Dueling Fun Facts for 17th to 19th century games

[Clonus]

The back to back approach to dueling was favoured in Britain, but on the Continent a more common approach was to stand on opposite sides of a demarcated line and walk toward each other until one or the other decided to take his shot. Then he had to stand still and wait as his opponent continued to walk up to the rope or whatever and then take the second shot.

[Ian Mackinder]

Re: Dueling Fun Facts for 17th to 19th century games

 

Interesting to know - but I still think duelling with chainsaws is better.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Dueling Fun Facts for 17th to 19th century games

 

Interesting to know - but I still think duelling with chainsaws is better.

 

It's persuading the duellists that's the tricky part.

Fun fact: did you know that the epee was adopted as a dueling sword because it did less damage? The idea was that it was perfectly suitable for killing you, but did less hacking and slashing. Since the point of a duel is to face the risk of death for social rewards, it made no sense to "win" less an arm, eye or whatever. (The Germans eventually took to wearing protection everywhere they didn't want a dueling scar.)

Which probably points to old regime Japan not being a dueler's paradise, incidentally.

There's a dearth of good studies considering how ripe the subject is for a "history of masculinity" approach, but Francois Billacois's Le duel en France has been translated, without the tediously silly Freudian chapter, too.

http://www.amazon.com/Duel-Rise-Early-Modern-France/dp/0300040288/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247682228&sr=1-1

[Clonus]

Re: Dueling Fun Facts for 17th to 19th century games

 

Interesting to know - but I still think duelling with chainsaws is better.

 

Sadly they hadn't invented chainsaws yet. But there was one case where the agreed-upon weapon was billiard balls thrown at each other's heads.

[tkdguy]

Re: Dueling Fun Facts for 17th to 19th century games

 

Here are a few unusual duels for your viewing pleasure.

[Ian Mackinder]

Re: Dueling Fun Facts for 17th to 19th century games

 

Here are a few unusual duels for your viewing pleasure.

 

... Which touches upon something I once read of that could "almost" be classified as a duelling challenge in the modern era.

 

Many years ago, after a spate of particularly nasty airliner accidents (in which igniting jet fuel had played a major part), there was a push to compel airlines to start using lower-octane fuels. Naturally, this move was resisted in various quarters for the usual reasons.

 

At one particularly acrimonious meeting / confrontation, a lead proponent of the new, safer fuel made an interesting public challenge. He was fully ready to stand in a barrel of "his" fuel up to the waist, and strike a match. BUT, only if his opposite number would do the same in a barrel of what was then the standard jet fuel.

 

Oddly enough, nobody met the challenge.

 

Well worth noting that the safe fuel eventually won out, and became the new standard for many years.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Dueling Fun Facts for 17th to 19th century games

 

... Which touches upon something I once read of that could "almost" be classified as a duelling challenge in the modern era.

 

Many years ago, after a spate of particularly nasty airliner accidents (in which igniting jet fuel had played a major part), there was a push to compel airlines to start using lower-octane fuels. Naturally, this move was resisted in various quarters for the usual reasons.

 

At one particularly acrimonious meeting / confrontation, a lead proponent of the new, safer fuel made an interesting public challenge. He was fully ready to stand in a barrel of "his" fuel up to the waist, and strike a match. BUT, only if his opposite number would do the same in a barrel of what was then the standard jet fuel.

 

Oddly enough, nobody met the challenge.

 

Well worth noting that the safe fuel eventually won out, and became the new standard for many years.

John Moore-Brabazon, raised to the peerage as one of the Tory air caucus as Lord Brabazon of Tara.

Nineteenth century economist John Ramsay McCulloch published a collection of seventeenth and eighteenth century essays on the British public debt (I think it's this: http://books.google.ca/books?id=3Z9CAAAAIAAJ&pg=RA1-PA1&lpg=RA1-PA1&dq=mcculloch+essays+on+credit&source=bl&ots=6NtrixoUfp&sig=wiZdqGhrb_CkqJ4ZxSsPrkpl0Ro&hl=en&ei=m8VgSoycBMbemQe61e3bDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2

Part of the framing material is some bizarre "duels of credit," in which, near as I can tell, members of the Lords dared each other to borrow as much ready cash as their reputation would support, and the one who could borrow more, got all the money. The past. She funny.