40 Fun Facts About Catapults

Which conquistador's men built a trebuchet at the siege of Tenochtitlan, only for its first stone to hit the machine?

Hernán Cortés tried the old-fashioned weapon in 1521 because his gunpowder was running low, and the attempt reportedly wrecked it at once.

The Roman onager, a one-armed stone-throwing catapult, was named after which animal for the way it kicked?

Wild ass is what onager means: the machine bucked so hard on release that it could not be mounted on stone walls without shaking them loose.

At an American contest held each autumn, teams build catapults and air cannons to hurl what as far as possible?

Pumpkins must stay whole until they land for a throw to count, and one that bursts in mid-air is jokingly scored as pie.

Vincent Connare, who named a 1996 typeface after the trebuchet, also designed which font included in Windows 95?

Comic Sans came first, in 1994; he named Trebuchet MS after a workplace puzzle about flinging a person a mile across the Microsoft campus.

Which Renaissance artist designed a catapult driven by a large wooden leaf spring, wound up on a drum?

Leonardo da Vinci left no sign that the machine was built in his lifetime, but modern enthusiasts have since reconstructed it.

By one famous account, the army besieging Caffa in the 1340s catapulted corpses carrying which disease over its walls?

Plague was the disease in the tale told by the Italian notary Gabriel de Mussis, who blamed the tactic for the Black Death's spread.

In Britain, the word catapult is also the everyday name for which handheld toy?

Slingshot is the usual American name, though the same toy is a gulel in India, a kettie in South Africa and a shanghai in Australia.

In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, what do taunting French soldiers hurl from their castle at King Arthur's knights?

Barnyard animals rain down on the knights, and a later home release came boxed as a castle with a catapult and rubber animals to launch.

Which medieval traveller's book claims his family helped build the giant catapults that ended the siege of Xiangyang?

Marco Polo's boast cannot be true as told, because the siege ended in 1273, before he had reached Kublai Khan's court.

A circus human cannonball is really launched by a hidden catapult mechanism, using a spring or a jet of what?

Compressed air has done the job since Ildebrando Zacchini's 1922 design, and any bang and smoke are added purely for show.

The Roman ballista, which shot large iron-tipped darts along a flat path, resembled a giant version of which weapon?

Crossbow-like in shape, the ballista was accurate but hit less hard than the big stone-throwers, and was usually built on site for each siege.

A medieval counterweight trebuchet got its throwing power from which force, acting on a heavy box of stones or sand?

Gravity did the work once the crew had slowly raised the loaded box, and letting it drop whipped the long end of the beam upward.

Greek and Roman torsion catapults stored energy in rope bundles twisted from hair or which other animal material?

Sinew from the feet of deer and the necks of oxen was preferred, and the ropes were rubbed with olive oil and animal fat to keep them springy.

The catapults that fling jets off the deck of a nuclear-powered Nimitz-class aircraft carrier are driven by what?

Steam catapults were a Royal Navy idea, devised after the Second World War because its smaller carriers had shorter launch runs for heavy new jets.

The US Navy's Ford-class aircraft carriers were the first ships to launch jets with catapults powered by what?

Magnetic fields from a linear motor pull a carriage along a track, speeding planes up more smoothly and putting less strain on their airframes.

In the early trench fighting of the First World War, armies used catapults to throw what across no man's land?

Hand grenades were lobbed by machines such as Britain's Leach catapult, made by a London department store, until small mortars took over.

Which Greek mathematician's catapults, cranes and ship-lifting claw held off a Roman siege of his home city?

Archimedes was killed by a Roman soldier when the city finally fell, although the Roman commander had ordered that he be spared.

Which conqueror's catapults drove Saka horse archers from the far bank of the river Jaxartes so his army could cross?

Alexander the Great's crossing is the first on record to be covered this way, because the machines could shoot farther than the enemy's bows.

The mangonel, a catapult swung by a team of people hauling on ropes, was first recorded in which ancient land?

China's Mohist writings, compiled in the 4th century BC, describe the machine hurling hollowed-out logs filled with burning charcoal.

The Roman army named a light bolt-shooting catapult after which venomous creature?

Scorpion bolt-throwers were often massed in batteries on high ground, where the legion's main body could shield their flanks.

The Greek gastraphetes, a hand weapon that came before the catapult, was cocked by pressing which body part against it?

Belly is the first half of its name, belly-releaser, and leaning on it let the user store more energy than an ordinary hand-drawn bow.

Which TV show built a working replica of the polybolos, an ancient Greek repeating catapult, and judged it plausible?

MythBusters found in 2010 that the weapon could have existed, though their replica kept breaking down and needed repeated repairs.

The ancient Greek polybolos, a bolt-thrower that reloaded itself, holds the oldest known use of which bicycle mechanism?

Chain drive links turned by a windlass slid the firing block back and forth, dropping a fresh bolt from a hopper on every cycle.

Rows of ancient impact marks, blamed on a rapid-fire catapult used by Sulla's troops, scar which Italian city's walls?

Pompeii's scars look so much like modern machine-gun marks that they have been linked to a self-loading Greek bolt-thrower.

Greek arrow-shooting catapults first saw action in 397 BC at Motya, a Sicilian island stronghold of which rival power?

Carthage was the first to face the new weapon, which caught on so widely that a later inscription sets rules for young Greeks' catapult-shooting contests.

The Bible credits King Uzziah of Judah with fitting which city with machines to shoot arrows and hurl large stones?

Jerusalem's machines, set on towers and corner defences, would be among the earliest catapults on record if the passage is taken at its word.

The giant trebuchet built in 1304 to batter Stirling Castle, said to fill 30 wagons in pieces, had which name?

Warwolf was built on the orders of England's Edward I, who by some accounts kept the surrendering Scots inside until he had tested it.

Which aviation pioneers launched their aeroplanes with a catapult worked by iron weights falling from a tower?

The Wright brothers had relied on strong coastal winds for their first flights, but the breezes back home in Ohio were seldom strong enough.

Which German weapon of 1944, nicknamed the doodlebug, was flung up a launch ramp by the Walter catapult?

V-1 flying bomb launches left the ramp at about 320 km/h, well above the speed the pilotless craft needed to keep flying.

During the Third Crusade, a stone-thrower nicknamed God's Own Catapult battered the walls of which port city?

Acre faced a machine paid for from the crusaders' common fund, and a chronicler says a priest preached beside it to collect money for its repairs.

Which British fighter was rocket-catapulted from wartime merchant ships, usually ending its flight ditched in the sea?

Hawker Hurricane fighters flown this way were nicknamed Hurricats, and their pilots bailed out or ditched near the convoy and hoped to be picked up.

What kind of energy does a cocked catapult hold in its bent or twisted parts until the moment of release?

Potential energy is built up slowly by hand and then let go all at once, so winding the machine is long work and the shot is over in an instant.

The long throwing beam of a trebuchet, swinging on its axle, is a giant example of which simple machine?

Lever action lets the short, heavy end fall a little way while the long end, with the missile at its tip, whips through a far wider arc.

Galileo showed that a projectile, such as a stone flung from a catapult, traces which curved path?

Parabola is also the shape of a satellite dish, and he worked the curve out by rolling balls down sloping planes.

Which amusement park rides of the late 1970s used a catapult system, driven by a dropped weight, to reach speed?

Roller coasters of the Shuttle Loop type were hauled from a standstill by a cable as the weight fell, a job later given to flywheels and linear motors.

Small catapults known as traps fling targets skyward in a sport that swapped which live birds for clay discs?

Pigeons gave way to clay targets around 1875, yet shooters still call a target a bird and a hit a kill.

Which raiders attacked a tower defending Paris with ballistae, mangonels and catapults during a siege that began in 885?

Vikings failed to take the city, and the Frankish emperor finally let them sail on up the Seine with a promise of 700 pounds of silver.

At Adrianople in 378, a Roman onager's huge stone hit nobody but badly frightened which attacking people?

Goths were shaken by the huge stone even though it struck no one, a sign that such engines could frighten as much as they killed.

Rubber-powered hand catapults became possible only after which American invented vulcanized rubber in 1839?

Charles Goodyear's process gave rubber a lasting snap, and early hand catapults were homemade from a forked branch and strips cut from old inner tubes.

Which hit mobile game has players use a hand catapult to launch limbless characters at green pigs in rickety towers?

Angry Birds designers first thought the launcher too obvious and tried a swing, then came back to it because players grasped it at once.