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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   4258 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 10, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Found on 4chan:

Cordite Eating

The British soldier has discovered a new intoxicant. In the October number of the Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps appears a most interesting paper, in which the author details the results of inquiries regarding the consumption of cordite by soldiers. Cordite, the new substitute for gunpowder, is composed of 58 parts of nitroglycerin, 37 parts of guncotton, and 5 parts of mineral jelly. A Lee–Metford cartridge contains sixty “strands” of this material. It has “a sweet, pleasant, pungent taste and is only slightly soluble in the mouth”. It causes “throbbing, headache, flushing of the face, visible carotid pulsation, giddiness, and disordered action of the heart”. The author sucked a fourth of a strand for two minutes and experienced the most racking splitting headache he ever felt in his life, together with hammering and ringing noises in his ears. The headache lasted quite thirty-six hours.…

Just this week I was joking that it looked like a forbidden snack.

I've got some old .303 British cartridges in the safe, but I will not be testing this.

Potential emergency home remedy for angina I guess? Keep your powder dry and your bullet-puller at the ready!

This was one of the most stereotypically American things I've read.

Canadian please -- Americans rarely hoard WWI era .303 shells, whereas every farmhouse up here has a mouldy old box of cordite (or several) lying around the garage. (I'm a bit surprised at netstack TBH!)

I’m quite fond of my Lee-Enfield and stocked up on ammo for it.

Agreed that it is not the cartridge of choice for most Americans. Much easier to stumble on grandpa’s old boxes of .30-06!

Well done, the stuff's become awfully expensive these days. 50rd boxes of 60s era surplus were less than twenty bucks at one point, so I'm well stocked also.

I'm much too young to have had access to the $5 Lee-Enfields in a barrel at the hardware store, but I do appreciate mine as well.

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