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hermitcrab
Shattered skeleton is first confirmed death from trebuchet science.org

N_Lens9 hours ago

"What are you going to do, lob a stone at me from 300m away?" shouted the man on the parapet, moments before impact.

CTOSian3 hours ago

more likely "...a furlong and more" ... no meters that time :}

[deleted]3 hours agocollapsed

SideburnsOfDooman hour ago

"They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance" - last words of Major General John Sedgwick, American Civil War.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sedgwick

avadodin4 hours ago

"Let me show you its features".

paxcoder8 hours ago

I hate this meme. Someone says "think about what you are doing prideful fool". And the other person still decides to use lethal force. That is diabolical, not funny.

WelkinFolk7 hours ago

Diabolically funny, you mean.

bluefirebrand6 hours ago

> Someone says "think about what you are doing prideful fool".

That strikes me as a wildly incorrect interpretation of the situation in the meme.

My reading is closer to a man on a parapet shouting "neener neener you can't touch me" moments before being touched by a rock at high velocity

lazide6 hours ago

Yup, my favorite is the ‘what are you going to do, stab me? -stabbed man’ quote from the news interview hah.

King-Aaron5 hours ago

I think it was American Gangster that had the line "what are you going to do, shoot me in front of everyone?", right before he gets shot in front of everyone. That's a good one.

foxglacier5 hours ago

I read an account of exactly that happening to the natives in my country 200 years ago. A group paddled up the river in their canoe and the local tribesmen who were clearly more powerful taunted them. But the natives in the canoe had newly discovered guns and shot the taunters until they were "tired of man-killing" and went home. It seemed to be purely hunting humans for fun. And yes, it was horrible, that was part of a wave of wars that decimates the whole country and cost them their sovereignty.

CTDOCodebases5 hours ago

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.

johanvts3 hours ago

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.

[deleted]2 hours agocollapsed

nexus62 hours ago

“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.

_mjkan hour ago

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.

Levitating6 hours ago

"...uncovered the graves of nine skeletons dated to the early 1300s. Five, including Skeleton 150, dated to the 1300s."

That seems like a contradiction.

kijin2 hours ago

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.

normie30005 hours ago

I hate to contradict you, but it seems like a tautology.

darkerside41 minutes ago

Five did, but nine did too

[deleted]4 hours agocollapsed

cobbzilla7 hours ago

But have they identified the trebuchet that killed him?

We can rule out Warwolf [1] my favorite trebuchet, which never killed anyone.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warwolf

Someone4 hours ago

> 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.”

JoeAltmaier5 days ago

Interesting find! I wonder if the massive damage could also be explained by the falling wall (documented in the article).

hermitcrabop5 days ago

Indeed, I am sure there are other mechanisms that could cause similar trauma.

madaxe_again2 hours ago

Unlikely, as a regular slow crush gives very different injuries compared to a high velocity impact.

kijin2 hours ago

It depends on how tall the damaged structure was. A large chunk of masonry falling from a tower could reach speeds comparable to a car crash.

Georgelemental7 hours ago

b3ing7 hours ago

Hope he died quickly, instead of having to deal with the pain of multiple bones crushing

Swizec6 hours ago

> 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

kevin_thibedeau6 hours ago

Instant unconsciousness. Hopefully he didn't wake up.

shevy-java6 hours ago

How do you know that? Is it confirmed that this led to instant unconsciousness?

margalabargala5 hours ago

The skull was found in 61 pieces, which is above the limit for quantity of pieces your skull can shatter into from blunt force while remaining alive.

euroderf4 hours ago

OT but... This reminds me of a classic Esquire Dubious Achievements Awards headline from the 1980s, "Man Drills 22 Holes in Head and Lives".

It went on to tell how a man had committed suicide by drilling 23 holes in his head.

smallnix3 hours ago

Great Scott, I think we just hit someone!

helloworld6 hours ago

Our modern weapons are far more destructive, but our propensity for violence and war seems to be an invariant across the millennia.

yurishimo6 hours ago

War… war never changes.

shevy-java6 hours ago

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.

somenameforme5 hours ago

Eisenhower's farewell speech [1] is also basically prophetic, which is quite unfortunate in that they were all warnings of things to vigilantly avoid.

[1] - https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/eisenhower001.asp

petesergeant2 hours ago

> indicates horrific demise

If I go, I would like to go from massive blunt trauma from behind that renders me instantly unconscious.

delis-thumbs-7e2 hours ago

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.

shevy-java6 hours ago

> 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.

pfdietz4 hours ago

Catapults store energy using elastic deformation, like a bow; counterweight trebuchets store energy using gravity.

nephihaha4 hours ago

Didn't the Romans have something similar?

johanvts3 hours ago

The Romans had onagers and ballista, both of which work via string tension. Then around 6AD it seems string traction (mangonels) where introduced from China and finally counterweight/gravity was introduced in the 12th century.

nephihahaan hour ago

Basically more primitive versions of the same.

TheWrongGuy5 hours ago

After all these years they finally got someone

noobmasterthrow3 hours ago

i read death BY trebuchet, i am disappointed.

271839 hours ago

dude got absolutely rocked

xprnio7 hours ago

What do you expect - it came in like a wrecking ball

kouunji7 hours ago

Didn’t feel it though, cuz he was stoned.

s20n5 hours ago

first confirmed case of MLG noscope

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