Friday, April 2, 2010

Son of a gun!

Ben obviously misheard this urban legend:
An urban legend sometimes states that a story reported in the October 7, 1864 The American Medical Weekly about a woman impregnated by a bullet that went through a soldier's scrotum and into her abdomen was the origin of the term "son of a gun." The story about the woman was a joke written by Dr. Legrand G. Capers; some people who read the weekly failed to realize that the story was a joke and reported it as true.

In Ben's retelling, the bullet ricochets off the soldier's knee and then enters the woman's abdomen, making her pregnant.

Ben was full of outrage that anyone could believe anything so ludicrous as any fool knows that there is no way a bullet can ricochet off a knee.

Oh, to be young, earnest and innocent again.

2 comments:

April said...

If you are interested, and have netflix or another way to get old episodes of Mythbusters I believe they had a show on this.

:-)

Shez said...

Ben's a fanatical Mythbuster fan. I'm going to bet he heard about this urban legend on Mythbusters.