Greener's expansive bullet trialed

Newcastle gunmaker William Greener demonstrates a two-piece self-expanding bullet to the Board of Ordnance at Tynemouth — a tapered plug driven into a hollow ball seals the bore on firing — thirteen years before the Minié ball the British Army would eventually adopt. The Board declines it; in 1857, after Napoleon III acknowledged the Englishman's priority, Parliament votes Greener £1,000 for the invention.

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