bankador

Where credit is due:

Most pocket knives have their blades mounted to disappear into one side of the handle when not in use.

Butterfly – or double-handled knives have handles that divide into two halves and fold around the retracted blade. Whether the butterfly knife is open or closed, the two halves lock together to form a unity, turning back to back when the blade is out.

Butterfly knives originally came from the Philippines, where they are called balisong. Because of their violent potential they are prohibited in some countries.

A story about the Colt .45 model 1905:

The legend of the .45 has its roots at the turn of the century.

In 1892 the army had replaced its faithful Colt Single Action Army .45s of the Indian Wars with a more modern swing-out cylinder Colt revolver in .38 Long Colt. This fired a 150-grains bullet at 770 feet per second. Although no powerhouse, this had proved reasonably effective in the Spanish-American War and again in the fighting against the Filipino insurgents immediately after the war.

However, when the Americans attempted to pacify the island of Mindanao a couple of years later, there were numerous reports of failure against the fierce Muslim Moro warriors there.

In keeping with Islamic beliefs about achieving salvation through death in battle against infidel, these Moros would sometimes go “juramentado” or “amok” (whence the word amok or amuck in the American dictionary originated, the tagalog word bundok became boondock, appropriated at about the same time). After religious ceremonies and masochistic acts of self-torture, the Moro juramentado, having worked himself into a frenzy of fanaticism and hatred, would go forth to slay an infidel.

In an archetypal scenario, the white-robed Moro, wielding his barang or kris, would charge a hapless American soldier. The American would empty his Colt .38 into the chest of the incoming Moro to no effect, and the Moro would lop off the luckless doughboy’s head and go his way rejoicing before succumbing to his wounds or being gunned down by other nearby American soldiers.

Anyway, in response to demands from the Philippines, a quantity of Colt .45 Single Actions were furnished to the troops there and supposedly proved more efficacious against the Moros.