Minié ball

There's an E in it, but everyone mistypes it and just calls it Minnie.

Mine was typed M-I-N-I-E.

Yep.

There we go.

It's this rough, splintered section of oak that stands only a few feet high, and when you look at this object, the wood is shredded, and it's torn apart in irregular patterns, and there are these deep cavities that kind of puncture its side.

And the reason it looks like this is because of something that you can see a little bit deeper, which is that it's embedded with conically shaped bullets, which were called Minié balls.

They were developed in the 19th century.

It's basically what soldiers were using by the time of the American Civil War.

But in the 19th century, you start to see the development of conically shaped projectiles.

They're originally developed in France.

They're called Minié balls.

But in the U.S., there is a designer at Harpers Ferry that modifies that.

There's never a revolution in warfare, but this is, this is the equivalent.

I once told an audience, "This is the equivalent of the introduction of the Minié ball during World War, uh, during the Civil War." So you took a musket ball, which was round, it's kinda like throwing a baseball, and you spiraled it out so you could shoot, uh, the Minié ball, named after Charles, uh, Claude Minié, a, a, uh, French guy who invented it, and it spirals like a football.

So it can go longer, it can hit more accurately, it can, you know, uh, reach 400 meters versus 100 meters when you're on a Civil War battle.

So that changes everything.