Many of us remember that Burr killed political rival Alexander Hamilton in a famous duel, but what we may have forgotten is the rest of the story.

The shooting of Hamilton precipitated a series of increasingly bizarre twists in Burr's already turbulent life: the politician fled two arrest warrants, conspired with a colleague to illegally invade Mexico, and may have contemplated establishing his own western empire on the model of Napoleon. Eventually captured, tried, and acquitted of treason, Aaron Burr then attempted (unsuccessfully) to persuade Napoleon to help him conquer Florida. Burr spent his last 24 years practicing law.

But let's get back to that famous duel. By the time Burr challenged Hamilton, the word duel (after a poetic variant of the Latin word for war) had been part of our language for 400 years. Burr and Hamilton's duel was a duel of honor; it's distinguished from the older judicial duel that was first practiced by the Germanic tribes of the early Christian era and that lasted the Middle Ages. Sometimes called trial by battle, such duels were intended to resolve quarrels and legal disputes by one-on-one combat. And yes, that is where the practice of throwing down the gauntlet (or reinforced glove) as a challenge to combat originated.