60 Fun Facts About Cannons

The word 'cannon' comes from the Old Italian cannone, meaning what?

It traces back through the Latin canna to the Greek kanna, 'reed'; both 'cannons' and 'cannon' are correct plurals.

In which country did the cannon most likely first appear, possibly as early as the 12th century?

It probably evolved from the fire lance, a gunpowder tube on a polearm; a Dazu rock carving from 1128 may show one.

Which gun, dated 1298, is considered the earliest confirmed extant cannon because it carries an inscribed production date?

It is just 34.7 cm long and weighs 6.2 kg; the other early Chinese guns are dated only by context.

In 1288, troops of which dynasty are recorded using hand cannons in battle against the rebel prince Nayan?

The Jurchen commander Li Ting led them; the Heilongjiang hand cannon was found near the battle site.

The earliest known European depiction of a gun appears in a 1326 manuscript by which author?

It shows a vase-shaped gun firing a large arrow, lit through a touch hole with a long stick.

The oldest surviving cannon in Europe, a small bronze piece from the early-to-mid 14th century, was unearthed in which country?

The Loshult gun from Scania is now in the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm.

English cannon called ribaldis were first recorded in preparations for which 1346 battle?

The English hoped the noise would panic French cavalry horses; the guns helped longbowmen drive off Genoese crossbowmen.

Cannons were mainly anti-infantry weapons until around what year, when large guns first breached walls in Europe?

By 1480 European cannon had reached their 'classic form', which barely changed until the 1750s.

Mehmed the Conqueror used 68 super-sized bombards to capture which city in 1453?

Their blast could reportedly be heard 10 miles away, and the fall of the city ended the Byzantine Empire.

Which Hungarian engineer is credited with bringing the giant bombard to the Ottomans before 1453?

The Dardanelles Gun of 1464 was modelled on his Basilic.

How many men were reportedly needed to transport the Great Turkish Bombard used in the 1453 siege?

It needed a crew of 200 and 70 oxen just to operate.

The Dardanelles Gun of 1464 was cast in bronze in two screw-together parts. Whom did Sultan Abdulaziz give it to in 1866?

It had still been firing at British ships in the 1807 Dardanelles operation, more than 340 years after it was made.

Mons Meg, the 20-inch bombard at Edinburgh Castle, was a gift to James II of Scots from which duke?

Built in 1449, it burst its barrel in 1680 and spent 75 years in the Tower of London before Walter Scott campaigned for its return.

How was the barrel of Mons Meg constructed?

A separate screw-fitted breech takes the powder charge, and the whole is 20 inches in calibre.

The Tsar Cannon in the Kremlin was cast in bronze in 1586 by which master founder?

Guinness lists it as the largest bombard by calibre in the world, though it was never used in war.

How much does the Tsar Cannon weigh?

Its bore is 890 mm across and it carries a relief of Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich on horseback.

When Ivan III set up Russia's first cannon foundry in 1475, in which city was it?

Russian cannon had only been documented since 1382, and the oldest surviving one dates from 1485.

The Jaivana at Jaigarh Fort, the world's largest wheeled cannon when made in 1720, was fired how many times?

The single test firing under Sawai Jai Singh II used 100 kg of powder and, legend says, threw the ball some 35 km.

Which Southeast Asian empire, according to Raffles, was already using cannon widely by 1325 and made vassals hand theirs over?

Mongol-Chinese technology from the 1293 invasion of Java produced the cetbang, and Javanese founders were praised as masters of casting.

Japan acquired its first cannon in 1510, brought back from China by whom?

Japan never produced many, which left its troops badly outgunned by Ming artillery at Pyongyang in 1593.

How many sizes of cannon did the English classify in the 16th century, from cannon royal down to rabinet?

Henry II of France settled for six and the Spanish for twelve; the list runs through culverin, saker, minion and falcon.

Once names were standardised, a 'cannon' proper fired a shot of what weight?

A demi-cannon fired 32 pounds, a culverin 18 and a demi-culverin 9.

What replaced finely ground gunpowder in the 16th century, letting the charge ignite quickly and evenly?

Air pockets between the coarse grains let the flame race through the whole charge.

Cannon made castles obsolete and gave rise to which new style of low, thick, angled fortification?

Machiavelli wrote that no wall, however thick, could survive artillery for more than a few days.

How many horses were needed to move a heavy English cannon in the 16th century?

A culverin needed nine, and even then the guns crawled at walking pace.

Which Swedish king revolutionised field artillery with light guns handled by three men and the first combined powder-and-shot cartridge?

He dropped everything heavier than 12-pounders from the field and pulled his 4- and 9-pounders with just two horses.

The German-invented mortar was designed to do what?

The Dutch learned to fire powder-filled bombs from them, and only in 1650 was it found that the gun's own flash lit the fuse.

The carronade, adopted by the Royal Navy in 1779, was designed with a low muzzle velocity in order to do what?

It weighed a third to a quarter of a long gun of the same calibre and vanished from the Navy in the 1850s.

Napoleon's dispersal of a royalist mob in Paris with cannon fire in October 1795 became known as what?

It happened on 13 Vendémiaire and launched his rise to power.

In a Napoleonic-era British gun crew, why did one gunner press his thumb over the vent hole while loading?

Another gunner sponged the bore with a damp sponge for the same reason before each fresh charge.

The smoothbore 12-pounder 'Napoleon', widely used in the American Civil War, originated in France in what year?

It was named for Napoleon III, not his uncle.

Which British engineer invented a rifled, breech-loading gun bearing his name and, with Joseph Whitworth, the wrought-iron-jacketed steel cannon?

Rifling spread through artillery from about 1855, giving shells gyroscopic stability and better accuracy.

Cannons directly or indirectly caused roughly what share of casualties in World War I?

Trench warfare drove huge demand for howitzers, which could drop shells into trenches.

The German 42 cm siege howitzer of 1914 got its famous nickname from which woman?

German soldiers coined 'Dicke Berta' at Liège in 1914, where the 42 cm guns destroyed Forts Pontisse and Loncin.

What was the calibre of Big Bertha's barrel?

That made it one of the largest artillery pieces ever fielded, though it is often confused with the Paris Gun.

When the Paris Gun first shelled Paris in March 1918, what did Parisians assume was attacking them?

No gun or aeroplane could be heard, because the shells were arriving from 120 km away.

Shells from the Paris Gun reached a maximum altitude of about 42 km, a record that stood until which weapon flew in 1942?

Each shell took 182 seconds to reach the city and left the barrel at 1,640 metres per second.

Because of its extreme range, gunners aiming the Paris Gun had to allow for which phenomenon?

It fired north-south from Crépy-en-Laon, and Krupp's Professor von Eberhardt did the calculations.

Schwerer Gustav, the German 80 cm railway gun, was designed to destroy which fortifications?

The Wehrmacht went round the Maginot Line before it was ready, so its only action was at Sevastopol, where it hit a magazine 30 m below sea level.

How much did a fully assembled Schwerer Gustav weigh?

It fired 4.8-tonne high-explosive shells 47 km and 7.1-tonne armour-piercing shells 38 km.

Which company built Big Bertha, the Paris Gun and Schwerer Gustav?

The Krupp works at Essen were the arms-makers of imperial and Nazi Germany alike.

Autocannons are usually defined as automatic guns of at least what calibre?

Unlike machine guns they can fire explosive shells; the first were WWI anti-aircraft guns.

The 30 mm GAU-8/A Avenger rotary cannon is mounted in which aircraft?

The AC-130 carries a 105 mm howitzer plus autocannons up to 40 mm.

Which orchestral work by Tchaikovsky calls for real cannon fire, simulating Russian guns at Borodino?

Musicians have to wear ear protection when it is performed with an artillery section.

Which AC/DC song features cannon fire and is played when the Columbus Blue Jackets score?

An authentic reproduction M1857 12-pounder Napoleon fires at Nationwide Arena after every goal.

Historian Ahmad Y. al-Hassan controversially claims the Mamluks used 'the first cannon in history' against the Mongols at which 1260 battle?

Most historians reject the date, arguing the Arabic word naft could mean naphtha as well as gunpowder.

What is the small spherical knob at the very back of a traditional cannon called?

The three main sections of the barrel are the chase, the reinforce and the cascabel.

What are the two cylinders projecting from a cannon's sides, used to mount it on its carriage?

They sit just behind the reinforce ring, supported by short broad rings called rimbases.

What is 'windage' in a muzzle-loading cannon?

The bore is cut slightly wider than the ball so it can be loaded, but too much gap wastes propulsion.

What was it called when a retreating crew disabled a cannon by hammering an iron spike into its touch hole?

A 'honeycombed' gun, by contrast, was one whose bore was pitted by corrosion or casting flaws.

In 1770s cannon drill, at what elevation did a ball reach its greatest range, about ten times its level range?

Any shot fired above the horizontal was known as 'random-shot'.

How many people crewed a single cannon under 1770s practice?

The right gunner primed and loaded, while the left gunner fetched powder from the magazine.

What replaced slow-match ignition of cannon by the mid-19th century?

Under Napoleonic drill, the fifth gunner had fired the piece with a slow match on command.

What were 'Quaker guns', used by Colonel William Washington in 1780 and later by the Confederates?

About 100 Loyalists surrendered to Washington in 1780 rather than face the fake bombardment.

Which aircraft, shown at the 1911 Paris Exposition, was the first documented to carry a shell-firing cannon?

By World War I the SPAD 12 fired a 37 mm Puteaux gun through its propeller boss, hand-loaded one round at a time.

What did the Luftwaffe call cannon mounted to fire upward and forward at bombers, borrowing a slang word for jazz?

'Schräg' means off-key; the Japanese used similar upward-firing installations.

The Lockheed AC-130 gunship can carry a howitzer of what calibre alongside its autocannons?

Combat in Vietnam proved fighters still needed cannon after a post-war push to rely on missiles alone.

Which African power was the first to bring cannon warfare to the continent, during its war with Abyssinia?

Portugal later armed the Abyssinians with cannon while the Ottomans backed Adal.

What was the Javanese name for the breech-loading swivel gun derived from the Turkish prangi?

Portuguese observers called such guns berço; Duarte Barbosa around 1514 praised the Javanese as master gun-founders.

How is a cannon recovered from the sea typically treated to stop it rusting?

The tannic acid gives the metal a bluish-black finish, and a wax sealant keeps out oxygen and moisture on display.