Comments by "Rob Fraser" (@krashd) on "Cannon Firing in Slow Motion - The Slow Mo Guys" video.

  1. +David Lowe Cannons did allsorts, the reason today we have both guns and shotguns.  A projectile could punch a hole in your ship at the waterline, allowing a smaller ship to hang back and just hope you could not repair it in time.  They also had 'grapeshot' which like a shotgun meant hundreds of tiny projectiles that could incapacitate countless targets.  Then you had grenades, small cannon balls packed with substances that would react with oxygen when they made impact. People even got inventive with cannon balls, pirates who wanted to disable a target would load ammunition that they had created themselves.  Nunchukas! Or as they called them, chain shot.  This was a hunk of small projectiles that were attached in pairs by a 6-foot chain.  The idea was that just like shot the projectiles would spread out but the chain connecting them would tear anything they hit.  Chain shot could annihilate a ship's sails making it dead in the water.
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  2. +MoJo Every country on planet Earth has bad eggs who are either xenophobic or aggressive or obnoxious, but the UK, and more specifically Edinburgh holds the greatest party on Earth every December 31st (Hogmanay) Why?  Scottish  tradition.  In neutral ground people argue their arguments but in someone's home or presence you treat every one with the utmost decency.  It's probably to make up for the fancy we Scots only give friends a shitty lump of coal as a New Years' gift.
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