Not Made for the Battlefield: Tools, Ornaments and Everyday Objects Turned into Weapons

The seax was carried as a personal sidearm and utility blade as much as a battlefield weapon, and it later became a heraldic device in the coats of arms of Essex and the former county of Middlesex. It is the starting point for the idea that a fighting knife can also be a daily tool.

A throwing knife is purpose built and weighted to be thrown, and the atlas records its use across many cultures for hunting, combat, sideshow performance and sport. Medieval combat manuals by Hans Talhoffer and Paulus Hector Mair describe throwing daggers and their techniques.

The kunai is a Japanese multipurpose tool thought to derive from the masonry trowel, adopted by ninja because it was cheap and easy to sharpen. Despite its popular image, it was primarily a stabbing and thrusting implement rather than a throwing weapon.

The karambit is a small curved knife shaped like a claw, believed to have begun among the Minangkabau of West Sumatra as an agricultural implement for raking roots and planting rice. It was later weaponized and carried as a last resort when a soldier's primary arms were lost.

The eunjangdo is a silver knife worn in Korea as both a practical tool and an ornament. Under Yeonsangun in 1498 its use by commoners was prohibited because of the value of gold and silver, and its blades were sometimes engraved with mottoes of devotion since the knife symbolized fidelity.

The sjambok is a heavy leather whip from the Dutch Cape Colony, traditionally cut from hippopotamus or rhinoceros hide and used to herd livestock. It also served as an implement of corporal punishment and as a weapon, including by colonial and apartheid-era police and security forces.

The assegai is a light throwing spear with an iron head used across much of Africa before firearms spread. Among the Zulu, Shaka popularized a shorter stabbing version, the iklwa, used with a cowhide shield in a paired throwing and stabbing system.

The Arkansas toothpick is a heavy dagger with a straight blade 12 to 20 inches long, credited to the blacksmith James Black. In the late 1830s Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia named it in laws meant to curb dueling.

The Rampuri is an Indian pocket knife named for Rampur, first made by royal bladesmiths to the Nawabs after widespread adoption of firearms reduced demand for traditional weapons. It later became tied to organized crime until a 1990s Uttar Pradesh rule limited blade length to 4.5 inches.

A switchblade is defined by its spring-driven automatic opening rather than by any single inventor or date. In the 1950s American media linked it to youth crime, and in 1954 Representative James J. Delaney introduced the first congressional bill restricting its manufacture and sale.

The hook sword is sometimes presented as ancient but is a comparatively recent design tied mainly to the late Qing dynasty and afterward. It survives chiefly as a training and performance weapon in Chinese martial arts rather than a battlefield-issued arm.

The Bulgarian umbrella hid a pneumatic mechanism that fired a small ricin-loaded pellet. It is best known for the September 1978 assassination of the dissident writer Georgi Markov on Waterloo Bridge in London, and a similar device was used the same year in a failed attempt on Vladimir Kostov in the Paris Metro.