Russian electrical sea mines in 1854 sound like one of the most insanely dangerous things ever made, second only to Russian chemical sea mines from the same year.
Yikes, the British army was actually more barbaric to its own soldiers in Crimea than Russia was. The Russians had a guy who basically invented battlefield medical triage and promoted the use of ether as an anesthetic (Pirogov, who I’d never heard of before now), while the British were like “I don’t approve of this newfangled ether idea, you should cut them without it and hear the scream, that’s so much better than them quietly dying”.
But yeah, the Russian empire hanging on that long despite being so backwards in so many ways is pretty remarkable. The British at least had lots of advanced weaponry going for them, plus they sort of sometimes adapted to local conditions. The Russians don’t seem to have, other than just “kill anyone who doesn’t like us” and almost never changing their technology or infrastructure.
Reading an old sci-fi story by Arthur Conan Doyle. This bit about something being “as dark as a London fog” is also just funny because my favorite coffee shop thing is a London fog, which is definitely not dark. But hey, times change and cultural references/conceptions are one of those things.
@eyrea@GrittyLipids@bookstodon@h2lift
They certainly had them. But IIUC the spread of ICE vehicles is largely related to the huge surplus of ex-military vehicles post-1918. The first consumer car in Britain was probably the Austin Seven, which appears in 1923. And the commonest British Army field gun, the QF 18-pounder, was mostly horse-drawn till the 1930s.