HEAVY LITTLE OBJECTS

#154 :: Minnie Ball

This .58-caliber slug killed a lot of men during the American Civil War. Big as your thumb, fired from a high-velocity muzzle-loading rifle, it went in hard, shattering bones and exploding organs before exiting through a fist-sized hole in your back. Fired and (like this) unfired slugs pepper the battlefields of Virginia and the Carolinas. You can buy one for a buck or two at national monument gift shops, coated with flaking, oxidized lead. As it destroys, so it also has a legendary power for giving life - just ask the Confederate battlefield bystander who was impregnated by a minnie ball ...