[tanbog4]

Its not the US but the date of the last well known duel always blows my mind (from Wikipedia):

21 April 1967: The last official duel in the history of France happened between Gaston Defferre and René Ribière, both delegates at the French National Assembly. During an argument in the assembly room, Defferre said to Ribière "shut up, idiot" ("taisez-vous, abruti"). Defferre won the duel after four minutes of sword fighting, wounding his opponent twice.

[toptal]

Footage of it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e68nuAcSuWQ

[hiq]

> Le premier sang venait d'être versé. M. Ribière, pourtant, exigeait de reprendre le combat ; non pas à mort, car il pensait se marier le lendemain même, et risquer sa vie pour une insulte lancée au cours d'un débat politique n'est guère de notre temps.

Translating approximately to:

> The first blood had just been drawn. Mr Ribière, nevertheless, demanded the duel be resumed ; not to death, for he expected to get married just the day after, and risking one's life for an abuse thrown during a political debate is hardly fashionable.

[newdude116]

Hey, I did duels when I was a student:

https://youtu.be/lUh5exBJXBU?t=187

[_dg3t]

Yes, this is still tradition among some German students. My 30y old brother has several scars („Schmiss“) from it.

[Ichthypresbyter]

I wonder if any graduate of a German university has ever run afoul of the various American state laws requiring candidates for public office to swear that they have never fought a duel.

[newdude116]

I never heard of such laws in the US.

By definition, this is not considered a "duel", hence I think you could claim in good faith "no".

Wiki: Modern academic fencing, the Mensur, is neither a duel nor a sport. It is a traditional way of training and educating character and personality; thus, in a mensur bout, there is neither winner nor loser.

[jessriedel]

Note that, according to a YouTube comment translation of the footage linked by another comment here, the duel was agreed upon from the start to be limited to first blood, not death. So arguably not a true duel in the normal sense of the word. Still interesting though.

[ggm]

Does "The Haynes manual of duelling" really say they have to be to the death? You mean all those duels where nobody died were not "real" duels?

[Ichthypresbyter]

No surviving Code Duello that I'm aware of (there are several, though the authenticity of most of them is disputed) says that duels have to be to the death.

There is a French one [0] which says that in a duel with swords, the seconds decide among themselves whether the duel will be to first blood or to the death, and do not inform the principals of their decision.

[0]https://www.geriwalton.com/french-dueling-codes-for-swords-p...

[jessriedel]

Thanks. In common usage of the term, duels don't have to be to the death, but they have to be with deadly weapons. Otherwise every disagreement settled by a boxing match or fencing match is duel. It's of course true that there is a continuum on how deadly a weapon can be, which depends on usage and has no sharp cutoff, but if the chance of death has been carefully eliminated, then the reader should be alerted to the fact that this does not really live up to the traditional understanding of a duel.

[jessriedel]

Duels have to be with deadly weapons. (See the dictionary.) If you are purposely using them in a manner that cannot result in death, they aren't deadly, so it's not a duel. Otherwise every boxing or fencing match would be a duel.

That is different than using deadly weapons but where one party is incapacitated or surrenders before they are killed. The realistic threat of death is still present.

The whole point of the top-level comment was that it seems shocking that dueling was still happening mid-20th century, so it is useful to point out that this was not the normal definition of dueling.