I've been saying this for years, your independence day IS NOT 4 July 1776, but 3 September 1783. 4 July was simply the date you proclaimed independence, it was not recognised or granted until this day 1783.

It is also the anniversary (1658) of the death of Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth 1653-58, interestingly on the anniversay of his two greatest victories, Dunbar 1650 and Worcester 1651.

Parliament offered him the Crown in 1657 and he was minded to accept, but his closest advisors told him that they had not fought to remove one King to replace him with another, so he reluctantly turned it down.

1939 - GB & France declare war on Germany starting another World War.

Actually it was started by the Americans years earilier when they called back in their loans to Germany and and put everyone in Germany in soup lines. That's what caused the desperation in the country and allowed a cracker to come to power. I am going to have to check things out a little deeper because America was probably the cause of the first world war also. Maybe Mark can help me out.

I lay the blame solely on Kaiser Bill

I think we can absolve the USA from any involvement in the beginnings of the First World War, other than they were part of the naval arms race most industrialized countries were embroiled in. European rivalries were to blame. What started it Mark was the assassination of Archduke Franiz Ferinand of Austria with a Browning model 1910 semi automatic gun. The Americans didn't pull the tigger several times but they did supply the gun. See I told you that they started the dam first war also.lol

The gun that killed Ferdinand was designed & manufactured in Belgium. I am becoming increasingly weary correcting you all the time, Pete. Now I know how the nuns felt.

So now all the sites I researched this on are spreading vicious rumours?

THE SARAJEVO PISTOL

Model 1910 Browning semiautomatic pistol like this one above was used by Gavrilo Princip to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand and precipitate World War I. (Image Credit: Gun's World) On June 28, 1914, Gavrilo Princip [wiki] shot and killed the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife, Sophie, in Sarajevo, Bosnia. The assassinations caused a chain reaction of events which, within less than five weeks, led to the start of World War I. The gun was a Browning semiautomatic pistol, model M1910, serial #19074. Gavrilo Princip, second right, arrested after he fired on Archduke Ferdinand. Princip, just 19, was a member of the Serbian nationalist group called the Black Hand. He fired seven shots into the royal couple's car from five feet away, then attempted to shoot himself, but was stopped by passerby and quickly arrested. Princip died in prison of tuberculosis in 1918 (the disease was one reason he took the mission). After his trial, the pistol was presented to Father Anton Puntigam, the Jesuit priest who had given the archduke and duchess their last rites. He hoped to place it in a museum, but then he died in 1926 the gun was lost ... for almost 80 years. In 2004 a Jesuit community house in Austria made a startling announcement: they had found the gun (verified by its serial number). They donated it to the Vienna Museum of Military History in time for the 90th anniversary of the assassination that started a war that would eventually kill 8.5 million people. Also in the museum are the car in which the couple were riding, the bloodied pillow cover on which the archduke rested his head while dying, and petals from a rose that was attached to Sophie's belt.

Wasn't the British army's SLR an FM design?

Some fine guns were manufactured by FN.

Yes Major what we called the FN-CI and C2 were used all over the world which included all commonwealth countries. Yours seemed to be a cheaper or maybe older model which had a different style of sights. You could engage targets at 600 metres with little practise with the sights we had. You used them during the Falklands problems.