Totally Useless Facts from Mr. Penny #2

 Did you know that Mr. Penny is a veritable fountain of useless information? It’s true, he makes someone’s eyes glass over almost daily as he can’t help but recite worthless facts!
We thought we would share some of those useless-but-possibly-interesting tidbits here.
Did You Know: Cowboy “Six Guns”… didn’t have six shots.
The iconic “Six Guns” of the old west, like the Colt Peacemaker, DID have 6 chambers in it’s cylinder. However, gunfighters of that day didn’t load 6 cartridges into their guns. 

To do so meant that there would be a hammer down on a loaded chamber, which also meant if a gun was dropped and hit the ground hammer first, the gun would go off! 

So instead they would only load 5 cartridges, leaving the hammer down on an empty chamber. As soon as the gun was cocked, a loaded chamber rotated into place.  

So if you watch a cowboy movie and they fire five shots and reload, you know they’ve done their historical homework!

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