21st August

Today was the day, in 1858, when General Sam Browne (he of the Cavalry) designed a brilliant new sword belt. He'd lost an arm during the Indian Mutiny of the previous year and found drawing his sword difficult because swords were slung by two loose straps from a waist belt. The 'Sam Browne' carried a sword frog that held the weapon close to the hip and could be drawn with one hand.
They don't make them like that any more.

In other news ...
The first Cadillac, the Rolls-Royce of American car design, appeared today in 1902. It had so many additional features ((four wheels, steering wheel, doors etc) that they immediately wrote a song about it - Knick Knack Cadillac.

11th May

While the English garrison were at church today at Meerut in Northern India in 1857, mutineers of the 3rd Bengal Cavalry went on the rampage, attacking their unarmed white officers as well as their wives and children. The causes of the Sepoy War or Indian Mutiny are still being argued over by historians today but the slaughter of the innocents - it happened again in the House of the Ladies at Cawnpore weeks later - is never justified by a difference of ideologies.

In other news ...
Back in 1900 the title of US world Heavyweight was lost by 'Gentleman Jim' Corbett to Jim Jefferies. The fight lasted for 23 rounds. Men were really men in those days and of course Gentleman Jim's great grandson Ronnie fought as a budgie-weight before taking to comedy.