[Bozos of Bones]

Somewhere around year 1000, a chinse man named Tseng Kung-Liang invented gunpoweder. If I am not mistake, he also invented a magnetised needle that pointed south. Anyway, more than two hundred years later, the chinese invented the bomb, in 1784 a mister Henry Shrapnell invented the shrapnell charge. The charge was delivered by cannon, not thrown. At the early 1900s, the safe throwing grenade was invented, also in Britain. Grenades an bombs have been used since the 15th century, but they were very unsafe, time of explosion could not be guaranteed. One out of every three or four grenades exploded prematurely, and one ou of every three thrown did not explode at all.
This is without counting the inventions of the Nobel brothers, who's dynamite and nitroglycerine were not supposed to be an instrument of war, but a construction tool. When Alfred saw what he invented was used to kill people by the hundreds,and that his own brother Emil was killed in an experiment with nitroglycerine, he wrote a will in which he left all his money for the Nobel Peace/Chemistry/Physics/Literature and whatnot Prize. The prizes are still being funded out of the money Nobel earned by inventing dynamite.

[ 06-03-2005, 12:58 PM: Message edited by: Bozos of Bones ]