68 Weird Weapons

CHAPTER 1 A Short History of Weapons HUMANS HAVE ALWAYS LOOKED FOR NEW AND MORE POWERFUL WAYS TO KILL. Thousands of years ago, the first people made weapons to kill animals for food and to attack their human enemies. At first, the weapons were very simple and made from stone or wood or both. In cave paintings we can see early people using spears. Boomerangs were also designed as hunting weapons. As humans became more intelligent, they found new and more effective ways to kill. And as people began living in larger groups, they needed more powerful weapons to defend themselves and fight in wars.

Inventors started to use science and technology to invent new weapons. They used metal to make knives and swords, and moving parts to build war machines, like catapults. And then... BANG! The discovery of gunpowder in China in the 9th century changed the world of weapons forever. Suddenly, inventors had something very powerful to use in their designs. Gunpowder allowed weapons inventors to make many clever and sometimes unusual ways to kill. Many weapons were designed to kill large numbers of people in wars. Gunpowder could be used to fire rockets, cannons, and bombs. Battles became easier to fight at a distance. As in modern wars, soldiers did not have to see the people they killed. Other weapons can murder a victim secretly so that the killer is never caught. But not all weapons are clever or secret. Even normal, everyday things can become dangerous in the hands of a murderer! So watch out! If you're not already too scared, let's begin our journey through some of history's weirdest weapons.

CHAPTER 2 Weapons of War SOME OF THE STRANGEST WEAPONS WERE INVENTED DURING WARTIME. SOME WORKED, BUT OTHERS WERE TOO CRAZY. In times of war, army leaders have always spent a lot of time and money on the most effective killing machines. They want weapons that surprise and frighten their enemies. As a result, the weapons inventors through time had to become more and more imaginative. One of the strangest but most effective war machines was the trebuchet (pronounced treh-boo-shay). It was used in wars around the Mediterranean from about the 12th century. The trebuchet was a kind of giant catapult.

How did the trebuchet work? It used a heavy weight to move a long arm very quickly. A sling was tied to the end of the arm. When the weight dropped on the other end, the arm flew up very quickly, and the sling threw rocks, burning oil, or other dangerous things at the target. It was a very powerful machine and could throw a 100-kilogram rock about 300 meters! The machine was even more effective when it was used to throw the dead bodies of animals and people into enemy castles, towns, and cities. Often the bodies carried serious illnesses. The people inside caught these illnesses and became very sick and died. It is no surprise that the people of the Middle Ages were terrified of the trebuchet!

Several centuries later in southern India, the British army was terrified by another strange but effective weapon: the Mughal sword rocket. At the Battle of Pollilur in 1780, the British soldiers were surprised to see thousands of rockets flying at them. And these rockets had swords tied to them! The British were so frightened of this terrible weapon, they had to surrender. The Mughal sword rocket was a simple, but clever, idea. First, you take a sword and tie a metal pipe to it. Then you fill the pipe with gunpowder— this makes it a rocket. Next, you light the gunpowder and... BOOM! The rocket carries the sword up through the air to attack your enemy. The sword rocket was a great success, and the British copied the idea themselves in future battles.

Ideas for unusual weapons can often come from simple things. The bouncing bomb is a good example of this. It was used in World War II. Sir Barnes Wallis, a British engineer, knew that Germany had several important dams. He believed that a giant bomb could destroy these dams, and then water from the lakes would flood many German factories. But how could they hit the dams? One day, Wallis was throwing stones at a lake, watching the stones bounce along the top of the water, when the idea came to him. At that time, planes did not have the technology to drop bombs on an exact target. But planes could drop bombs near the dams. The bombs would bounce along the top of the water until they crashed into the dam walls. The bouncing bomb may seem like a crazy idea, but it actually worked! In May 1943, British planes destroyed the Möhne and the Edersee dams. The bouncing bomb helped the British win the war.