gun, you can probably do it. Not all duels were the "twenty paces then turn." Some were done with alternating shots where the person who was challenged was given the first right to fire and each person just had to stand there and take it, which meant hoping that your opponent would make the sane option and intentionally miss instead of trying to kill you. Either way, I don't know of any historical evidence that dueling pistols were inaccurate or purposefully made that way. The evidence consistently bears out the opposite: they were finely finished weapons meant to be shot clean and with properly fitting ammunition molded specifically to the gun.
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May 22, 2019 17:02
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Alhazred posted:Only assholes actually aimed in a duel. If I'm ever challenged to a duel, assholes are my weapon of choice 
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May 22, 2019 18:16
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chitoryu12 posted:Not all duels were the "twenty paces then turn." Some were done with alternating shots where the person who was challenged was given the first right to fire and each person just had to stand there and take it, which meant hoping that your opponent would make the sane option and intentionally miss instead of trying to kill you. Given the guns at the time, and the fact that they were using pistols, the shot would lose a lot of energy on the way. This was part of the motivation to walk so far apart in the first place. This was also why there was a particular duel that went down in history (I forget who was even in it but it was mentioned in a documentary) because the two duelers decided to raise the stakes by both holding ends of a handkerchief. No X paces apart, very little chance of missing. The servants present were doing their damnedest to talk the guys out of it but they weren't having it so instead they convinced the guys that the servants would go off, only load one of the pistols, and then randomly pick who got first pick. That way instead of the very likely outcome of both of them dying only one of them would. Apparently this sort of thing happened exactly once on the record and was also one of the last duels wherever it happened that led to duels being banned wherever it happened. One very real snag with dueling culture is that you always have dicks trying to have the best duel which inevitably leads to riskier duels.
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May 22, 2019 18:33
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ToxicSlurpee posted:One very real snag with dueling culture is that you always have dicks trying to have the best duel which inevitably leads to riskier duels. Monsieur de Grandpré and Monsieur de Pique.
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May 22, 2019 19:14
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If your duel doesn't involve wrestling around with knives on the banks of the mississippi river I'm not sure it can even really be called one.
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May 22, 2019 20:53
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Given the guns at the time, and the fact that they were using pistols, the shot would lose a lot of energy on the way. Not unless you used a minuscule amount of powder. Bullets from an average muzzleloading handgun flew with similar velocity to a .45 ACP round and were far larger and heavier. They caused severe, crippling wounds that medical technology was often ill-equipped to handle (hence why so many soldiers got amputations: there was no good way for 19th century medical technology to repair bullet damage from a musket or cannonball). At 40 feet the bullet would be enough to kill even without hitting a vital organ.
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May 22, 2019 20:59
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drrockso20 posted:
Lovecraft had a pretty tragic upbringing, and seeing his dad go violently insane from tertiary syphilis at an early age explains an awful lot.
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May 22, 2019 21:33
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Tunicate posted:Lovecraft had a pretty tragic upbringing, and seeing his dad go violently insane from tertiary syphilis at an early age explains an awful lot. Yeah that and his aunts were such awful people and terrible influences too
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May 22, 2019 22:20
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