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Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsAncient sling bullets
Yesterday I happened onto some pictures of ancient sling bullets used by the Greeks and the Romans way back when. I was fascinated, so I googled for some information about these cast lead projectiles.
Pictured are ancient Greek leaden sling bullets with engravings. One depicts a winged thunderbolt, and the other, the Greek inscription take that ( ΔΕΞΑΙ ) in high relief.
Like those on ancient Greek sling bullets, inscriptions on ancient Roman sling bullets are grouped according to the type of message inscribed on the bullet. Some are inscribed with the name of the enemys commander, or with a request for luck from the gods (usually winged Nike on Roman bullets), or with a snarky message such as This is for dessert, Crack your teeth, Catch, For Pompeys backside, Ouch, or This is an unpleasant gift. One Roman bullet was found that said, Attack Octavians asshole.
Here's a photo showing a message written in chalk on a US bomb heading for the German battleship Tirpitz during Operation Tungsten in WWII. I read that top dogs in the U.S. military frowned on bomb messages. Blasting the enemy to smithereens was fine, but apparently it was considered rude and uncalled for to write snarky stuff on the bombs.
By googling ancient sling bullets, you can get loads of information about them, and pictures.
Here's a good one: http://www.collector-antiquities.com/real-or-fake/roman-lead-slingshot.html
tblue37
(64,980 posts)Harker
(13,880 posts)inscribing a bomb under a Fairey Barracuda.
frogmarch
(12,145 posts)Thanks for the correction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tungsten
Harker
(13,880 posts)because of the inboard struts, but dug a bit deeper.
DFW
(54,055 posts)After all, it's not like the bombs landed, waited around for people to read what was on them, asked, "everybody read it now?" and THEN exploded.
NotASurfer
(2,138 posts)Then, maybe, the bombs would ask if everyone has read the message before cheerfully exploding