| WAR
HORSES: One legend has it that carousels
were developed as an early device to teach cavalrymen how to fight on horseback.
Whether this is true or not, carousels do have some interesting links to the military.
- Spurred by a surge of
patriotism following the Boer War (1899-1902), centaurs appeared on several British-made
carousels; these double-seater horses replaced their usual heads with lifelike,
waist-up carvings of domestic political or military heroes.
- In
the early 1940s, Winston Churchill ordered that Britain's carousels be re-opened,
despite widespread material shortages, to boost morale during WW II.
- Reputedly,
one of the C.W. Parker Company's most notable former employees was Dwight D. Eisenhower,
Supreme Allied Commander of D-Day in World War II and later U.S. President, who,
as a young lad, was said to have sanded carousel horses at the Parker factory
located near his home in Abilene, Kansas.
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