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Shrapnel is named for a British army officer. |
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Henry Shrapnel, born in 1761 in Wiltshire, England, was a young lieutenant in the British Royal Artillery when he began experimenting with a new kind of antipersonnel ammunition. Working at his own expense and in his off-hours, he devised what he called "spherical case shot," a hollow cannon ball packed with small shot and a bursting charge. A time fuse ignited the charge just before the projectile reached enemy lines, spraying bullets in a highly lethal distribution. Crucially, the shell could be fired from existing guns, making it easier to deploy across the army. | |
After years of tinkering (squeezed in between postings to Newfoundland, Gibraltar, and the West Indies), Shrapnel submitted his design to the British army. In 1803, they officially adopted it, and within a few years soldiers were calling it simply the "Shrapnel shell." The invention saw extensive use during the Napoleonic Wars, and caused a majority of the artillery wounds in World War I. Shrapnel, for his part, was awarded an annual pension of 1,200 pounds (around 124,000 pounds in today's money) in 1814 for his decades of private research to develop his device. But his invention's legacy far outlasted him. Even after militaries shifted to high-explosive shells, which shattered their own casings into deadly fragments without added bullets, the name stuck. |
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The guillotine is named for a man who wanted executions to be more humane. | |||||||||
The guillotine is named for Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, a French physician and lawmaker who opposed capital punishment — but believed that if executions were carried out, they should be swift and humane. In 1789, as a deputy to France's National Assembly, Guillotin proposed replacing swords and axes with a mechanical beheading device. Traditional executions were often botched, requiring multiple blows and varying by the executioner's skill. A standardized machine, he argued, would work quickly and reduce suffering. The device (designed by French doctor Antoine Louis and built by a German harpsichord maker) was built in 1791 and first used the following year. Though Guillotin didn't invent the machine himself, his name quickly became attached to it. The link proved so enduring that his family eventually changed their surname to avoid being connected to the device. Perhaps ironically, Guillotin survived the French Revolution and later became an early advocate for vaccination, spending his final years promoting public health. | |||||||||
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