Thread: McQueen Salute
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IROC IROC is online now
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Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: Knoxville, TN
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I think the myth is a myth:

From wikipedia:

"According to a popular legend the two-fingers salute and/or V sign derives from the gestures of longbowmen fighting in the English army at the Battle of Agincourt (1415) during the Hundred Years' War.[4][12] The story claims that the French claimed that they would cut off the arrow-shooting fingers of all the English longbowmen after they had won the battle at Agincourt. But the English came out victorious and showed off their two fingers, still intact. Historian Juliet Barker quotes Jean Le Fevre (who fought on the English side at Agincourt) as saying that Henry V included a reference to the French cutting off longbowmen's fingers in his pre-battle speech.[13] If this is correct it confirms that the story was around at the time of Agincourt, although it doesn't necessarily mean that the French practised it, just that Henry found it useful for propaganda, and it does not show that the 'two-fingers salute' is derived from the hypothetical behaviour of English archers at that battle. Indeed, there is no record of this explanation for the V sign before the 1970s, and it seems to be a popular myth."
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Mike
1976 Euro 911
3.2 w/10.3 compression & SSIs
22/29 torsions, 22/22 adjustable sways, Carrera brakes
Old 10-29-2008, 12:26 PM
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