Mangal Pandey's Birth Anniversary

Mangal Pandey, born on 19 July 1827, in Akbarpur, India, was an Indian soldier whose attack on British officers on 29 March1857, was the first major incident of what came to be known as the Indian, or Sepoy, Mutiny (in India the uprising is often called the First War of Independence or other similar names).

Pandey was born in a town near Faizabad in what is now eastern Uttar Pradesh state in northern India, although some give his birth place as a small village near Lalitpur (in present-day southwestern Uttar Pradesh). He was from a high-caste Brahman landowning family that professed strong Hindu beliefs. Pandey joined the army of the British East India Company in 1849, some accounts suggesting that he was recruited by a brigade that marched past him. He was made a soldier (sepoy) in the 6th Company of the 34th Bengal Native Infantry, which included a large number of Brahmans. Pandey was ambitious and viewed his profession as a sepoy as a stepping-stone to future success.

Pandey’s career ambitions, however, came into conflict with his religious beliefs. While he was posted at the garrison in Barrackpore in the mid-1850s, a new Enfield rifle was introduced into India that required a soldier to bite off the ends of greased cartridges in order to load the weapon. A rumour spread that the lubricant used was either cow or pig lard, which was repugnant to Hindus or Muslims, respectively. The belief arose among the sepoys that the British had deliberately used the lard on the cartridges.

There have been various accounts of the events of March 29, 1857. However, the general agreement is that Pandey attempted to incite his fellow sepoys to rise up against their British officers, attacked two of those officers, attempted to shoot himself after having been restrained, and eventually was overpowered and arrested. Some contemporary reports suggested that he was under the influence of drugs—possibly cannabis or opium —and was not fully aware of his actions. Pandey was soon tried and sentenced to death. His execution (by hanging) was set for April 18, but British authorities, fearing the outbreak of a large-scale revolt if they waited until then, moved the date up to April 8. Resistance to the use of Enfield cartridges later that month in Meerut led to the outbreak of a revolt there in May and the start of the larger insurrection.

In India, Pandey has been remembered as a freedom fighter against British rule. A commemorative postage stamp with his image on it was issued by the Indian government in 1984. In addition, a movie and stage play that depicted his life both appeared in 2005.

Samuel Colt's Birth Anniversary

Samuel Colt, born on 19 July 1814, in Hartford, Connecticut, USA, was an American firearms inventor, manufacturer, and entrepreneur who popularized the revolver.

As a teenaged seaman, Colt carved a wooden model of a revolving cylinder mechanism, and he later perfected a working version that was patented in England and France in 1835 and in the United States the following year. Featuring a multichambered cylinder that rotated and locked by cocking the hammer, Colt’s repeating single-barreled pistols, rifles, and shotguns were slow to gain acceptance, and a company that formed to manufacture them in Patterson, New Jersey, failed in 1842. The following year he devised an electrically discharged naval mine, the first device using a remotely controlled explosive, and he conducted a telegraph business that utilized the first underwater cable.

Word that Colt’s multishot Paterson weapons had been effective against Indians in Texas prompted a government order for 1,000 pistols during the Mexican-American War, and Colt resumed firearms manufacture in 1847. In 1855 he built the world’s largest private armoury in the South Meadows area of Hartford. Assisted by engineer-superintendent Elisha King Root, he developed beyond any private industrialist before him the mass manufacture of firearms by using interchangeable parts and machine production, and he applied progressive ideas concerning employee welfare. His invention made him a wealthy man. At the time of his death in 1862, his firm already had produced some 450,000 guns in 16 different models. Colt’s Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company produced the pistols most widely used during the American Civil War, and its six-shot single-action .45-calibre Peacemaker model, introduced in 1873, became the most-famous sidearm of the American West.

The company also became famed for its production of the Gatling gun, a hand-cranked machine gun invented by Richard J. Gatling, and for a series of John M. Browning-designed semiautomatic pistols, most notably the Model 1911. Having been sold by Colt Industries in 1989, the Colt Firearms Division was reconstituted as Colt’s Manufacturing Company. Today the enterprise is best known for government-contract production of the M16 assault rifle in all its many iterations and for the AR-15semiautomatic rifle.