.451 Whitworth
The Whitworth rifle was an English-made percussion cap rifled musket used in the latter half of the 19th century. A single-shot muzzleloader with excellent long-range accuracy for its era, especially when used with a telescopic sight, the Whitworth rifle was widely regarded as the world's first sniper rifle. The Whitworth rifle saw extensive use with the Confederate sharpshooters in the American Civil War, claiming the lives of several Union generals, including Major General John Sedgwick, one of the highest-ranking Union officers killed during the Civil War, shot on 9 May 1864, at Spotsylvania. In October 2017, a surviving example of a Confederate Whitworth rifle was auctioned with a hammer price of $161,000. The Whitworth rifle was considered to be the very best rifle of its time in terms of accuracy, when compared to other British, French, American rifles, or those produced elsewhere. History The Whitworth rifle was designed by Sir Joseph Whitworth, a prominent British ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Muzzle-loading Rifle
A muzzle-loading rifle is a Muzzleloader, muzzle-loaded Small arms and light weapons, small arm that has a rifled barrel rather than a smoothbore, and is loaded from the muzzle of the barrel rather than the breech. Historically they were developed when rifled barrels were introduced by the 1740ies, which offered higher accuracy than the earlier smoothbores. The American longrifle evolved from the German "Jäger (military), Jäger" rifle; a popularly recognizable form of the "muzzleloader" was the Kentucky Rifle. Although by definition they must be reloaded after each shot in a time-consuming fashion, they are still produced for hunting. Comparable artillery pieces are termed rifled muzzle loader (RML). Small arms Like most History of the firearm, early firearms, the first rifles were muzzle-loading, although this involved a lot of complication in inserting the bullet past the rifling, and clogging and cleaning problems were notorious. There are also muzzle-loading pistols and sh ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Muzzleloader
A muzzleloader is any firearm in which the user loads the bullet, projectile and the propellant charge into the Muzzle (firearms), muzzle end of the gun (i.e., from the forward, open end of the gun's barrel). This is distinct from the modern designs of Breechloader, breech-loading firearms, in which user loads the ammunition into the Chamber (firearms), breech end of the gun barrel, barrel. The term "muzzleloader" applies to both rifled and smoothbore type muzzleloaders, and may also refer to the marksman who specializes in the shooting of such firearms. The firing methods, paraphernalia and mechanism further divide both categories as do caliber (from cannons to small-caliber palm guns). Modern muzzleloading firearms range from reproductions of sidelock, flintlock and percussion cap, percussion long guns, to in-line rifles that use modern inventions such as a closed breech, sealed percussion cap, primer and fast rifling to allow for considerable accuracy at long ranges. Modern Mo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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National Rifle Association Of The United Kingdom
The National Rifle Association (NRA) is the governing body for full bore rifle and pistol shooting sports in the United Kingdom. The Association was founded in 1859 with the founding aim of raising funds for an annual national rifle meeting to improve standards of marksmanship. Today the NRA continues this objective as well as organising civilian target shooting and selecting British teams to contest the ICFRA World Championships. The National Shooting Centre at Bisley is a wholly owned subsidiary of the association. History The National Rifle Association was founded in 1859, 12 years before its (unconnected) American namesake. Registered as a United Kingdom charity, its objectives are to "promote and encourage marksmanship throughout the King’s dominions in the interest of defence and the permanence of the volunteer and auxiliary forces, naval, military and air." In pursuit of this, its founding aim was to raise the funds for an annual national rifle meeting (now known ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Long Range Shooting
Long range shooting is a collective term for shooting sport, shooting disciplines where the distance to the target is significant enough that the shooter has to put effort into calculating external ballistics, various ballistic factors, especially in regards to the deviating effects of gravity and wind. While shooting at shorter ranges, a shooter only has to slightly adjust the sight (device), sights to compensate for limited bullet drop at most, but when the range is extended, wind drift will be the first factor affecting precision to the extent that it must be taken into serious account. Some would argue that long range shooting starts where assessment of wind, distance and various atmospheric conditions are equally important for the results as pure shooting skills - meaning that even if one conducts a technically perfect shot, the shooter will miss the target because of incorrect calculations, neglecting to take some elements into consideration, or merely due to unpredic ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Percussion Lock
The percussion cap, percussion primer, or caplock, introduced in the early 1820s, is a type of single-use percussion ignition device for muzzle loader firearm locks enabling them to fire reliably in any weather condition. Its invention gave rise to the caplock mechanism or percussion lock system which used percussion caps struck by the hammer to set off the gunpowder charge in rifles and cap and ball firearms. Any firearm using a caplock mechanism is a percussion gun. Any long gun with a cap-lock mechanism and rifled barrel is a percussion rifle. Cap and ball describes cap-lock firearms discharging a single bore-diameter spherical bullet with each shot. Description The percussion cap is a small cylinder of copper or brass with one closed end. Inside the closed end is a small amount of a shock-sensitive explosive material such as mercury fulminate (discovered in 1800; it was the only practical detonator used from about the mid-19th century to the early 20th century). ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Crimean War
The Crimean War was fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, the Second French Empire, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Kingdom of Sardinia (1720–1861), Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont from October 1853 to February 1856. Geopolitical causes of the war included the "Eastern question" (Decline and modernization of the Ottoman Empire, the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the "sick man of Europe"), expansion of Imperial Russia in the preceding Russo-Turkish wars, and the British and French preference to preserve the Ottoman Empire to maintain the European balance of power, balance of power in the Concert of Europe. The flashpoint was a dispute between France and Russia over the rights of Catholic Church, Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church, Orthodox minorities in Palestine (region), Palestine. After the Sublime Porte refused Nicholas I of Russia, Tsar Nicholas I's demand that the Empire's Orthodox subjects were to be placed unde ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pattern 1853 Enfield
The Enfield Pattern 1853 rifle-musket (also known as the Pattern 1853 Enfield, P53 Enfield, and Enfield rifle-musket) was a .577 calibre Minié-type muzzle-loading rifled musket, used by the British Empire from 1853 to 1867; after which many were replaced in service by the cartridge-loaded Snider–Enfield rifle. History and development The term "rifle-musket" originally referred to muskets with the smooth-bored barrels replaced with rifled barrels. The length of the barrels were unchanged, allowing the weapons to be fired in ranks, since a long rifle was necessary to enable the muzzles of the second rank of soldiers to project beyond the faces of the men in front. The weapon would also be sufficiently long when fitted with a bayonet to be effective against cavalry. Such weapons manufactured with rifled barrels, muzzle loading, single shot, and utilizing the same firing mechanism, also came to be called rifle-muskets. Royal Small Arms Factory developed the Pattern 1853 Enfi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Polygonal Rifling
Polygonal rifling ( ) is a type of gun barrel rifling where the traditional sharp-edged "lands and grooves" are replaced by less pronounced "hills and valleys", so the barrel bore has a polygonal (usually hexagonal or octagonal) cross-sectional profile. Polygonal riflings with a larger number of edges have shallower corners, which provide a better gas seal in relatively large diameter bores. For instance, in the pre-Gen 5 Glock pistols, octagonal rifling is used in the large diameter .45 ACP bore, which has an 11.23 mm (0.442 in) diameter, since it resembles a circle more closely than the hexagonal rifling used in smaller diameter bores.Barrel History History The principle of the polygonal barrel was proposed in 1853 by Sir[...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hammer Price
In auctions, the buyer's premium is a charge in addition to the hammer price (i.e. the winning bid announced) of an auction item, or lot. The winning bidder is required to pay both the hammer price and the percentage of that price called for by the buyer's premium. It is charged by the auctioneer in addition to the commission which has always been charged by auction houses to sellers. All of the buyer's premium is retained by the auction house and is not shared with the item's seller. Major auction houses have levied the buyer's premium for several decades, particularly in fine art auctions, with percentages in the region of 10–30%. In real estate auctions in many European countries, the buyer's premium, if charged at all, is much less (2–2.5%). More recently in the UK, however, repossessed properties have been offered without fee to the seller, but with a buyer's premium of 10%. The buyer's premium has been characterized by auction houses as a necessary contribution to the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Battle Of Spotsylvania Court House
The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, sometimes more simply referred to as the Battle of Spotsylvania (or the 19th-century spelling Spottsylvania), was the second major battle in Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Maj. Gen. George G. Meade's 1864 Overland Campaign of the American Civil War. Following the bloody but inconclusive Battle of the Wilderness, Grant's army disengaged from Confederate General Robert E. Lee's army and moved to the southeast, attempting to lure Lee into battle under more favorable conditions. Elements of Lee's army beat the Union army to the critical crossroads of the Spotsylvania Court House in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, and began entrenching. Fighting occurred on and off from May 8 through May 21, 1864, as Grant tried various schemes to break the Confederate line. In the end, the battle was tactically inconclusive, but both sides declared victory. The Confederacy declared victory because they were able to hold their defenses. The United States decl ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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John Sedgwick
John Sedgwick (September 13, 1813 – May 9, 1864) was an American military officer who served as a Union Army general during the American Civil War. He was wounded three times at the Battle of Antietam while leading his division in an unsuccessful assault against Confederate forces, causing him to miss the Battle of Fredericksburg. Under his command, the VI Corps (Union Army), VI Corps played an important role in the Battle of Chancellorsville, Chancellorsville Campaign by engaging Confederate troops at the Second Battle of Fredericksburg and the Battle of Salem Church. His corps was the last to arrive at the Battle of Gettysburg and thus did not see much action. Sedgwick was killed by a sharpshooter at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House on May 9, 1864, making him and Major Generals James B. McPherson, Joseph K. Mansfield, and John F. Reynolds the highest-ranking Union officers to be killed in the war. He is remembered for an List of last words#Ironic last words, ironic rema ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |