Pussies that go bang, birds that just blow

[doodab]

Indeed.

Nothing quite like being hit by a bit of rotten cow to ruin your day.

Mm. Burgers.

[vetran]

Biological Warfare at the 1346 Siege of Caffa - Volume 8, Number 9

A principal source on the origin of the Black Death is a memoir by the Italian Gabriele de’ Mussi. This memoir has been published several times in its original Latin (2,3) and has recently been translated into English (4) (although brief passages have been previously published in translation, see reference [5]). This narrative contains some startling assertions: that the Mongol army hurled plague-infected cadavers into the besieged Crimean city of Caffa, thereby transmitting the disease to the inhabitants; and that fleeing survivors of the siege spread plague from Caffa to the Mediterranean Basin. If this account is correct, Caffa should be recognized as the site of the most spectacular incident of biological warfare ever, with the Black Death as its disastrous consequence. After analyzing these claims, I have concluded that it is plausible that the biological attack took place as described and was responsible for infecting the inhabitants of Caffa; however, the event was unimportant in the spread of the plague pandemic.

nice

[vetran]

Makes a refreshing change from launching dead cows from one's trebuchet.

they used to use dead bodies on catapults as biological warfare.

[vetran]

A Rocket Cat? Early Modern Explosives Treatises at Penn | Unique at Penn

I was puzzled when a friend asked me a few weeks ago if I’d seen the “rocket cat” illustrated in a Penn manuscript which had been featured on the book blog BibliOdyssey in November. The image, from what was described as a 1584 “Feuer Buech” manuscript, appeared to show a cat and a bird propelled by rockets towards a castle.

quite inventive.