Variations
The agricultural flail was not just used as an improvised weapon in Europe. In southeast Asia, short agricultural flails originally employed in threshing rice were adapted into weapons such as the nunchaku or sansetsukonn.
In modern history, related weapons were also said to been used by members of organized crime during the Depression-era period of the United States and other Western countries. Known as a cosh, or blackjack, they are described as being made of a sock filled with sand, or a sock containing a bar of hard soap in the toe end, that were swung against the head of the victim with great but usually non-lethal force.
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