A railroad detective discovered a plot well in progress to detonate a rail line that President Taft was to travel over later that day.
The National Urban League was created.
The first meeting of the Progressive Republican Party occured. It endorsed Senator Robert La Follette for President, but that would not stick.
It's odd to think that in 1911 the Republican Party was a center right party that was been threatened by Republicans to its left. The Progressive Party was an outright liberal party.
Today, of course, there's an attempt to threaten the Republican Party in Wyoming with a challenge from the very hard right.
Philadelphia took game two of the 1911 World Series.
A company of Marines landed at Hankou, in Hubei, to protect the property and employees of the Standard Oil Company as the revolution in China started to spread.
Qing Dynasty Minister of War Prince Yin-chang secretly requested Japanese assistance in putting down the ongoing nationalist uprising.
Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, was sworn in as the new Governor General of Canada.
Ford Motors opened its first plant in the United Kingdom.
President William Howard Taft at the laying of the cornerstone for the Oakland City Hall, Oakland, California on October 13, 1911
Mendocino Coast, October 13, 1911.
'Mid the redwoods of Mendocino County, California, October 13, 1911.
Wendling (now Navarro), California, October 13, 1911.
A post more in keeping with the purpose of this site, as opposed to keeping track, for instance, of Donald Trump's mental decline or the eclipse of the United States as a serious nation.
While it had been in the works for a few years (not many, really) the final version of John Browning's design for a .45 Automatic Colt Pistol handgun for the Army was adopted in 1911, as we recently covered.
The Colt Government Model has never gone away, although there was a period of time after the service adopted the M9 in which it looked like it would. It not only did not, it actually revived in the civilian and even military markets thereafter. It's just too good of a design to leave. Technologically, there hasn't been a single handgun design feature introduced after it that didn't already exist at the time, and there's never been anything to surpass it.
2. Tony Lama Boots
Here's an odd one you wouldn't quite expect.
Anthony Lama was born to an immigrant family in Brooklyn just six months after his family arrived in the United States from Italy. By age 11 both of his parents had died and he apprenticed to a shoemaker in Syracuse, New York. At age 16 he joined the U.S. Army illegally (he was underage) and, given that he had leatherworking skills he was assigned as a saddler in the cavalry. Saddlers worked all sorts of leather at the time and were highly regarded for their leather working skills. Lama, in that capacity, worked and repaired footgear.
After being discharged upon completion of his service, he stayed in El Paso where he continued to repair boots for servicemen. That soon spread into shoemaking. He opened what was initially a small repair shot in the city in 1911. His reputation was such that he was soon sought out by local cowboys and then entered the cowboy boot manufacturing business.
Showing somewhat the nature of the worldview of Catholics, in 1917 he married local Esther Hernandez, and therefore the family consisted of what Americans at the time regarded as two "races", Italian and Hispanic. By the 1930s it was making boots on a wholesale basis. The family business was incorporated in 1946, showing the extent to which it had grown. In 1990 it was bought by Justin boots, so it now belongs to another company, but the brand name and brand continues on.
I've had two pairs of Lama's over the years. They were both very high shaft real cowboy boots and I liked them both. One pair, with a very high heel, I still have, although they're really only useful for riding.
3. The Maine Hunting Shoe.
L. L. Bean was the inventor of the Maine Hunting Shoe, and the shoe, which is really a boot, caused the company to come into existence the next year.
Rubber soled with a leather upper, they boot came about as Bean himself was tired of getting cold wet feet while hunting. The design, which was initially extremely high topped, took off rapidly, allowing for Bean to turn the shoe into an enterprise.
The boot has remained popular for decades, indeed, well over a century, which belies how revolutionary it was at the time. In 1911 outdoor boots were normally hobnailed, if in fact they just didn't have simple leather soles. Rubber soles shoes had first appeared in the 1860s, but they were problematic and for hte most part, outdoor boots, did not use them until they started to be introduced in earnest in the 1920s. Even as late as World War Two every major army other than the US Army used hobnailed boots.
The Maine Hunting Shoe proved to be really popular in the niche in which it occupied. During World War Two it was adopted by the U.S. Army as the "Shoe Pack", something my father always referred to them as. At some point, and I'm not sure when, these boots evolved into the popular insulated boot of similar construction. Apparently some shoe packs had insulated insoles in World War Two so it must have been no later than that period. During the Korean War the insulated style was widely issued. The boots, while designed by Bean, were largely manufactured by other companies.
I have two pairs, one of which is a Cabela's knock off. My good pair are like the originals, very high topped. I actually bought them some time in the 1980s for duck hunting, as I lacked a dog and found myself frequently getting into the water to retrieve ducks, and I otherwise was doing a fair amount of stomping around in wet terrain. They're great for that. I've known some people who really favored the shoe variant of it, which I've never owned.
4. The M1911 Campaign Hat.
The M1911 was the last felt campaign hat to be issued by the U.S. Army and, like the M1911 pistol, it's never gone away.
Campaign hats are a type of broad brimmed hat adopted for military use. In most instances, they very closely resemble broad brimmed hats common in their culture of origin, and in some instances there's no difference at all. This is pretty much the case with the M1911 campaign hat.
Broad brimmed hats have been used by the Army since there was an Army. Usually the M1858 "Hardee" hat is cited as the first example, but it really isn't. During the American Revolution soliders commonly used them, with some of them being "cocked" and some not. The cocked ones are the best remembered in the example of the "tricorner" hat, but you can find examples where only one side was cocked or there was no cock at all.
Contrary to common assumption, Congress completely disbanded the Army after the Revolution, choosing to rely on state militia's for ground troops instead. It wasn't until the Northwest Indian War that it came back into existence. 1794 ought to be regarded as the actual birthdate of the U.S. Army, since there's been an Army since then.
I'm not an expert in 18th Century military uniforms, and for that reason I can't really say when the tricorner went out of favor. What I can say is that the Army generally followed European uniform patterns after that, and it wasn't until the Mexican War that the Army really determined that European military headgear was, well, stupid. After the Mexican War the Army adopted the Hardee Hat, which was a campaign hat, which had originally been contemplated for mounted troops. It officially came in as an Army wide dress hat in 1858, About the same time the Army adopted the kepi, with those first coming in during the early 1850s. The kepi is a pretty simple hat and perhaps we'll deal with it elsewhere, but some deficiencies must have been noted early on as in 1858 the Army also adopted the M1858 "forage cap" which was quite similar, but larger, and which could serve as sort of a wool bucket for foraging.
In spite of being a dress hat, the Hardee hat did see use in the field as a campaign hat, with it frequently being reshaped by the user so that its original shape was practically unrecognizable. Additionally, during the war thousands of troops on both sides chose to wear broad brimmed felt hats rather than official kepis or forage caps as they simply liked them better.
After the Civil War the Army adopted a broad brimmed campaign hat in 1872, the M1872, which was one of the odder official campaign hats in that it was designed so that its substantial brim could be folded up on both sides, sort of like 19th Century naval officers hats. The hat wasn't hugely popular and troops often bought their own more substantial hats. The 1872 hat yielded to the 1876 hat, and from there a series of short brimmed nutria fur campaign hats that went from black to tan in color as the 20th Century approached with the last official version being the M1895. During the entire period, however, soldiers routinely bought private purchase broad brimmed hats of better quality, with the same also being true of boots, and even trousers.
A popular civilian style of "cowboy hat" was the Montana Peak, with it being particularly popular in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century. The style was used by the Boer War Canadian volunteer cavalry unit the Strathconas and the North West Mounted Police picked it up unofficially, until 1904 when they officially adopted the style The U.S Army adopted the style on September 8, 1911, with the ridges pointed differently than Mounties variant and the brim being shorter. The Marine Corps adopted the design in 1912. New Zealand's army, following an internal example of some New Zealand militia units, adopted it in 1916.
In every service unit which has adopted it, it remains in use. It was universal issue in the U.S. Army until 1917, when the helmet was introduced and the Army started to issue overseas garrison cap, reflecting that in combat troops were now wearing the helmet and the big hat was awkward to store, but it returned to general issue in 1919 and remained in general issue until some point in 1940. During World War Two it remained an official item but was not generally issued, except to cavalrymen. Following the war it remained in use, but only for rifle and pistol teams, however, in 1964 it returned and was also issued to Drill Instructors. This followed the example of the Marine Corps which had also stopped general issue of the M1912 during World War Two, but which kept it on for marksmanship units. The Marines adopted it for Drill Instructors starting in 1956. A variant was later adopted in blue for Air Force Drill Instructors. Due to the advances in hearing protection, marksmanship units have abandoned the design as it does not readily accommodate the same, for now.
The Battle of Ambarawa began between Indonesian and Dutch forces, proof, I suppose, that war doesn't tire people from war, in spite of what people may suppose.
Mongolia voted 100% in favor of leaving China, which it had really done in 1911 anyway, with over a 98% voter turnout.
100%?
And that voter turn out?
Anyhow, Mongolia became de facto independent in 1911, although China entered with force in 1919. In one of the bizarro incitements of history, the Chinese were forced out by the forces of the uber creepy White Russian forces of Baron Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, whose forces were in turn routed by the Red Army in 1921, whereupon it became a defacto Soviet satellite.
A Soldier fires an M17 handgun at targets during the Victory Week Pistol Competition, or Regional Combat Pistol Championship, June 4. The top 10% of firers at the event earned a bronze Excellence in Competition marksmanship badge. (Photo Credit: Nathan Clinebelle)
The M17 and M18 pistols, manufactured by SIG, which are versions of their P320 handgun, are really taking the heat.
They have been for awhile, but this local incident really ramped things up:
Air Force Division Grounds M18 Handguns After Airman Dies On Wyoming Base
Let's first say, anyway you look at this, this is a terrible tragedy (but see below).
But is anything really wrong with the pistol. SIG says there isn't.
SIG, or expanded Schweizerische Industrie Gesellschaft, is one of the premier firearms manufacturers in the world. In this context its party of a trade union with the German firm of J. P. Sauer und Sohn GmbH in order to work around Swiss laws that would largely prohibit the export of military weapons. SIG did export some prior to the industrial union, with the excellent Stg 57 in export variants, being a prime example, but in recent years SIG has seriously moved into the export arms market in a way that it had not before, following the well blazed trail of Mauser and Fabrique Nationale, both of which at one time occupied the stage of supplier of small arms to the world at different points.
The US was never part of that market until Robert Strange McNamara vandalized Springfield Armory and foisted the AR15 upon the military against its will. That had the impact of making the US a commercial small arms purchaser in a way that it had not been since the American Revolution, and we've paid for it every since. It's completely true that the US had purchased commercial arms prior to that, with it notably going to commercial sidearms after Colt's perfection of cap and ball revolvers, and it interestingly relied upon commercial firms for machineguns, but when Springfield Armory was around, it always had an excellent in house backup. After that, the US became entirely reliant upon civilian suppliers.
A lesson there, interestingly enough, is that to some degree being a commercial supplier of small arms to the US military has been historically a really bad deal for commercial firms. Being the manufacturer of the M1917 rifle during World War One nearly killed Remington right after the war, and relying on sales of AR15 models to the service has actually been sort of a bad economic bet for Colt. The lesson probably is that really relying on military sales to the US is risky.
The old model that Colt used, which was basically "here's what we have, it's really good, buy if you want it" is probably the best one.
Advertisement for Colt double action revolver.
And that's particularly the case as there hasn't been a single US handgun the US military has purchased since the M1873 was replaced by the M1892 which hasn't drawn criticism.
The M1892 is a nice double action revolver, but its .38 cartridge, ideal for police use, was anemic for combat, something that the Philippine Insurrection rapidly demonstrated. M1873s were brought back into service (more on that in a minute) and .45 Colt New Army's were purchased as M1982s were pulled. That was a stopgap measure until the Army could adopt an "automatic" pistol, which it did after leisurely testing in the form of the M1911.
The M1911 is a contender for greatest military handgun of all time, so its surprising that at first there were plenty of Army officers who hated it. They regarded it outright dangers as it was too easy to fire and it was found that excited cavalrymen would accidentally shoot their horses in the head during charges. Criticism of its short trigger pull lead to a new version of the pistol, the M1911A1, coming out during hit 1920s, simply to make it a bit harder to shoot, but as late as World War Two old cavalrymen were clinging to double action revolvers, which had no safeties at all, but which featured a long heavy trigger pull.
By that time the M1911 was beloved and for good reason.
The M1911 took the services all the way into the late 80s. In 1985, the Baretta M9 was chosen to replace it, when it really didn't need to be replaced. Indeed, the Army had to be forced to make a decision, which it was resisting, by Congress threatening to turn the project over to the Air Force, which had been responsible for the adoption of the AR 15. That caught Colt flat footed as even t hough they'd been the supplier of most military handguns to the military for over a century, they weren't really expecting the Army to move forward with the entire project.
There were three reasons in reality to find a new handgun. One was that no new M1911s had been purchased since the Second World War, so they were all getting internally rebuilt. New pistols needed to be ordered. The second one was tha ti was felt that the .45 ACP round was too stout for women, who now were in roles where they needed handguns. That was moronic, as women can shoot any handgun a man can. The third was that the US was foisting the 5.56 on our NATO allies and by adopting a 9mm pistol, we were throwing htem a bone, as every other NATO member save for NOrway used a 9mm pistol.
Which is something we shoudl have paused to think about right there.
The US, until after World War Two, had never been a supplier of small arms to other nations in any signficiant degree. Even after World War Two we were't a supplier of new arms, but our suprlus arms. IT wasn't until after teh Vietnam War that this changed. The big suppliers of military arms to the Western World were Germany and Belgium. The Browning designed Belgian handgun, the High Power, was to some degree the handgun of the free world. It had a proven track record.
The Baretta was a reengineerd P-38. The P-38, like the High Power, and the M1911, is a contender for greatest military handgun of all time. Given that, the M9 is a very good handgun.
US troops at first hated it.
Marines with M9s.
They hated it because they didn't want it, and soon attention was focused on breakages in the slides of the early Italian manufactured pistols. Baretta stated there was nothing wrong with the gun, and in fact, there wasn't.
It never really fully replaced the M1911, as if you really need a pistol, the M1911 wins hands down every time. But as 9mms go, it was a really good one.
Well, then came the Glock.
Glocks are frankly nothing special and a lot of real pistol aficionados do not like them. But they used a striker instead of an external hammer. There are some advantages to that, but for the most part, the advantages are more theoretical than real. Frankly, anyone carrying a striker pistol would be just as well off with a hammer fired one and never notice the difference if they actually had to use it.
Anyhow, the service determined that it needed a striker fired pistol because everyone else was getting one. Not too surprisingly, some in the service dithered on the project as it wasn't really needed, but them some senior officers who didn't know what the crap they were talking about threatened to directly procure Glocks, which would have been a horrible idea.
Tests were held and the P320 chosen.
Disclaimer here, I have one.
I have one, oddly enough, due to a Ducks Unlimited event. I didn't go out and look for one.
Having said that, it shoots extremely nicely. I can see why people like/liked them. In a heads up contest between the M9 and the M17/18, I think the SIG wins every time.
And now we have this issue.
Is it one?
I don't really know. I hope that its figured out. SIG, which also won the Army contest for new rifle (M7) and machine gun (M250), is taking piles of ill informed heat right now.
Let's take a look at the problem, some potential causes, and some fixes.
First, let's start with this.
Is there really a problem?
Sounds fantastical to even ask that, but the chatter about the SIG fits into a long US service tradition of claiming that the prior firearm was perfect and the new one plagued with flaws. Sometimes its even true, or perhaps a little true. Sometimes, it's bunk.
The history of Army handguns certain fits that, however. The Army was really long in replacing the M1873 and soldiers came to immediately hate its replacement. Was the M1892 bad? Well, not as a design, it was far more advanced than the M1873, but the cartridge really was a bad choice. The criticism was warranted.
What about the criticism of the M1911, which actually lead to it being redesigned a bit? Not hardly. The M1911 was a great pistol from day one and its defects, so to speak, were ones of perception on the part of those who were used to old heavy trigger double actions.
And the M9. Well, I'll admit that I was one of its critics. But the M9 is a really good handgun. The frame cracking was a freakish event and not something that proved to be an overall problem. The eral problem is that its a 9mm, but that doesn't have anything to do with the design itself.
And, if we expand out and look at the history of US rifles we'll find the same thing. When the M1 Garand was adopted there were some legitimate problems wtih its gas system, which lead to that being rapidly resdesigned. Still, that didn't keep pleny of critics of faulting the rifle as inferior to the M1903 and soldiers actually were very conscerned that stoppages they experienced in stateside training, which apparently were due to the ammunition being used for a time, meant the rifle was defective. Combat would rapidly prove that to be false, but it received that criticm at first.
The M14 received criticism for having some supposed problem with its bolt and action, which critics of the rifle will reference even today. One civilian produced variant supposedly featured reengingeering to address the prblem, whatever it is. It's difficult to find out hwat hte supposed problem was, and in actual use, ti seems to have been completely unnoticed. Some M14s, for that matter, featured M1 Garand lock bar rear sights which drives some competitive rifleman absolutely nuts. Anyhow, the rifle didn't have faults, but it received criticism for having them.
The M16 of course, did have real faults, and still does, all of which are attributable to its direct impingment gas system. However, the Army made the faults worse by suggesting the rifle never needed to be cleaned, wich was absurd, and by using fouling powder in early cartridge production. AR15 fans and the military seem to have gotten largely over this, but at first the rifle was really hated, and I'll admit that I didn't like it.
The point is that there might not be anything wrong with the M17 at all. What we could be seeing is an element of operator error.
Something about the entire "it discharged all on its owned from its holster" story sounded like a fable.
I started this post before the news above broke, but I kept expecting something like this. Frankly, murder or manslaughter wasn't what I was expecting, but some sort of operator error, or I'll confess suicide.
But here's the deal, once something gets a bit of a bad wrap in American society, particularly litigious American society, it's hard to unring the bell on the story.
And the story here, dare we say it, involves a lot of service users. . . .
Now ,why would that be significant?
Well, frankly, because service users are amongst those who are the least likely to be paying attention to what they're doing and screw up. Being in the Armed Forces or a police department doesn't make you a gun fan. It doesn't even really make you all that knowledgeable on weapons, quite frankly.
SIG might be right. There might be no problem here at all.
And if there is one, it might be an introduced one. That is, users messing with their sidearm accidentally or intentionally. Some police forces actually issue sidearms just to keep their policemen from doing that with firearms they own.
But let's assume there is a problem. What would it be?
The M17 features a really complicated striker design and the pistol was designed not to have a safety. Those two things alone may mean that the design has been somewhat compromised by complication and the addition of a safety it wasn't designed to have. That might, somehow, be defeated the need for a trigger "command". It's important to note that if the pistols are firing on their own, they're defeating the safety, but then the safety only prevents the trigger from being pulled.
That is, I'd note, a much less effective safety design than that on the M1911, but we'll get back to that.
Anyhow, the safety isn't going to stop block the striker. It doesn't work, say, like the safety on a M1903 or G98, which does. It just keeps the trigger from being accidentally pulled.
Another possibility is that something about the holsters is playing a weird role It seems unlikely, but its not completely impossible.
If I were a SIG engineer, and I'm not an engineer at all, I'd look at trying to develop a safety that hold the striker, if possible, and it might not be.
Okay, let's assume that it's all just hopeless, there's something wrong with the SIG and it can't be fixed. I'm not saying that's the case, but what if there is. Clearly a different handgun is in order.
Some have suggested just going back to the M9, and that's not a bad idea. The problem might be that after decades of use most of the M9s are in rough shape. I doubt that, but it's possible.
Well, so what. Just sort through the ones in the inventory and weed out those in bad shape. Issue the ones that aren't, and adopt the newest variant of the M9, which is nearly universally regarded as a very fine weapon.
The only reason not to do that is it has a hammer.
M'eh.
The other possibility. . . oh my. . .dare we say it. . . is to bring back the M1911.
Marine Corps MEU-SOC, the M1911 that proceeded the M45.
There's no reason not to, and in fact the Marine Corps did for awhile. There's nothing the M17/18 and M9 can do that the M1911 doesn't do better.
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