John Moses Browning's Birthday was Saturday

From A View From The Porch via H/T at Instapundit:

We’re talking about the dude who patented the concept of the SLIDE on autoloading pistols. The guy who pretty much invented gas-operated automatic weapons. The man who made the first practical and commercially successful self-loading shotgun. The way a Glock works? Browning patented that. You don’t like old-fashioned hammer-fired guns? Browning’s first commercially successful pistol, the FN Model 1899, was striker-fired. Other than the nameless individual who first stuffed fireworks powder into a metal pot and used it to launch a ball, there’s probably no other single individual who had such an influence on firearms as we know them today.

The influence of John Browning on modern weapons can not be understated.