All about Snipers

Snipers ? They blow up people's minds.

More seriously:

• The verb to snipe originated from any hunter adept enough to kill the snipe, a species of bird with a long, slender bill.
• Snipers were originally called "sharpshooters" not because they had to have sharp eyesight, or sharp aim, but because of their use of a Sharps rifle.
• The first ever documented use of snipers was in the American Revolution, where colonists hid in the trees and shot at British troops with rifles.
• Contrary to popular portrayal, snipers often work in pairs, with a spotter holding a short-range weapon to protect the soldier with the long-range weapon. In addition, they often switch to avoid eye fatigue.
• An early sniper motto: "He who shoots and runs away, lives to shoot another day."
• There was a sniping school founded at Linghem, France in 1916.
• The British at some point used paper-mache dummies to draw sniper fire. They even lit fake cigarettes to make it appear more realistic. Once the dummy was fired at, the soldiers then used triangulation to determine the location of the sniper. They then used artillery to destroy the sniper.
• Sniper Simo Häyhä had 505 confirmed kills in 100 days.
• The longest sniper kill distance is 2.47 km, as noted by Deepak Mehta.Computer simulations predict that there would have been a six second gapbetween the firing of the bullet and collision with the target as the bullet sailed through the air. During that time, the bullet would have dipped 2.8º. IN addition, a small breeze of only 2.7 m/s would have diverted the bullet 9m off course.
• In another notable incident, a two-man sniper team of the Royal Marines each killed people at a range of about 860 m with shots that, due to strong wind, had to be fired "exactly 17 meters (56 ft) to the left of the target for the bullet to bend in the wind."
• Mike Plumb, a SWAT sniper in Columbus, Ohio, once prevented a suicide by shooting a revolver out of the individual's hand, leaving him unharmed.
• Snipers are trained to squeeze the trigger straight back with the ball of their finger, to avoid jerking the gun sideways. Some doctrines train a sniper to breathe deeply before shooting, then hold their lungs empty while they line up and take their shot. Some go further, teaching their snipers to shoot between heartbeats to minimize barrel motion.
• People around a sniper's target won't hear the bang of the bullet being fired. They'll just see the target fall to the ground.

Sources: Facts, Discussion Forum, and Encyclopedia Article, The long view - Telegraph, and Wikipedia page: Sniper