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- Hacker News
- Great Scott, I think we just hit someone!by smallnix
- After all these years they finally got someoneby TheWrongGuy
- > indicates horrific demise
If I go, I would like to go from massive blunt trauma from behind that renders me instantly unconscious.
by petesergeant - Well I call you a WIMP! I want to go by literally shitting blood in an agonising pain an fever for weeks on end, like most people in these campaigns often faced their demise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysentery
Actually, you know what, I think you might have a point there. I take back ky harsh words.
- > 14th century
While this death may be the first confirmed from a trebuchet, is that really the first death by a trebuchet? Plus, I'd say catapults are almost identical to a trebuchet in workings, for the most part. I don't quite believe that this was really the first death by catapult.
by shevy-java - Didn't the Romans have something similar?by nephihaha
- Catapults store energy using elastic deformation, like a bow; counterweight trebuchets store energy using gravity.by pfdietz
- Our modern weapons are far more destructive, but our propensity for violence and war seems to be an invariant across the millennia.by helloworld
- Well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket
From 1935. And he was not the first one to point that out either.
I actually think that thanks to the internet, we expose many more criminal build ups towards warfare nowadays than before.
by shevy-java - War… war never changes.by yurishimo
- Hope he died quickly, instead of having to deal with the pain of multiple bones crushingby b3ing
- Instant unconsciousness. Hopefully he didn't wake up.
- > Hope he died quickly, instead of having to deal with the pain of multiple bones crushing
from the article: “skull broken in 61 places”
Doubt you’d stay conscious long enough to notice
by Swizec - More discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49331555
- “The breaks indicate a very large area of impact and devastation,” she says. “It’s likely the individual was killed by a siege engine.”
So it’s likely, which means it’s not confirmed as the headline implies.
by nexus6 - I don't get the nitpicking here. Scientifically correct, since circumstantial. Meteor is also possible, but very unlikely.
The probability regimes in which science is dealing often only leave marginal room for alternative explanations.
by _mjk - Interesting find! I wonder if the massive damage could also be explained by the falling wall (documented in the article).by JoeAltmaier
- Unlikely, as a regular slow crush gives very different injuries compared to a high velocity impact.by madaxe_again
- Indeed, I am sure there are other mechanisms that could cause similar trauma.by hermitcrab
- But have they identified the trebuchet that killed him?
We can rule out Warwolf [1] my favorite trebuchet, which never killed anyone.
by cobbzilla - > We can rule out Warwolf
Can we? That Wikipedia page is inconclusive, and thus article says:
During Edward I’s 1304 siege of the castle, English forces deployed the recently invented trebuchet, a weapon first documented in the 12th century. A cousin to the catapult, trebuchets were capable of hurling boulders weighing more than 100 kilograms hundreds of meters. One at Stirling, dubbed “War Wolf,” “was the biggest trebuchet ever built at that point,” Buckberry says. Eyewitness accounts confirm the giant siege engine was used during the 1304 battle, tearing through two stone walls “as an arrow would fly through a piece of cloth.”
Accounts of the battle don’t mention any trebuchet casualties. But Buckberry says Skeleton 150’s injuries strongly suggest at least one defender was hit from behind by a flying boulder, launched by War Wolf or one of the other siege engines arrayed outside Stirling Castle’s walls. “It’s a huge amount of energy delivered in milliseconds,” Waltenberger says. “In skeletons from past times you rarely see this.”
by Someone - "...uncovered the graves of nine skeletons dated to the early 1300s. Five, including Skeleton 150, dated to the 1300s."
That seems like a contradiction.
by Levitating - I hate to contradict you, but it seems like a tautology.by normie3000
- I parsed it as ((mass grave containing 9 skeletons) dated to the early 1300s) && ((5 skeletons) dated to the 1300s).
As in, the grave itself was dated, and 5 of the 9 skeletons found inside were also individually dated to roughly the same century. Maybe the other 4 were not tested, or turned out to have been buried at a later date.
by kijin - Trebuchets were used in the Syrian civil war (2011-2024).
I would link a video but I don't think that is a wise idea for legal reasons. There were so many parties in that war and I'm not sure which ones were declared terrorist organizations.
- by olmo23
- Please don't censor yourself. It should be possible for you to share a video of something without that meaning you support it. You probably live in a country that has free speech? Use it.
I would like to see a video of a trebuchet. Modern or not.
by johanvts