October 16/article

October 16, 1860 was a very good day for an unassuming fellow by the name of Ben Henry. He had come up with what he thought was a pretty good idea: a cartridge rifle that you could load once and then shoot for a while. Now, that might sound like a bit of a no-brainer these days, but in 1860 it was a pretty radical notion; everybody thought he was nuttier than a squirrel turd. That didn't stop Ben, though. He kept pushing at it and, on this day in 1860, he was granted US patent #30,446 for a the first ever reliable lever-action repeating rifle — tubular magazine-fed and breech-loading. While you'd think this would make him a popular guy and that everybody would like his clever little brain-child, not everyone was pleased. Especially not the Confederates. They had their own name for his little invention: "that damn Yankee rifle they load on Sunday and shoot all week!"