Who Invented the Rude Anglo-Saxon One-Fingered Salute and Where Did the Gesture Come From?

When the outnumbered English faced the French at the Battle of Agincourt, they were armed with a relatively new weapon, the longbow.

The French were so amused that they vowed to cut off the middle finger of each British archer.

When the longbows won the day, the English jeered the retreating French by raising that middle finger in a gesture that still means, among other things, “in your face.”