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What was the Barrackpore Mutiny of 1824?

Introduction The Barrackpore mutiny was a rising of native Indian sepoys against their British officers in Barrackpore in November 1824. The incident occurred when the British East India Company was fighting the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824-1826) under the leadership of the governor-general of India, William Amherst, 1st Earl Amherst. Refer to Vellore Mutiny (1806) and… Read More

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What is a Sepoy?

Introduction A sepoy or সিপাহী was originally the designation given to a professional Indian infantryman, usually armed with a musket, in the armies of the Mughal Empire. In the 18th century, the French East India Company and its other European counterparts employed locally recruited soldiers within India, mainly consisting of infantry designated as “sepoys”. The… Read More

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What was the Vellore Mutiny (1806)?

Introduction The Vellore mutiny on 10 July 1806 was the first instance of a large-scale and violent mutiny by Indian sepoys against the East India Company, predating the Indian Rebellion of 1857 by half a century. The revolt, which took place in the South Indian city of Vellore, lasted one full day, during which mutineers… Read More

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What is Diffused Lighting Camouflage?

Introduction Diffused lighting camouflage was a form of active camouflage using counter-illumination to enable a ship to match its background, the night sky, that was tested by the Royal Canadian Navy on corvettes during World War II. The principle was discovered by a Canadian professor, Edmund Godfrey Burr, in 1940. It attracted interest because it… Read More

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What were the Yehudi Lights?

Introduction Yehudi lights are lamps of automatically controlled brightness placed on the front and leading edges of an aircraft to raise the aircraft’s luminance to the average brightness of the sky, a form of active camouflage using counter-illumination. They were designed to camouflage the aircraft by preventing it from appearing as a dark object against… Read More

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What was the Philadelphia Experiment?

Introduction The Philadelphia Experiment is an alleged military experiment (many say urban legend) supposed to have been carried out by the US Navy at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, sometime around 28 October 1943 (during World War II). The United States Navy destroyer escort USS Eldridge was claimed to have been… Read More