(Roughly) Daily

Jamie Catherwood with the story of an inspired Catholic priest and hard-earned belief…

Two days before the wildly popular World’s Fair in his city came to an end, on October 30, 1893, a disturbed office seeker shot and killed the Mayor of Chicago in his own home… This devastated Chicago and America more broadly. This high-profile assassination detracted from a triumphant World’s Fair, which showcased American strength and global prominence.

For whatever reason, it really devastated… Catholic Priest, Casimir Zeglen. A local newspaper reported:

“the sensitive priest was shocked more than most people, because it occurred to him that there must be some way to create bullet-proof clothing that would protect people who, by their position, are most vulnerable to fanatics.”

And so… Zeglen began designing a bullet-proof vest… Around this time, there were a few publicized cases of men being shot in the chest and surviving because a silk handkerchief in their breast pockets, folded a few times, had stopped the bullet. This inspired Zeglen to explore the application of silk on a larger scale: bulletproof vests. He spent two years experimenting and tinkering, and in 1897 Zeglen received two patents from the USPTO for his invention: “armor protecting against bullets from a handgun.”

Although he was not always the target, Zeglen frequently placed himself in the line of fire during public demonstrations (Source)… How much conviction must you have in your own research to willingly place yourself in harm’s way? And that’s just it. True conviction can only come from deep research and long hours. Doing the work.

I’d never let someone shoot me while wearing a silk vest unless I’d spent thousands of hours researching, building, iterating, and studying everything there is to know about bulletproof materials.

Yet Zeglen had done just that. Backed by meticulous research and years of trial and error, Casimir Zeglen demonstrated his invention before the new Chicago Mayor – four years after the assassination of his predecessor – and the Chicago Police Department…

“A Story of Conviction & Bulletproof Priests,” from @InvestorAmnesia.

For more on Zeglen, see here; for more on other early bulletproof vests (and the dramatic photos they spawned), here.

* Rollo May, The Courage to Create

###

As we do the work, we might recall that it was on this date in 1946 that Annie Get Your Gun opened at the Imperial Theater on Broadway. With a score by Irving Berlin and a book by Dorothy Fields and her brother Herbert Fields, it told the fictionalized story of Annie Oakley (1860–1926), a sharpshooter who starred in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, and her romance with sharpshooter Frank E. Butler (1847–1926).

It was huge hit, running for 1,147 performances, and spawned revivals, a 1950 film version and television versions. Songs that became hits include “There’s No Business Like Show Business“, “Doin’ What Comes Natur’lly“, “You Can’t Get a Man with a Gun“, “They Say It’s Wonderful“, and “Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better).”