History
Carcasses were used for the first time by the French under Louis XIV in 1672. They were also fired from bomb vessels.
The carcass shell as used by the Royal Navy in the 18th century, most famously in the attack on Fort McHenry, was a hollow cast iron sphere weighing 190 pounds (86 kg). Instead of the single fuse hole found on a conventional mortar shell of the period, the carcass had 3 openings, each 3 inches (76 mm) in diameter. Its filling burned for 11 minutes upon firing. It was especially useful during night bombardments, as the burning projectile assisted in the aiming of the cannon.
Read more about this topic: Carcass (projectile)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God’s property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The true theater of history is therefore the temperate zone.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)