Ripley's Believe It or Not has been presenting the incredible and the unusual in illustrated form since Robert Ripley's first "Champs and Chumps" comic published on Dec. 19, 1918. Currently, B.I.O.N. is illustrated by John Graziano, who has been working as an artist and illustrator since 1983, when he received a certificate in illustration from the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts. He has designed trading card sets and a portrait series based on the 1960s cult TV show "Dark Shadows." John has also created comic strips for "Scream Queens" magazine, designed t-shirts graphics and created storyboards and concept drawings for Hollywood films. Researcher Lucas Stram has worked since 2004 as the voice behind the cartoon, reviewing potential stories, filtering through the hundreds of weekly submissions and putting together the stories for John to bring to life. New submissions are always welcome. Just click here.
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Rip Haywire by Dan Thompson
Rose is Rose by Don Wimmer and Pat Brady
Comments (22) (Please sign in to comment)
gmartin997
said, 11 months ago
Most people don’t know the Gatlin gun was used by the Union in the last months of the Civil War, giving the North a distinct advantage.
Cooncat said, 11 months ago
I think the repeating carbine Spencer rifle was a bigger advantage for Union troops than primitive ‘machine guns’. The North’s industrial power, and the failure of the South to enlist foreign aid doomed the Southern cause from the get-go. (imho)
gmartin997
said, 11 months ago
@Cooncat
The South was doomed from the start by the very thing that caused the southern states to secede — states’ rights, with the states’ governors agreeing on nothing and fighting Jefferson Davis tooth and nail . Many things contributed to their inability to fight Grant, including Grant’s willingness to avoid the battlefields and attack behind the lines, destroying the South’s lifeline and food supply. He was the first commander who was obsessed with beating the South any way he couild. As far as foreign allies, neither GB nor France would have supported slavery. Queen Victoria dismissed the Jamacan parliament because their planters were still using slaves; so she certainly wouldn’t have supported the South.
jploch5408 said, 11 months ago
In the film “The Outlaw Josey Wales,” there’s a scene where Clint Eastwood is gunning down Union soldiers with a hand-cranked weapon. Possibly a Gatling gun?
SeaFox10 said, 11 months ago
Smashing bugs with a stick is not the same game! :p
bbwoof said, 11 months ago
I’ve learned things about the civil war that I either didn’t know or had forgotten or both from reading this section. Thanks for the history lesson refresher.
Chikuku said, 11 months ago
The big value of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was that it reminded the UK and France that the war was about slavery, no matter how loudly the South lied that it was about something else. A lie still often repeated, and not only in the South. But a Lie. The war was about slavery.
Mr. Majestyk said, 11 months ago
@gmartin997
The Gatling gun was first used in warfare during the American Civil War. The gun was not accepted by the Union Army until 1866, but a “sales engineer” of the manufacturing company demonstrated it in combat
The Gatling gun saw only limited use in the Civil War, (Ben Butler used two around Petersburg and eight on gunboats; Porter acquired one; and Hancock ordered twelve for his I (Veteran) Corps), however, the conflict did test this weapon, perhaps the first successful true machine gun used in warfare. Invented by Dr. Richard Jordan Gatling, the Civil War model served as the precursor of more successful models.
The Gatling gun was a hand-crank-operated weapon with 6 barrels revolving around a central shaft. The cartridges were fed to the gun by gravity through a hopper mounted on the top of the gun. 6 cam-operated bolts alternately wedged, fired, and dropped the bullets, which were contained in steel chambers. Gatling used the 6 barrels to partially cool the gun during firing. Since the gun was capable of firing 600 rounds a minute, each barrel fired 100 rounds per minute.
The gun had a number of problems, however. The bores were tapered, and often the barrels and chambers did not exactly align, affecting accuracy and velocity. The chamber system itself, in which a paper cartridge was contained inside a capped steel chamber, was both expensive and fragile. While the gun showed much promise and fired the standard .58-caliber ammunition, it had so many drawbacks and was so radical in both design and purpose that Gatling was unable to interest the U.S. government. The army purchased none of his guns, but Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, after a field test, purchased 12 for $1,000 each and two were used on the Petersburg front in 1864 and apparently were considered successful.
In Jan. 1865 Gatling’s improved Model 1865 gun was tested by the Ordnance Department. Among other things, this weapon used rimfire copper-cased cartridges instead of the steel-chambered paper variety. Though this model did not see service, it was adopted officially in 1866. Having at last received government approval, Gatling began to sell his guns throughout the world; they achieved lasting fame in the post-war years.
Due to it’s late introduction, and many technical problems, the gun had little or no effect on the outcome of the war.
Mr. Majestyk said, 11 months ago
@gmartin997
The Agar or “Coffee Mill” gun.
.
In 1861, the Agar machine gun was demonstrated to President Abraham Lincoln, who was so impressed that he ordered all ten available weapons to be purchased immediately, at a cost of $1,300 each, which was a very high price at the time. Later in the same year, General McClellan ordered an additional fifty weapons, at a reduced cost of $735 each. In 1861, General Butler purchased two guns at $1,300 each, and in the following year General Fremont also purchased two guns, paying $1,500 for each.
The guns were condemned by the Ordnance Department for using too much ammunition to ever be practical, and the guns saw little use on the battlefield. They were often deployed to remote locations to guard bridges and narrow passes.5 The guns often performed poorly in the field. The single barrel design proved vulnerable to overheating, and the weapon was also prone to jamming. The special steel tubes used to hold the cartridges were heavy and expensive, and were often prone to loss. Later cartridges would use brass, but this was not widely available during the time that the Agar machine gun was used. The gun’s range was also criticized. It had a range of about 800 yards, which was roughly the same as the range of the rifle-muskets used by infantry. A longer range weapon would have been preferred.
Because of the way it was used in battle, the Agar machine gun, like most machine guns of the period, was never able to show its potential. Machine guns would later become much more important on the battlefield. In 1865, the few remaining Agar machine guns were sold for $500 each.
phritzg
said, 11 months ago
You can have your coffee mill gun. As for me, I liked the meat grinder machine gun Curly of the Three Stooges used in “Goofs and Saddles”.
gmartin997
said, 11 months ago
@Mr. Majestyk
Well, thank you for that history lesson, and I’ll certainly read it when I have the time; but I really wasn’t that interested in the Gatlin gun. BTW you really should acknowledge your source. It looks like you emptied Wikipedia’s article on the subject.
Puddleglum2 said, 11 months ago
Keeping that hand-cranked Rapid-Fire gun going was a tough grind!
Mr. Majestyk said, 11 months ago
@gmartin997
I have a Class 3 FFL and special Federal Permits to use and manufacture explosives. I also have almost 40 years experience of working with all types of weapons. The information is available on the internet as well as history books on antique weapons. I wasn’t aware that a source was required in comic strip comments. I don’t see one in any of yours.
gmartin997
said, 11 months ago
@Chikuku
Well, that will always depend on to whom you’re talking. The fact is, freeing the slaves wasn’t popular in the North, for fear blacks would flood their cities and take their jobs in an economy where men were already fighting for jobs paying 10 cents and a quarter a day. Abolitionists were a relatively small, but powerful group with great political influence, and was hated among the common people in the North. The Conscription Act caused deadly riots, with thousands of people being killed, and with the people calling it “the rich man’s war, the poor man’s fight.” Men didn’t take it kindly to being forced to join the army, and they cared even less about the Negro, with blacks being the hardest hit in the riots. Irish immigrants were forced into service right off the ships before they could even get their families settled without even knowing why they were fighting. What a disappointment it must have been for them to learn they had fled one fight only to walk into another without even knowing why. The abolitionists were the ones who forced the slavery issue, an issue Lincoln would have preferred to avoid.
Lincoln did everything he could to avoid war. The government even paid plantation owners to free slaves and send them south to colonize islands in the Caribbean. About 2,000 were collected and relocated, only to die of disease within a few years. He pursued every avenue imaginable. He was even willing to allow slavery to continue in the South where it already existed, but refused to allow it to expand into the new territories. The act already existed allowing one slave state to enter the union along with one free state, but Lincoln overuled that, and the South refused to compromise. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back, as they say, and brought on secession.
During the war, but beore the Emancipation, Lincoln offered several concessions at reconciliation which would have allowed slavery to continue, but they were all rebuffed. We, Southerners, are a stubborn bunch. .
gmartin997
said, 11 months ago
@Mr. Majestyk
I hate to be rude, but I’m really not interested.