The Dangerous Book for Boys

by Conn Iggulden

The first player throws his marble forward about five feet.

  The second player does the same, trying to hit the first marble. (Other players can hit either and so on. This can be played by quite a few.)

  All shots are underhand and from where the Shooter lands.

  If a marble is hit, the owner either loses it or pays a marble forfeit from the bag. It’s better to pay the forfeit so as not to lose your Taw.

  That’s it. All the tactics come from the play.

  Hundreds

  This is a surprisingly addictive accuracy game for two players.

  Draw a small chalk circle—diameter twelve inches (30 cm).

  Both players shoot a marble at the circle from an agreed distance.

  Both in or both out gets nothing.

  One in the circle earns ten points and another go.

  First to a hundred wins.

  Fouls

  In Ring Taw, the shooter’s knuckle must touch the outer circle. Lifting is a foul.

  “Fudging” is pushing the hand forward—and a foul. The marble must be shot with the thumb alone.

  After the game has begun, no contact with marbles in the inner circle is allowed, except by the Taw.

  The world championship is played every year in Tinsley Green, West Sussex, England. In essence, it is Ring Taw, with forty-nine marbles in the inner ring, worth a point each. The winner is the first to knock out twenty-five with the Taw.

  Playing marbles is not about how many marbles you can buy, it’s about the ones you win and lose—it’s about skill and your Taw.

  A Brief History of Artillery

  THE ABILITY TO strike an enemy from far away has always appealed to soldiers and generals alike. Bows have been found from as early as 7400 BC, preserved in a bog at Holmegaard, Denmark. They may go back as far as 20,000 BC. Though such weapons were powerful and accurate, there has always been a search for more destruction and greater range. A city cannot be battered into submission by archers, after all.

  Archimedes is one of the most famous early inventors of artillery weapons. In the defense of Syracuse from 214 to 212 BC, he used bronze mirrors to focus the sun and burn enemy ships.

  The truth of this story was doubted for a long time. In the early 1970s, a Greek scientist, Dr Ioannis Sakkas, employed sixty Greek sailors in an experiment to see whether it was possible. All the men carried large oblong mirrors and used them to focus the sun onto a wooden ship one hundred and sixty feet away. The ship caught fire almost immediately.

  Archimedes was an extraordinary thinker, the Leonardo da Vinci of an earlier age. He invented a number of other artillery weapons to sink Roman galleys, or hammer them from the city walls. He was not alone, however. The Greeks developed knowledge of pulleys, water pumps, cranes, even a small steam engine. It was a period of extraordinary scientific advancement—all of which was useful in creating weapons of long-distance destruction.

  Early weapons were based on the spring power of a bow arm, pulled back by muscle or by a ratchet, as in this picture. Understanding pulleys in particular means that a man can repeat an easy action over and over to move large forces very slowly. In other words, heavy weapons can be wound back with the use of a few simple principles.

  “Torsion” is the force gained by twisting. The Romans improved on Greek inventions, perfecting the use of ropes of woven horsehair and sinew as their “spring.” The heavy Roman Onager was capable of sending a 100 lb (45 kg) rock up to 400 yards (365 m). An “Onager” is Latin for a wild ass or donkey—with a fearsome kick. It is similar in principle to the catapult, with a slinglike cup and a single torsion bar.

  A basic catapult—used by Greek and Roman forces.

  The Onager

  The Ballista was a Roman bolt or stone shooter. It used two torsion springs and had a range of up to 450 yards (411 m). The Romans also perfected a repeating ballista, invented by Dionysios of Alexandria. By simply winding a handle, the ratchet came back, an arrow dropped into place and was fired as soon as the winch reached its maximum point. This was the first machine gun—long before gunpowder.

  The Ballista

  Every Roman legion carried heavy onagers and thirty Scorpion bows—a smaller form of the weapon that could be carried on a single cart. Roman success in war depended on much more than discipline and a good gladius!

  The last type of this sort of engine is a Trebuchet, powered by counter-weights. This form of artillery was able to launch heavier weights than any other kind. However, the enormous counterweight needed meant that they were practically immobile once set up and worked well only when battering city walls. They were in use throughout medieval times until the invention of cannon. Pulleys and ratchets were used to pull down the arm and load it. When released, the arm snapped forward and the second section whipped over at high speed.

  The Trebuchet

  Later, gunpowder and iron-foundry techniques combined to create smooth-bore cannons. Compared with early engines of war, these had a much longer range and were faster to load. Although China had gunpowder in the eleventh century, it was European countries that really exploited its use as a propellant in the thirteenth century. Roger Bacon, the English Archimedes, wrote down a formula for gunpowder in code in the thirteenth century. The combination of sulfur, charcoal and potassium nitrate, or saltpeter, would change the Western world.

  The picture above is of “Mons Meg,” a Flanders cannon cast before 1489 and currently kept in Edinburgh castle. It fired a stone ball of 330 lb (150 kg) more than one and a half miles (2.4 km).

  For the next six hundred years, cannons would remain essentially the same—smooth-bore muzzle loaders, lit by a taper or a flint-lock. Iron balls would be used instead of stone as they were easier to mass-produce and make uniform. Cast-iron barrels took the place of softer wrought iron. Cannons at sea could fire chain, or bar shot, to destroy enemy rigging and clear the decks of boarding parties. In the basic principles, though, Nelson’s cannons fired in the same way as those from the thirteenth century. As with most long-lasting technologies, if they weren’t replaced, they were perfected.

  Mortars and Howitzers were also perfected during the nineteenth century. A mortar fires at very high angles compared with a cannon, a howitzer between the two. Progress was fast and furious as a single clear advantage could mean the difference between winning a war and being invaded.

  Types of Royal Navy Bar and Chain Shot

  World War I British fieldpiece, firing sixty-pound explosive shells.

  Rifling a barrel involves casting spiraling lines inside that make the ball or shell spin as it leaves, giving gyroscopic stability. Although it had long been in use for hand weapons, the practice was first applied to artillery around 1860. The new breed of artillery would be breech-loading, have reinforced barrels, and be able to fire shells with astonishing accuracy.

  The heaviest versions of these shell-firing weapons could be miles behind the lines, firing huge shells in a parabola (arc) at the enemy positions.

  The twenty-first century—U.S. MIAZ Abrams MBT.

  No chapter on artillery could be complete without a mention of tanks. From WWI onward, these awesome machines have changed the face of warfare by allowing powerful artillery to be extremely mobile and well armored.

  In modern times artillery can take the form of intercontinental missiles, striking from hundreds or even thousands of miles away and with a greater force than anything else in this chapter. In a sense, artillery has reached its ultimate stage, where cities can be flattened without a single soldier entering the combat zone.

  Shells can now be armored in “depleted uranium”—uranium with most of the radioactive isotopes removed. This is a heavy metal and hard enough to be ferociously efficient as an armor-piercing round. Though it is actually less radioactive than naturally occurring uranium, it is chemically toxic and should not be ingested. Dust and fragments from DU shells remain dangerous for a very long time.

  We have come a long way from bow-based spring weapons. Until the invention o
f the machine gun, it was still possible to march into cannon fire and expect at least some of your army to reach the enemy. World War I changed that, the obsolete tactic going the way of the cavalry charge. It is difficult to predict the course of the future, with such immensely powerful weapons now available. Wars nowadays tend to be fought on a small scale, with major players being very careful to limit the destruction. In theory, Britain could have dropped nuclear weapons on Argentina during the Falklands War, or America on Iraq in the first or second Gulf War. Neither country took that step. Let us hope it does not happen in our lifetimes.

  The Origin of Words

  ENGLISH IS AWASH with interesting words and phrases; there are books the size of dictionaries chock-full of them. Here are twenty of our favorites—words and phrases with origins so interesting they should be part of general knowledge.

  Boycott. Captain Charles Cunningham Boycott was a rent-collecting agent for an English landlord in Ireland in the nineteenth century. He was considered particularly harsh and locals refused to have anything to do with him. His name became a word meaning “to ostracize.” It is used as a verb—“to boycott,” and as a noun—“the boycott went well.”

  Halloween. “Hallow” is an old pronunciation of “holy,” still sometimes found in the alternative version, “All Hallows’ Eve.” The “-een” part is a common contraction of the word “evening.” “Halloween” means “Holy evening”—also known as “All Saints’ Eve.”

  Hooligan. Almost certainly derived from the surname of an Irish family, “Houlihan,” whose name became synonymous with bad behavior in the late nineteenth century.

  Quisling (pronounced “kwizling”). Major Vidkun Quisling was a Norwegian politician who supported the Nazis in WWII. His name became synonymous with “traitor.” He was shot for treason.

  Thug. One of many Hindi words adopted into English (like “pajamas” and “bungalow”). The “Thugs” were a sect of robbers and murderers in India.

  Gerrymander (pronounced “jerry-mander”). A word derived from the surname of Elbridge Gerry, a U.S. politician who in 1812 rearranged electoral districts to gain advantage for the Republican Party. The new district was jokingly said to be shaped like a salamander and was depicted as such in a political cartoon that coined the term “Gerry-mander.” His name has come to describe schemes to win elections dishonestly. His name began with a hard “g,” strangely enough, but the sound is soft on the word.

  Assassin. The Arabic word “hashshashin,” meaning “hashish eaters,” was the name given to a violent Syrian sect in the Middle Ages. To create a murderous frenzy, they took hashish (cannabis) amid chanting and dancing. The English word “assassin” ultimately derives from this.

  Whiskey. From the Gaelic “uisge beatha” (ishka baha), meaning “water of life.” Other languages use very similar phrases—“aquavit” for strong spirit in Scandinavia, “eau-devie” for brandy in France, “aqua vitae” in Latin. Vodka is Russian for “little water.”

  Tawdry. Meaning cheap and flashy. This word comes from the phrase “Saint Audrey’s lace.” St. Audrey was a seventh-century princess of East Anglia, who took religious orders. As a girl, she had been very fond of necklaces, and when she succumbed to a throat disease, she felt it was punishment for her vanity. “St. Audrey’s lace” or “Tawdry lace” was tainted, or flawed, and came to mean flashy and poor quality.

  Exchequer. In Norman England, money-counting tables were often covered in a checkered cloth. The practice was common enough for the table to become known as an “eschequier,” meaning “chessboard,” and the word transferred to English as “exchequer,” a word for the Treasury.

  Auspicious/augury. In English, the words have to do with telling the future. “It seemed an auspicious moment to apply for his job, when Jenkins fell down the well.” Both have their roots in the Roman practice of using the flight of birds to tell the future. An expert in this field was known as an “auspex,” derived from a combination of “avis,” meaning “bird,” and “specere,” “to look.” These charlatans were literally “lookers at birds,” and the word survives two thousand years on.

  Chivalry. The moral code of knights, who tended to ride horses. The name is derived from the French word for horse, “cheval,” which in turn comes from the Latin “caballus.” “Cavalier,” meaning offhand or “too casual” (a cavalier attitude), also comes from the same root.

  Chortle. A word invented by Lewis Carroll (writer of Alice in Wonderland) as a combination of “chuckle” and “snort.” This type of combination is known as a “portmanteau” word. He also used the word “portmanteau” to describe other words of this type, like “brunch,” which is a combination of “breakfast” and “lunch.” Clever man.

  Conspire/Expire/Respire. All these words have their origin in the Latin “spirare,” to breathe. Conspirators breathe their plots together. A man who “expires” has the breath go out of him. Respiration is breath.

  Denim. This is one of many products linked to its place of origin. The hard-wearing cloth was created in Nîmes, a southern French industrial town. It was known first as “serge de Nîmes” and then as “de Nîmes.”

  Laconic. The region inhabited by the Spartans of ancient Greece was named Laconia. Philip of Macedonia (the father of Alexander the Great) sent this warning to the famous warriors of the city, to frighten them into obedience: “If I enter Laconia with my army, I shall raze Sparta to the ground.” The Spartans replied with a single word : “If.” “laconic” means terse, or to the point, in recognition of the Spartan style. The word “spartan,” meaning bare and without ornamentation, also comes from that warrior culture.

  Shambles. Although it is now used to mean a chaotic scene, this word originally meant a slaughterhouse. In fact, reference to the fact that shambles were relocated after the great fire of London in 1666 can be found on Christopher Wren’s Monument (next to the Monument tube station in London). The word origin goes even further back to Old English for a table, “scamul,” which is connected with the Latin for “bench,” “scamnum.” Rows of these would form a meat market.

  Mob. This word is simply a contraction of the Latin phrase “mobile vulgus” (MOB-e-lay, VULG-ous). “Mobile” means fickle and “vulgus” means crowd.

  Quick. In Old English, “cwic” meant “alive,” a meaning we still see in “quicksilver,” another name for mercury, as the liquid metal seems almost to be a living silver. You may also have heard the phrase “the quick and the dead,” meaning “the living and the dead,” or “cut to the quick,” meaning “cut to the living flesh.” “Quick-tempered” also retains some sense of the original sense, though the modern meaning is mainly to do with speed alone.

  The Solar System (A Quick Reference Guide)

  THE SUN. THE CENTER OF THE SYSTEM

  93 million miles from Earth (149 million km).

  The Sun alone makes up 98% of all the mass of the solar system. If it was empty, it would take 1.3 million Earths to fill it. The temperature on the surface is a mere 6,000°C / (11,000°F), while the internal temperature is 15 million°C (27 million°F).

  AGE: Best current guess is 4.6 billion years. We expect it to survive for another 5 billion years before becoming a red giant, then a white dwarf, before finally burning out. Do not worry about this—the Earth and everything else in the solar system will be destroyed during the red giant stage.

  MERCURY

  Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, at only 36 million miles (57 million km). Second smallest in the system. The surface is cratered in a similar way to Earth’s moon. There is a thin atmosphere, containing sodium and potassium from the crust of the planet. Most of Mercury seems to be an iron core.

  TEMPERATURE: Hot. 430°C (810°F) by day, –180°C (–290°F) by night.

  ROTATION AROUND THE SUN (Mercury’s year): 87.97 days. This is the fastest in the solar system and as a result, Mercury was named after the Roman messenger to the gods, who had wings on his feet.

  MOONS: None.

&
nbsp; VENUS

  The second planet from the Sun, at an average 67 million miles (108 million km). Venus has been called the morning or evening star, also Hesperus and Lucifer. Venus is the brightest object in Earth’s sky apart from the Sun and our moon.

  Venus can be seen crossing the Sun in 2012. If you miss that one, you’ll have to wait until 2117, which is quite a long time. Remember that pinhole or reverse projection from a telescope is a good idea when looking at the Sun—never look at it directly, especially with a telescope. The Sun would be the last thing you ever see.

  ROTATION AROUND SUN (Venus year): 224.7 days.

  MOONS: None.

  ATMOSPHERE: Complete cloud cover resulting from 97% carbon dioxide, the rest nitrogen. Hostile to life as we know it. Surface pressure 96 times that of Earth, so before you could even begin to choke, you’d be squashed flat. The average surface temperature is 482°C (900°F). Uncomfortable, to say the least.

  Venus was named after the Roman goddess of love because lonely men sitting in observatories can be quite susceptible to shiny, pretty things in the sky. Its movement across the heavens has nothing to do with actual love, however.

  EARTH

  The third planet from the Sun, at 93 million miles (149 million km).

  Like baby bear’s porridge, Earth is neither too hot nor too cold. It is just right. Its atmosphere is made of nitrogen, oxygen, 0.03% carbon dioxide, and trace gases, such as argon.