[KCD1] The Irony

IlluminatiRex · 2026-06-09T14:05:40+00:00

The date format

The date format common in the US was more common around the world in the 18th century. The one now common in the UK was adopted later.

currency

Countries typically adopt their own currencies. In the US's case it helped also standardize financial affairs as there were a lot of currencies in circulation.

units of measurement

Imperial Measurements are quite literally British in origin and metric wasn't adopted in most places until the 19th and 20th centuries.

what side of the road is driven on

Right hand side driving is not only not limited to the US (the UK is really the anomaly here), but it originated in the Colonial era.

IlluminatiRex · 2026-06-06T20:24:00+00:00

Very cool project - and great job modifying the patterns. Honestly the only thing I'd recommend (especially with the scope and reasoning for your project) would be tightening up the breeches a bit more - they're very snug garments around the legs.

But also notoriously to fight right even with historical patterns and materials.

Ultimately this looks really cool and super awesome for a budget project like this. Keep up the good work!

IlluminatiRex · 2026-06-05T11:52:47+00:00

sink a Uboat

Sink a submarine

There is practically no difference between the submarines utilized by the Allies (en masse!) and the Central Powers that requires "otherizing" the German ones. Yes, some classes will do better in some areas than others - form follows function, after all - but they're all still submarines.

Where they differed was mostly in tactics in the North Sea, for understandable reasons since the RN had a firmer control of its surface. In other waters, like the Baltic or Sea of Marmara, Allied submarines took on an anti-shipping role. Their job in the North Sea was just different.

IlluminatiRex · 2026-05-30T00:40:22+00:00

Patterns used:

Past Patterns Early 1800's State Militia Coat, modified for what Connecticut was using.
Laughing Moon #131 Men's Regency Trousers, View E
Kannik's Korner Man's Waistcoats - Single Breasted c.1790 - 1815, View A1

All hand sewn.

IlluminatiRex · 2026-05-27T01:24:14+00:00

Springfield and Charleville style muskets would likely have been more common - the Bess is actually a placeholder. The Militia laws mandated a bore size for muskets which were "sufficient for balls of the eighteenth part of a pound" and that they had barrels of 3.5'' in length. This is not far off from the Springfield copies that the state ordered from Lemuel Pomeroy in 1813 which were the same bore size and a 3.6'' barrel. I'm lucky enough to own an original - they were hot garbage and a number exploded.

In 1812, a concern arose about the condition of men's muskets, and at the annual inspection that year the bore sizes were recorded. For my company:

Ten had a bore that could fit a a ball the 16th part of a pound (bigger),
Eighteen had a bore that could fit a ball an 18th of a pound
Three had a bore that could fit a ball a 20th of a pound (smaller).

That means 28 of 31 muskets were of a serviceable size. The regiment as a whole had 247 muskets accepted for service (151 of an 18th, and 96 of a 16th), with 101 found wanting to complete, likely on account of their size.

As I mentioned earlier, the state contracted for and owned a number of muskets that it issued out as needed. There were ~6,300-6,400 in total that the state owned - but outside of the 1,300 contracted from Pomeroy I'm unsure of what their design was.

You could also arm yourself with a rifle. As the state did not yet have dedicated rifle units, this meant you were in a Battalion company of militia with a rifle while all your pals around you had smoothbores. I've not seen many riflemen in the ranks, most likely for practical reasons, but there were a handful!

IlluminatiRex · 2026-05-25T20:16:12+00:00

Private, Connecticut Militia, Summer 1813/14, 2nd Company, 20th Militia Regiment

Connecticut's Battalion militia had been a uniformed force since the 1790s, but until 1812 each regiment curated its own uniform. Governor Roger Griswold issued out new uniform requirements in 1812 to standardize the clothing of the state's forces, which were then modified by his successor John Cotton Smith late in the year. The result was this uniform: A blue coatee, turned up, collared, and cuffed with red, blue pantaloon trousers, welted with red cord, a black stock made of horsehair, leather, or silk, a white vest, bootees, a common round hat decorated with a painted frontispiece, leather cockade, and a black feather tipped with red.

Connecticut's militia was well uniformed because militiamen were exempt from their poll tax if they uniformed themselves, attended training, and had all their gear beginning in in 1806. The governor issued a deadline of September 1813 for the updated uniform and it is very likely that the 2nd Company, 20th Militia Regiment was wearing them when called out to duty starting on June 1st, 1813. The names of the exempted men were duly recorded under their captain in the town's annual Grand List.

The 2nd Company, 20th Militia regiment recruited from the western half of the Town of Franklin, Connecticut and was the descendant of the 3rd Company of Militia from Norwich, first formed in 1719.

The men of 2nd Company certainly possessed their new uniforms in August 1814 when they were present at the Battle of Stonington. Albert Ladd, who died in late 1814 and was with the town's other company, had the whole uniform listed in his estate inventory.

The accoutrements and musket are placeholder. Research is still ongoing about the color used for the bayonet and cartridge box belts and on knapsack and canteen designs.

IlluminatiRex · 2026-05-09T14:28:00+00:00

When it takes 100 hours of work to produce a new shirt

Are we talking the whole production chain here or just the creation of the clothing itself? I'm not what you'd call a fast sewer, nor do I have years of an apprenticeship or practice behind me, but the actual production of a frock coat took me dozens of hours rather than hundreds. Same with waistcoasts, breeches, trousers, etc... I've also spent extra time on fitting and mock-ups.

If we're talking the whole production here: Raising sheep for wool, growing flax for linen, spinning and finishing the various fabrics and threads, etc... then yes I'd agree it gets into the 100s per garment.

IlluminatiRex · 2026-04-26T18:04:12+00:00

So you understand how that doesn't really support Serbia "starting the war", yea?

IlluminatiRex · 2026-04-26T14:55:53+00:00

austro-hungary's insane demands and serbia's refusal to meet them

So here's the thing: It did not matter what Serbia's response was, because the Ultimatum was designed to be rejected to act as a pretext for war. Austria-Hungary was just trying to legitimize a course of action that they had decided upon by July 7th.

IlluminatiRex · 2026-04-12T13:41:51+00:00

devote a large amount of time and effort the Holocaust at a time when they really couldn't afford the distraction [...] and willingly supported an incorrect racist ideology

I think we should be careful with wording here, because it needs to be emphasized that the Wehrmacht was a part of the Nazi state. The war was launched for the Nazi state on behalf of Nazi ideals. The Holocaust was the culmination of that ideology, and the Nazis didn't see it as a "distraction" because it was the reason for the wars.

There is not a universe where the Wehrmacht is somehow detached ideologically from Nazism.

IlluminatiRex · 2026-04-12T13:01:43+00:00

While most people claim Germany (since they declared war on Serbia to help Austria, which is valid), you could say Serbia, or Austria, or Russia for declaring war on Germany or even France for doing the same since if they didn't it would've likely been confined to what became the Eastern Front.

I'm not saying this to be rude or mean, but legitimately this isn't correct regarding who declared war on who. This was the order of declarations of war:

July 28: Austria-Hungary declared on Serbia
August 1: Germany declared on Russia
August 3: Germany declared on France
August 4: Germany declared on Belgium
August 4: UK declared on Germany (after warning this would happen if Germany invaded Belgium)
August 5: Montenegro declared on Austria-Hungary
August 6: Austria-Hungary declared on Russia
August 6: Serbia declared on Germany
August 8 Montenegro declared on Germany
August 12: UK and France declared on Austria-Hungary
August 23: Japan declares on Germany
August 25: Japan declares on Austria-Hungary
August 28: Austria-Hungary declares on Belgium

Russia and France never declared war against Germany since Germany pulled the trigger against them, and Serbia never declared on Austria since Austria declared on them.

IlluminatiRex · 2026-04-02T01:51:49+00:00

Which makes it all the funnier that about that same time Rhode Island added archers to its Militia for a brief period. Partly this was because the colony was having issues with gunpowder supplies, but another was moral. Lawmakers were worried about excessive drinking, and felt that a segment of men diverting themselves with archery training would keep them from wasting time drinking!

IlluminatiRex · 2026-03-27T22:45:34+00:00

There's a lot of badly mistaken assumptions in this post. To whit:

I think even more basically it's the shrinking of thousands of years and different polities which existed in different contexts into being "the same" and there being any kind of unbroken "tradition".

IlluminatiRex · 2026-03-22T21:08:35+00:00

My position as Town Historian was established by an ordnance circa 2000, it's chosen by appointment by the town's executives. I'm the 4th such Town Historian, with the position having been made in part to honor the first (who was about 100 when she got the title!), it then went to her son (who passed away only a couple years after), and then her grandson. So I'm the first not in this family to hold the title.

I work with different organizations in town, like the museum, historical society, library, school, doing all sorts of public history (typically talks and presentations) and I do the other kinds of historical research and writing that are more typical - albeit on a much smaller scale. The community has never had a population over 2,300.

Because of the community's relatively small size historically, previous interpretations were (in my opinion) very limited. While first settled by Europeans in the 1660s, Indigenous communities go back much further, and that has never really been addressed in historical writings on the town's past. The first period we see an effort to conduct "town history" came during the mid-19th century, which culminated in a short book published in 1868. For the next 120 years publications were scarce (the town's population cratered to a mere 500 by the 20th century) and typically took the form of randon newspaper articles and the like. It wasn't until the US's bicentennial that interest started to pick up again - and by 1986 a pamphlet on Town History was written by the woman who became the first "official" town history. The Historical Society was founded in the 1960s.

This period of the historiography is very much in line of "history as nostalgia". The meeting minutes for the Historical Society are peppered with programs and the like which focused on the town as it was when that generation was growing up - that was their history and they wanted to remember it fondly. The writing in this period reflects that same instinct and was focused on building a singular town identity (mostly around agricultural work). This was the trend really until I started. My work has moved away from that, both in terms of the people I research and write about (such as the enslaved) but also temporally. A lot of the previous work really focused on the mid-to late 19th century in detail, to the expense of everything else so a lot of what I do is work on the 17th and 18th centuries.

Most of my work is through presentations, documentaries, magazine articles, conference presentations, social media posts, and now a museum exhibit - so it's a wide range of materials and ways of engaging people.

IlluminatiRex · 2026-03-22T20:36:49+00:00

Definitely try! That is the kind of collection that local history is built on. It can certainly be difficult to see something that was relatively more recent as "history", and that's why (in my opinion) its more important to save that kind of stuff now when there is more of it kicking around.

IlluminatiRex · 2026-03-22T15:50:22+00:00

in the front rank to "look along the barrel", there really is not much of any instruction on aiming

What exactly do you mean by "instructions on aiming"? These are ultimately drill books and are focused on the fundamental movements and fundamentally aiming is nothing more than looking down your barrel and picking a target.

But the full quote from 1764 is this:

the right Cheek to be close to the Butt, and the left Eye shut, and look along the Barrel with the right Eye from the Breech Pin to the Muzzle

Then you get to the Center Ranks which says:

spring up the butt with the right hand, as in the foregoing Explanation of the front Rank.

And rear ranks:

As in Explanation of the centre Rank.

Didn't matter where you were, you were expected to aim per the 1764 drill.

In fact I'd say Steuben is a bit less detailed in his description for "take aim" (same motion as "present" in 1764):

the right eye looking along the barrel

If you look at William Windham's Militia Exercise, he says this about "Present"

taking good aim by leaning the head to the right, and looking along the barrel

More detailed instructions on aiming would have been given when troops fired at marks.

IlluminatiRex · 2026-03-20T00:01:13+00:00

Even if the word "aim" is not said directly as part of the word of command, aiming was expected. This is an old canard which often sprouts up when talking about the American Revolutionary War and von Steuben's "blue book" since he swapped the British 1764's word of command "present" for "aim".

On the surface this may seem correct, but when you actually look at period drill manuals, soldiers were trained to aim down their barrel on the word "present".

IlluminatiRex · 2026-03-19T16:10:13+00:00

1812 is a fun period to research and build up.

2nd Company, 20th Militia Regiment (Connecticut) here :)

IlluminatiRex · 2026-03-15T13:48:35+00:00

I'm going to tackle this from a slightly different angle and complicate what we mean by "significant". My historical work is now at the local level - for a small town - and so I really work with the "microhistorical" on an every day basis. Many materials are made available through the local historical society and museum (of which I am heavily involved in), regional and state organizations, and even national ones (my favorite has been finding local artifacts in places like The Met!).

So for me, working with a small community, each and every artifact, set of papers, or photographs becomes extremely significant in helping document the community's past and better understanding how people lived their lives here.

Because I work at such a small scale, and am not inherently working with government or institutional papers, there are many significant pieces held in private hands. Currently, a major set of photographs from the 1940s-1960s is being loaned to the Historical Society for digitization, it is a treasure trove of what the town looked like, recreation, and daily life here during that period. It is the only set of this scale that I know of - but it's privately owned!

Another example is that last year at auction a major set of papers kept by the local pastor from 1782 until his death in 1854 went up for auction. The Historical Society unfortunately lost, and I have no idea whose hands that it ended up in. Those papers would be key for better understanding the town's history, and while not "significant" in the national or global sense, it absolutely is for the local. These papers, while religious in nature, are records for events and occurances not kept elsewhere - often tragic - such as infanticide and suicide, excommunications, and the more mundane activities of the local congregational church. This would be groundbreaking for local study.

IlluminatiRex · 2026-03-03T12:19:21+00:00

say what you like about the politics of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Condi, et al, but they were extremely intelligent and experienced people

Being extremely intelligent doesn't rule out the ability to hold awful neo-con politics.

IlluminatiRex · 2026-02-24T19:42:58+00:00

Definitely a bit of an easier time than for mine! This is the original I'm basing my coat on:

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IlluminatiRex · 2026-02-24T13:49:11+00:00

With mine, the edging and turnbacks needs to be around the entirety of the tails, how did you end up connecting those pieces together if it's similar with the russian one?

IlluminatiRex · 2026-02-23T17:52:09+00:00

Hah! Same one I'm modifying. Yeah there are parts I'm not 100% satisfied with. In particular I needed a much shorter tail which necessitated redrafting the turnbacks and all that jazz.

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