Originally posted by Auditor_Kevin:
And here I always thought that cannon balls were just cast iron with no exposives in them.
How come those things don't blow up in the cannon instead of the SECOND time they get jarred (when they land)?
Me too. Had to research it and found that by the Civil War, they were packed with explosives which were detonated by a fuse, of which there were several types. Apparently many were duds due to the crude fuses of the time. I didn't get the impression they were impact fuses but more of a time delay type thing.
And there probably were a lot of misfires and cannon explosions, we just weren't around to hear about them.
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