Stiletto was used by anarchists as well as by members of various "Black Hand" (a method of extortion) organizations to assassinate Italian-Americans and others who either opposed the "Black Hand" or ignored its demands for blackmail. The "Black Hand" even established schools for training its members in the use of the stiletto. The emergence of fierce hand-to-hand combat in the trenches of World War I created a new need for stabbing weapons, resulting in the reappearance of the dagger and the stiletto. Many versions of these stabbing knives exist, some individually made by soldiers, while others were government-procured and authorized. On
Aemilianus van Heel Aemilianus van Heel Johannes Wilhelm van Heel (8 June 1907 – 8 October 1938), later known as Father Aemilianus van Heel, was a Franciscan friar from the Netherlands, who served as a missionary in China and died in the second Sino-Japanese War. Van Heel was born in Leiden, the Netherlands, on 8 June 1907. His parents were Johannes Cornelis van Heel (a cobbler) and Maria Clasina Blesting. He entered the Franciscan order and was ordained a priest on 26 March 1933. Later that year he left for China as a missionary, where he took the name Hu Yong-Sheng. The young