And King's Men Crow

Fun historical death-based fact of the day: during the Civil War, landowners in the Black Country sided with King Charles while Birmingham merchants favoured Parliament. The two opposing regions, nascent industrial powers with a history of bad blood, set themselves to the task of firearms manufacture for their respective armies. From Birmingham's Gun Quarter to the foundries of Wednesbury and West Bromwich's Guns Village, muskets and cannon were forged for the general purpose of snuffing out English lives on a large scale.

The war finished - eventually - but the region remained, for centuries after, a centre for the creation of all things pointy and shooty. At any time between the 17th and 20th centuries, anywhere on the globe, if you had the misfortune to get shot by a man in a red coat, the chances were that your death was moulded and cast in a dark canalside workshop somewhere in the West Midlands.

And, as always, the only ones who got fat were the merchants and the crows.