History
John Browning engineered a number of modern semi-automatic pistol mechanisms and cartridges. As his first pistol cartridge, the .32 ACP needed a straight wall for reliable blowback operation as well as a small rim for reliable feeding from a box magazine. The cartridge headspaces on the rim. The cartridge was a success and was adopted by dozens of countries and countless governmental agencies.
The .32 ACP cartridge was chambered in a variety of popular blowback automatic pistols of the day, including the Colt Model 1903 Pocket Hammerless, the Savage Model 1907 Automatic Pistol, and the Browning Model 1910 Automatic Pistol. The .32 ACP was used in the assassination of archduke Franz Ferdinand by Gavrilo Princip, and the pistol, a Browning M1910 (serial number 19074), is on display in the Army Museum of Vienna.
Allegedly, Adolf Hitler committed suicide with his personal .32 ACP Walther PPK, by pressing it against his right temple and pulling the trigger while simultaneously biting down on a cyanide capsule.
Read more about this topic: .32 ACP
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“Considered in its entirety, psychoanalysis won’t do. It’s an end product, moreover, like a dinosaur or a zeppelin; no better theory can ever be erected on its ruins, which will remain for ever one of the saddest and strangest of all landmarks in the history of twentieth-century thought.”
—Peter B. Medawar (1915–1987)
“Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action—that the end will sanction any means.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)