History Facts #1 and #2

I'm going to run a new segment on Drinking The Swill of random history facts I find interesting:

1) Benito Mussolini, whose father was a blacksmith and a socialist, was named after Benito Juarez, the liberal first president of Mexico. Prior to inventing fascism about the time WW1 broke out, Mussolini was actually a journalist for a socialist newspaper.

2) Americans often scoff at the idea of the British wearing red coats during the Revolutionary War because they made such easy targets in thick New England forest. As if the British were so Old World and stuffy that they couldn’t have the common sense on how to fight a guerilla war, even though they had eventually conquered a quarter of the known world. The practical reason for wearing red coats in the 18th century was that musket fire created such a huge amount of smoke that red was the only color that stood out enough to keep soldiers from shooting each other. Their uniforms were an advantage on the battlefield against friendly fire that the Americans would have duplicated had they the funding to do so.