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May 10, 2005
This Means War!
Wars can start for the strangest of reasons…
On this day in 1857, a bloody uprising in India known to history as “the Mutiny” was triggered by the introduction new kind of rifle. Loading the Enfield rifle required soldiers to bite the end off of a grease-covered paper cartridge. Word spread among Indian troops serving in the British army that the grease contained fat from pigs and cows, meaning that biting the cartridge was a sacrilege to both Hindus and Moslems. Indian sepoys rose up and killed their British officers, who they thought were trying to turn them into religious outcasts, and thousands died in the fighting that ensued.
When conditions are right for war, the most trivial event can set off a conflict: three men being thrown out a window; a sea captain’s ear being cut off; a pig being shot; even a soccer game. (These are all stories featured in my forthcoming book.) It’s the same as a forest that has gone too long without rain…a single match can spark an all-consuming conflagration. A lesson we should strive to remember.
Posted by rickbeyer at May 10, 2005 07:38 AM
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