Royal Canadian Mounted Police Created: The Mounties Are Born

The Canadian government needed three hundred men to police a territory larger than Western Europe. They got farmers, clerks, and a few ex-soldiers who'd never seen the prairies. Prime Minister John A. Macdonald created the North West Mounted Police in 1873 after whiskey traders massacred Assiniboine people in the Cypress Hills—American guns, Canadian soil, nobody to stop it. Within a year, these hastily-trained constables rode west in scarlet tunics borrowed from British tradition. The force that couldn't fill its first recruitment quota became the world's most recognized police service. Sometimes desperation builds better than planning ever could.