Although we tend to take the Japanese martial arts for granted these days, back in Victorian times they were pretty much unknown outside Japan. Queen Victoria ascended to the throne in 1837 beginning the Victorian era and we should remember that at that time Japan was a closed country that did not permit foreigners in ...
Having been originally educated in an English boys school and thence to college I developed a passion for books, but I don't read fiction. Add to that one part of the world I've been blessed with the opportunity to live in and travel extensively in has been Asia. But I also love rifles and hunting, ...
Wernher Von Braun's book "History of Rocketry and Space Travel" co written by he and Frederick I. Ordway III is the defining book on the subject written by the man who pioneered rocketry with the World War II V2 missile program and who was whisked away to the United States to spearhead the fledgling US ...
When he was a boy at boarding school young Freddy Selous was found by a schoolmaster laying on the cold floor beside his bed in the middle of the night. When asked by the schoolmaster what he was doing young Freddy replied "Well, you see, one day I am going to be a hunter in ...
A few decades ago when I first started pistol shooting I met a man with a sad story to tell. He'd taken up pistol shooting because he liked handguns as guys commonly do. His wife, not wanting to become a "pistol club widow" (which is just like being a "golf widow" except it involves handguns ...
Choosing a reloading handbook is not a particularly complicated process, you decide whose components you are most likely to use and the calibre(s) you are planning to reload for and you hand over the shekels and buy your book. And as long as you are reloading for a common American calibre you will be pretty ...
The four bore rifle was the largest shoulder fired rifle ever made. These were the dangerous game stopping rifles of the black powder era although they were on the large side even for that. The more common elephant rifle was the eight bore. When we talk about a "bore" rifle we are simply referring to ...
Back when I began shooting seriously in 1971 I sought out whatever I could to learn what to do and how to do it. Four and a half decades later I'm still doing that. Learning to use a rifle is a bit like learning a Japanese sword art. The instructor will always tell you that ...
It is commonly thought that Americans invented drag racing, and in Britain that there were a few people who thought that was an absolutely spiffing idea so they adopted the American idea and re-created drag racing in Britain. Well, that is how we might imagine the history to be. However in reality the British had ...
With Christmas coming most if not all of us are creating our Christmas gift shopping list, except of course for those who, like Ebenezer Scrooge of Charles Dickens "A Christmas Carol", say "Bah, Humbug" and refuse to get involved in the celebration or the giving. The rest of us however are looking for the right gift ...