Cannon And Ball Quotes

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Do you know how a man makes his way here? By brilliant genius or by skilful corruption. You must either cut your way through these masses of men like a cannon ball, or steal among them like a plague.
Honoré de Balzac (Père Goriot)
Curran snarled and hurled the rock against the mountain. The boulder flew, hit like a cannon ball, and rolled back down. Curran chased it, pulled another smaller rock out of the dirt, and smashed it against the first one. Wow. He was really pissed. Astamur's eyes were as big as plates. "I can get him to put those back after he's done," I told him. "No," Astamur said slowly. "It's fine." Curran picked up the smaller rock with both hands and threw it onto the larger boulder. The boulder cracked and fell apart. Oops. "Sorry we broke your rock." Atsany took the pipe out of his mouth and said something. "Mrrrhhhm," Astamur said. "What did he say?" "He said that the man must be your husband, because only someone we love very much can make us this crazy.
Ilona Andrews (Magic Rises (Kate Daniels, #6))
Else if you would be a man speak what you think to-day in words as hard as cannon balls, and to-morrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
My homesickness is a tangible thing, like a cannon ball of sadness, just pushing into my heart.
Heather Day Gilbert (Guilt by Association (Murder in the Mountains #3))
The startled girl dropped her watering-pot and clasped her hands together, and at that moment a stone cannon-ball crashed through her fair body.
Mark Twain (Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Vol I)
(Scarlett) Go on! Go on now! I want you to hurry. I don't want to ever see you again. I hope a cannon ball lands right on you. I hope it blows you to a million pieces. I-- (Rhett) Never mind the rest. I follow your general idea. When I'm dead on the altar of my country, I hope your conscience hurts you.
Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind)
I want to speak with you,” she said, “and I have placed honest Thornie betwixt Rashleigh and you on purpose. He will be like— Feather-bed ‘twixt castle wall And heavy brunt of cannon ball, while I, your earliest acquaintance in this intellectual family, ask of you how you like us all?
Walter Scott (Rob Roy)
Balls,” I said. “Never mind the track. The track is for punks. We are Road People. We are Cafe Racers. Being shot out of a cannon will always be better than being squeezed out of a tube. On my tombstone they will carve, “IT NEVER GOT FAST ENOUGH FOR ME.
Hunter S. Thompson
If providence has created the stars and the planets, Man has called the cannon-ball into existence.
Jules Verne (From the Earth to the Moon and 'Round the Moon)
A cannon-ball only travels six hundred leagues an hour; light travels seventy thousand leagues a second. Such is the superiority of Jesus Christ over Napoleon.
Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)
So if you think you’re dangerous, I’m a wrecking ball. I’m a loose cannon. A wildfire. I can burn houses down. I can burn cities down too. So don’t ever make the mistake of trying to kiss me again. Because I don’t want a needy girl clinging to me and you don’t want a guy giving you your first lesson in heartbreak.
Saffron A. Kent (My Darling Arrow (St. Mary’s Rebels, #1))
CONTROVERSY, n. A battle in which spittle or ink replaces the injurious cannon-ball and the inconsiderate bayonet.
Ambrose Bierce (The Devil's Dictionary)
His heart cannoned like a billiard ball off some green wall of his innards.
Geraldine McCaughrean (The Death-Defying Pepper Roux)
When the men were all back in their places in line, the command to advance was given. As I looked down that long line of about three thousand armed men, advancing towards a larger force also armed, I thought what a fearful responsibility General Taylor must feel, commanding such a host and so far away from friends. The Mexicans immediately opened fire upon us, first with artillery and then with infantry. At first their shots did not reach us, and the advance was continued. As we got nearer, the cannon balls commenced going through the ranks. They hurt no one, however, during this advance, because they would strike the ground long before they reached our line, and ricochetted through the tall grass so slowly that the men would see them and open ranks and let them pass.
Ulysses S. Grant (Personal Memoirs)
In October of 1973, when the Arab sneak attack almost drove us into the Mediterranean, we had all the intelligence in front of us, all the warning signs, and we had simply “dropped the ball.” We never considered the possibility of an all-out, coordinated, conventional assault from several nations, certainly not on our holiest of holidays. Call it stagnation, call it rigidity, call it an unforgivable herd mentality. Imagine a group of people all staring at writing on a wall, everyone congratulating one another on reading the words correctly. But behind that group is a mirror whose image shows the writing’s true message. No one looks at the mirror. No one thinks it’s necessary. Well, after almost allowing the Arabs to finish what Hitler started, we realized that not only was that mirror image necessary, but it must forever be our national policy. From 1973 onward, if nine intelligence analysts came to the same conclusion, it was the duty of the tenth to disagree. No matter how unlikely or far-fetched a possibility might be, one must always dig deeper. If a neighbor’s nuclear power plant might be used to make weapons-grade plutonium, you dig; if a dictator was rumored to be building a cannon so big it could fire anthrax shells across whole countries, you dig; and if there was even the slightest chance that dead bodies were being reanimated as ravenous killing machines, you dig and dig until you stike the absolute truth.
Max Brooks (World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War)
But though towards the end of the battle the men felt all the horror of their actions, though they would have been glad to cease, some unfathomable, mysterious force still led them on, and the artillerymen-the third of them left-soaked with sweat, grimed with powder and blood, and panting with weariness, still brought the charges, loaded, aimed, and lighted the match; and the cannon balls flew as swiftly and cruelly from each side and crushed human flesh, and kept up the fearful work, which was done not at the will of men, but at the will of Him who sways men and worlds.
Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace)
In 1855, at the height of the Crimean War, Roger Fenton’s photograph, ‘The Valley of the Shadow of Death’, published in The Times, poignantly captured the aftermath of British retreat in the face of the Russian army with a single image of an empty battlefield. There was only one problem. Fenton had constructed the entire scene, moving cannon balls artfully until he had the perfect image. In 1945, on the beach of Iwo Jima, legendary war photographer Joe Rosenthal captured the most famous image of battle ever taken: the raising of the Stars and Stripes as American soldiers took the summit from the Japanese. It won him the Pulitzer Prize. Both are a lie.
Jacques Peretti (Done: The Secret Deals that are Changing Our World)
We passed the Irish club, and the florist’s with its small stiff pink-and-white carnations in a bucket, and the drapers called ‘Elvina’s’, which displayed in its window Bear Brand stockings and knife-pleated skirts like cloth concertinas and pasty-shaped hats on false heads. We passed the confectioner’s – or failed to pass it; the window attracted Karina. She balled her hands into her pockets, and leant back, her feet apart; she looked rooted, immovable. The cakes were stacked on decks of sloping shelves, set out on pink doilies whitened by falls of icing sugar. There were vanilla slices, their airy tiers of pastry glued together with confectioners’ custard, fat and lolling like a yellow tongue. There were bubbling jam puffs and ballooning Eccles cakes, slashed to show their plump currant insides. There were jam tarts the size of traffic lights; there were whinberry pies oozing juice like black blood. ‘Look at them buns,’ Karina would say. ‘Look.’ I would turn sideways and see her intent face. Sometimes the tip of her tongue would appear, and slide slowly upwards towards her flat nose. There were sponge buns shaped like fat mushrooms, topped with pink icing and half a glace cherry. There were coconut pyramids, and low square house-shaped chocolate buns, finished with a big roll of chocolate-wrapped marzipan which was solid as the barrel of a cannon.
Hilary Mantel (An Experiment in Love: A Novel)
Speech is the pen and the sword of humankind and it is the foundation of their kingdom. Wherever the flag of speech waves, the most powerful armies are. defeated and scattered. In the arenas in which speech shouts out, the sounds of cannon balls become like the buzzing of bees. from behind the battlements on which the banner of speech has been raised, the sound of its drums are heard. In the precincts where its march reverberates, kings shake in their boots. The Master of Speech smashed to pieces many insurmountable walls, in the face of which Alexander the Great, Napoleon, and many others despaired or retread; and the pen of Speech, imparting and compliance, was saluted and praised.
M. Fethullah Gülen (Speech and Power of Expression)
Newton had invented the calculus, which was expressed in the language of "differential equations," which describe how objects smoothly undergo infinitesimal changes in space and time. The motion of ocean waves, fluids, gases, and cannon balls could all be expressed in the language of differential equations. Maxwell set out with a clear goal, to express the revolutionary findings of Faraday and his force fields through precise differential equations. Maxwell began with Faraday's discovery that electric fields could turn into magnetic fields and vice versa. He took Faraday's depictions of force fields and rewrote them in the precise language of differential equations, producing one of the most important series of equations in modern science. They are a series of eight fierce-looking differential equations. Every physicist and engineer in the world has to sweat over them when mastering electromagnetism in graduate school. Next, Maxwell asked himself the fateful question: if magnetic fields can turn into electric fields and vice versa, what happens if they are constantly turning into each other in a never-ending pattern? Maxwell found that these electric-magnetic fields would create a wave, much like an ocean wave. To his astonishment, he calculated the speed of these waves and found it to be the speed of light! In 1864, upon discovering this fact, he wrote prophetically: "This velocity is so nearly that of light that it seems we have strong reason to conclude that light itself...is an electromagnetic disturbance.
Michio Kaku (Physics of the Impossible)
him to turn out and find a dry twig; and if he can't do it, go and borrow one. In fact, the Leather Stocking Series ought to have been called the Broken Twig Series. I am sorry there is not room to put in a few dozen instances of the delicate art of the forest, as practised by Natty Bumppo and some of the other Cooperian experts. Perhaps we may venture two or three samples. Cooper was a sailor — a naval officer; yet he gravely tells us how a vessel, driving towards a lee shore in a gale, is steered for a particular spot by her skipper because he knows of an undertow there which will hold her back against the gale and save her. For just pure woodcraft, or sailorcraft, or whatever it is, isn't that neat? For several years Cooper was daily in the society of artillery, and he ought to have noticed that when a cannon-ball strikes the ground it either buries itself or skips a hundred feet or so; skips again a hundred feet or so — and so on, till finally it gets tired and rolls. Now in one place he loses some "females" — as he always calls women — in the edge of a wood near a plain at night in a fog, on purpose to give Bumppo a chance to show off the delicate art of the forest before the
Mark Twain (Mark Twain: Collection of 51 Classic Works with analysis and historical background (Annotated and Illustrated) (Annotated Classics))
Blowin' In The Wind How many roads must a man walk down Before you call him a man ? How many seas must a white dove sail Before she sleeps in the sand ? Yes, how many times must the cannon balls fly Before they're forever banned ? The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind The answer is blowin' in the wind. Yes, how many years can a mountain exist Before it's washed to the sea ? Yes, how many years can some people exist Before they're allowed to be free ? Yes, how many times can a man turn his head Pretending he just doesn't see ? The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind The answer is blowin' in the wind. Yes, how many times must a man look up Before he can see the sky ? Yes, how many ears must one man have Before he can hear people cry ? Yes, how many deaths will it take till he knows That too many people have died ? The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind The answer is blowin' in the wind.
Bob Dylan (The Little Black Songbook: Bob Dylan- Complete Lyrics & Chords, Over 60 Classics!)
But they will build no more barricades, they will break no more soldiers' heads with paving-stones. Louis Napoleon has taken care of all that. He is annihilating the crooked streets and building in their stead noble boulevards as straight as an arrow—avenues which a cannon ball could traverse from end to end without meeting an obstruction more irresistible than the flesh and bones of men—boulevards whose stately edifices will never afford refuges and plotting places for starving, discontented revolution breeders. Five of these great thoroughfares radiate from one ample centre—a centre which is exceedingly well adapted to the accommodation of heavy artillery. The mobs used to riot there, but they must seek another rallying-place in future. And this ingenious Napoleon paves the streets of his great cities with a smooth, compact composition of asphaltum and sand. No more barricades of flagstones—no more assaulting his Majesty's troops with cobbles.
Mark Twain (The Innocents Abroad)
Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook’s next door to each other, with a laundress’s next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered—flushed, but smiling proudly—with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.
Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol)
Go on and educate me, then,” Senan says to Cal. “What’s a yeet?” “A what?” Cal says. “A yeet. I’m sitting on the sofa tonight after my tea, doing a bit of digesting, and my youngest lad comes running in, launches himself onto my feckin’ belly like he’s been shot from a cannon, yells ‘Yeet!’ out of him right in my face, and legs it out again. I asked one of my other fellas what he was on about, but he only laughed his arse off and told me I’m getting old. Then he asked me for twenty quid to go into town.” “Did you give it to him?” Cal asks. “I did not. I told him to fuck off and get a job. What the hell is a yeet?” “You never saw a yeet?” Cal says. He finds himself fed up to the back teeth with being tossed around by these guys like a beach ball. “They’re pet animals. Like hamsters, only bigger and uglier. Great big fat faces and little piggy eyes.” “I haven’t got a fat fuckin’ face. You’re telling me my young lad’s after calling me a hamster?” “Well,” Cal says, “that word’s used for something else, too, but I hope your boy wouldn’t know about that. How old is he?” “Ten.” “He got the internet?” Senan is swelling up and turning red. “If that little fecker’s been looking at porn, he can say good-bye to his drum kit, and his Xbox, and his—everything. What’s a yeet? Did he call his own father a prick?” “He’s only winding you up, ye eejit,” the buck-naked window guy tells him. “He’s no more notion of yeets than you have.” Senan glares at Cal. “Never heard of ’em,” Cal says. “But you’re cute when you’re angry.
Tana French (The Searcher)
At the moment when you know that the projectile is flying towards you, it will infallibly occur to you that this shot will kill you; but the feeling of self-love upholds you, and no one perceives the knife which is cutting your heart. But when the shot has flown past without touching you, you grow animated, and a certain cheerful, inexpressibly pleasant feeling overpowers you, but only for a moment, so that you discover a peculiar sort of charm in danger, in this game of life and death, you want cannon-balls or bombs to strike nearer to you.
Leo Tolstoy (The Sebastopol Sketches (Penguin Classics))
Swish,” the net sounded like the blast of a cannon, signaling the game was tied at 64. Dave then saw the second shot in his mind before even going into his pre-shot routine. The ball tickled the front rim, brushed against the backboard, and then dropped through the net. The home crowd erupted as Dave backpedaled toward the opposing rim. Central High attempted a last-second shot that fell short into Breslin's hands. The fans rushed onto the floor as the number two train came roaring into the station, bringing Dave back from his glorious past back into the oppressive heat of the present.
Phil Wohl (More Than 44)
Some folks swear, though not at all, that, using chains, he sliced his head off--derby and all--and that the head sailed like a cannon ball through the air a quarter mile, bounced another quarter mile, and still had enough steam to cripple a horse some fellow was riding into New Marsails.
William Melvin Kelley (A Different Drummer)
If there’s one thing I learned with Bob’s passing, it’s that life is too short to spend it unhappy, Cannon-ball.
Kendall Ryan (Room Mates (Roommates, #1-3 & #4))
The problem, at least for the British, was that by this time more than 13,000 American soldiers were in place and ready to defend Fort McHenry with 100 cannons.  With the forces on land unable to continue the advance, the British turned to their naval superiority in an attempt to reduce the fort, and in his work, Pezzola described for his readers what kind of shells the British were using, making a reference to Francis Scott Key’s poem to drive the point home: “Just one of these cast-iron spheres contained a bursting powder charge of 9-lbs, touched off by a wooden fuse packed into the ball with finely ground powder, which was then launched from the ship by an 8000-lb mortar firing at an angle of 45-degrees. If the bomb ‘burst in air’ (to quote Francis Scott Key's later poem), the fragments showered down on the roofless forts, killing, wounding and maiming the unlucky defender-victims. If the ball struck the forts before detonation, it would smash what it hit to bits - and then explode.
Charles River Editors (Francis Scott Key: The Life and Legacy of the Man Who Wrote America’s National Anthem)
Mombasa, too, furnished with such Palaces and sumptuous houses, Will be laid waste with iron and fire In payment for its former treachery. Along the Indian coast, swarming With enemy ships plotting Portugal's Downfall, Lourenço with sail and with oar Will give his uttermost, and then give more. Though the powerful Samorin's giant ships Choke the entire sea, his cannon-shot Thundering from hot brass Will pulverize rudder, mast, and sail; Then, daring to grapple the enemy Flagship, watch him leap On deck, armed only with lance and sword, To drive four hundred Muslims overboard. But God's inscrutable wisdom (He knows Best what is best for his servants) Will place him where neither strength nor wisdom Can avail in preserving his life. In Chaul, the very seas will churn With blood, fire, and iron resistance, As the combined fleets of Egypt and Cambay Confront him with his destiny that day. The united power of many enemies (Might was defeated only by might), Faltering winds and a swelling sea Will all be ranged against him. Here, let ancient heroes rise To learn from this scion of courage This second Scaeva who, however maimed, Knows no surrender and will not be tamed. With one thighbone completely shattered By a wayward cannon-ball, still He battles on with his forearms alone And a heart not to be daunted, Until another ball snaps the ties Binding flesh and spirit together: The leaping soul slips its body's prison To claim the greater prize of the arisen. Go in peace, O soul! After war's Turbulence, you have earned supreme peace! As for that scattered, broken body, He who fathered it plans vengeance. Already, I hear their hot perdition Looming in a thunderous barrage On Mameluke and cruel Cambayan From catapult, from ordnance and cannon. Here comes the father, magnified By his anger and grief, his heart On fire, his eyes swimming, his soul Transfixed by paternal love. He has taken an oath his noble rage Will make blood run knee-high In the enemy ships; the Nile will mourn, The Indus witness, the Ganges be forlorn.
Luís de Camões (The Lusiads)
A like reaction was expressed by a Georgian: “I felt quite small in that fight the other day when the musket balls and cannon balls was flying around me as thick as hail and by best friends falling on both sides dead and mortally wounded Oh Dear it is impossible for me to express my feelings when the fight was over   I saw what was done the tears came then free oh that I never could behold such a sight again to think of it among civilized people killing one another like beasts one would think that the supreme ruler would put a stop to it but wee sinned as a nation and must suffer in the fleash as well as spiritually those things wee cant account for.”18
Bell Irvin Wiley (The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy)
Have you ever seen that video, where one of the Apollo astronauts, standing on the moon, drops a hammer and a feather side by side?” Giovanni shook his head. “The hammer and feather fall at exactly the same speed, they hit the ground at the same time. Same experiment that Galileo did from the leaning tower, dropping a pebble and a cannon ball. They both hit the ground at almost the same time. It doesn’t matter what the mass of an object is—a grain of sand or an elephant—if they experience the same gravitational field, they’ll accelerate exactly the same.
Matthew Mather (Nomad (Nomad, #1))
I am SAM, and this is my first mission. Wish me luck. Actually, don’t bother. I’m that good. I need to move fast, but I have to be careful too.This high-tech fortress disguised as a middle school has security systems like Hershey, Pennsylvania, has chocolate. My biggest concern (and archnemesis) is Jan I. Tor. He’s the half-human, half-cyborg “cleaning service” they use for “light security” around here. Yeah, right. Tor’s definition of “light security” is that he only kills you once if he finds you. So I wait in super-stealthy silence while Tor hovers past my hiding spot with his motion detectors running, laser cannons loaded, and a big dust mop attachment on his robotic arm. He’s cleaning that floor to within an inch of its life, but it could be me next. As soon as Tor’s out of range, I slip off my tungsten gripper shoes. Believe me, once he’s been through here, you do not want to leave footprints behind. That would be like leaving a business card in Sergeant Stricker’s in-box. Stricker is the big cheese who runs this place, and she’s all human, but just as scary as Tor. I don’t want to rumble with either one of those two. So I program the shoes to self-destruct and drop them in the trash. FWOOM! The coast is clear now, and I sneak back into action. I work my way up the corridor in my spy socks, quiet as a ghost walking on cotton balls. Very, very puffy cotton balls—I’m that quiet. What I need is the perfect place to leave the package I came here to deliver. That’s the mission, but I can’t just do it anywhere. I have to choose wisely. Bathroom? Nah. Too echoey. Library? Nah. Only one exit, and I can’t take that risk. Main lobby? Hmm… maybe so. In fact, I wish I’d thought of that on my way in. I could have saved myself one very expensive pair of tungsten gripper shoes. Once my radar-enabled Rolex watch tells me the main lobby is clear, I slide in there and get right to work. I enter the access code on my briefcase, confirm with my thumbprint, and then pop the case open. After that, it takes exactly seven seconds and one ordinary roll of masking tape to secure my package to the wall. That’s it. Package delivered. Mission accomplished. Catch you next time—because there’s no way you’ll ever catch me. SAM out!
James Patterson (Just My Rotten Luck (Middle School #7))
God, Bones, fuck me. I love you, I love you.” The words hit like a cannon-ball on a flimsy chessboard, obliterating the entire battlefield in one blow.
Lucian Bane (Reginald Bones 2 (Reginald Bones #2))
A shout nearly had me tinkling my trousers as I found myself in the room with the cannon, ten Fae all turned my way with death in their eyes and a ball of potent magic at the ready to fire. But I had a way with balls that they wouldn’t be prepared for.
Caroline Peckham (Restless Stars (Zodiac Academy, #9))
We cannot rely on our environment to create new outcomes; it’s not usually within our control. However, as the cannon barrel in your life, you can easily fire a ball at a different angle or from a different height, so that it lands further away or in a different place, simply by changing your thoughts. This is within your control.
Vex King (Good Vibes, Good Life: How Self-love Is by Vex King)
The Weight" I pulled into Nazareth, was feelin' about half past dead I just need some place where I can lay my head "Hey, mister, can you tell me where a man might find a bed?" He just grinned and shook my hand, "no" was all he said Take a load off Fanny Take a load for free Take a load off Fanny And (and, and) you put the load right on me (You put the load right on me) I picked up my bag, I went lookin' for a place to hide When I saw Carmen and the Devil walkin' side by side I said, "Hey, Carmen, come on let's go downtown." She said, "I gotta go but my friend can stick around." Take a load off Fanny Take a load for free Take a load off Fanny And (and, and) you put the load right on me (You put the load right on me) Go down, Miss Moses, there's nothin' you can say It's just old Luke and Luke's waitin' on the Judgment Day "Well, Luke, my friend, what about young Anna Lee?" He said, "Do me a favor, son, won't you stay and keep Anna Lee company?" Take a load off Fanny Take a load for free Take a load off Fanny And (and, and) you put the load right on me (You put the load right on me) Crazy Chester followed me and he caught me in the fog He said, "I will fix your rack if you take Jack, my dog." I said, "Wait a minute, Chester, you know I'm a peaceful man." He said, "That's OK, boy, won't you feed him when you can?" Yeah, take a load off Fanny Take a load for free Take a load off Fanny And (and, and) you put the load right on me (You put the load right on me) Catch a cannon ball now to take me down the line My bag is sinkin' low and I do believe it's time To get back to Miss Fanny, you know she's the only one Who sent me here with her regards for everyone Take a load off Fanny Take a load for free Take a load off Fanny And (and, and) you put the load right on me (You put the load right on me) The Band, Big Pink (1968)
The Band
The crossfire was so heavy that French and Spanish cannon balls smacked into each other
Nicholas Best (Trafalgar)
Happy. It sounds like fireworks, smells like roasted marshmallows, and feels like cannon-balling into a cold pool on a hot day, right?
Lisa Harper (Life: An Obsessively Grateful, Undone by Jesus, Genuinely Happy, and Not Faking it Through the Hard Stuff Kind of 100-Day Devotional)
Station’s openin’ up with the PDCs,” Alex said. “This’ll get a mite bumpy.” Holden switched from mirroring Naomi’s screen to watching Alex’s. His panel filled with thousands of rapidly moving balls of light and Thoth Station rotating in the background. The Roci’s threat computer was outlining the incoming point defense cannon fire with bright light on Alex’s HUD. It was moving impossibly fast, but at least with the system doing a bright overlay on each round, the pilot could see where the fire was coming from and which direction it was traveling. Alex reacted to this threat information with consummate skill, maneuvering away from the PDCs’ direction of fire in quick, almost random movements that forced the automated targeting of the point defense cannons to adjust constantly. To Holden, it looked like a game. Incredibly fast blobs of light flew up from the space station in chains, like long and thin pearl necklaces. The ship moved
James S.A. Corey (Leviathan Wakes (The Expanse, #1))
The enemy fired, from a distance and at random, just one wretched cannon-ball which struck him in the middle of the body, and you can imagine the cries and lamentations of this army. The messenger set off at once. He arrived on Monday as I told you, so that within an hour the King had a letter from M. de Turenne and the news of his death.
Madame de Sévigné (Selected Letters)
At the liquor store, Buster, emboldened by the feeling that he had made friends for the first time in years, used almost the absolute last of the cash in his wallet to buy all the alcohol the soldiers wanted. He felt warm and authentic inside his new clothes and thought, handing over all he owned to the liquor-store clerk, that he could live here forever. Now it was Buster’s turn. He leaned over a massive air cannon mounted on a tripod, which the soldiers referred to as Air Force One. Instead of potatoes, the gun used two-liter soda bottles as ammunition. “See, we don’t like to call them spud guns,” said David, who seemed, as the night progressed, to become more tightly wound. “Some shoot ping-pong balls and some shoot soda bottles and some shoot tennis balls that you fill with pennies.
Kevin Wilson (The Family Fang)
In January 1453 Mehmet ordered a test firing of the great gun outside his new royal palace at Edirne. The mighty bombard was hauled into position near the gate and the city was warned that the following day “the explosion and roar would be like thunder, lest anyone should be struck dumb by the unexpected shock or pregnant women might miscarry.” In the morning the cannon was primed with powder. A team of workmen lugged a giant stone ball into the mouth of the barrel and rolled it back down to sit snugly in front of the gunpowder chamber. A lighted taper was put to the touch hole. With a shattering roar and a cloud of smoke that hazed the sky, the mighty bullet was propelled across the open countryside for a mile before burying itself six feet down in the soft earth.
Roger Crowley (1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West)
Dominic was watching the game in front of him with great detachment, almost as if he were a traveler in a foreign land. It was Jackie Cannon’s words that had created this situation: Dominic could not get rid of the drunk’s words—that they had won only death in 1963, and that even the championship had been bought. The words festered in him. They clattered away in his head like empty bottles. Above all, they made the game itself seem like a threat that he was watching unfold; he watched with detachment, with calmness, but each pitch was possibly lethal—not to the batter but to the world. It seemed that a lifetime of joy and participation was shriveling into a nasty little ball of terror, all of it unfathomable.
Frank King (Southpaw: The Big League Horror Novel)
You should acquire and own at least two kettlebells. They are not cheap, but they still may be the very cheapest and fastest exercise equipment. In terms of a lifelong strength and endurance aid, your kettlebell purchase may be among the best values in your life. Several forms of kettlebells are now available. Probably the best remain the black cast iron bells resembling a cannon ball. Other forms now include various colors, put on with a plastic coating. This coating may degrade with age. Not much degrades a black cast iron bell except rust. Make certain the kettlebell handle is well designed. For a two arm swing, both your hands grip the kettlebell. The handle should be sufficiently long that your hands are comfortable. I hook three fingers of each hand through the handle, with my little finger to the outside. You may try out a number of different weights in kettlebells and graduate to higher weights as your strength builds. They may be purchased in sets with various weights, such as 20, 25 and 30 pounds (9, 11.3, 13.6 kg).
Don Fitch (Get Fit, Get Fierce with Kettlebell Swings: Just 12 Minutes a Day to Lose Weight, Prevent Sitting Disease, Hone Your Body and Tone Your Booty!)
St Clairs Defeat" "Was November the fourth in the year of ninety-one We had a sore engagement near to Fort Jefferson Sinclair was our commander, which may remembered be But we left nine hundred soldiers in that Western Territory At Bunker’s Hill and in Quebec, where many a hero fell Likewise out on Long Island, it is I the truth can tell But such a dreadful carnage, never did I see As happened all out on the plains, near the River St. Marie Our militia was attacked, just as the day did break And soon were overpowered, and forced into retreat They killed major Ouldham, and major Briggs likewise While horrid yells of anguished souls resounded through the skies Major Butler he was wounded the very second fire His manly bosom swelled with rage they forced him to retire Like one distracted he appeared, when thus exclaim-ed he Ye hounds of Hell shall all be slain but what revenged I’ll be We had not very long been broke, when General Butler fell He cries my boys I’m wounded, pray take me off this field My word says he, what shall we do, we’re wounded every man Go charge your valiant heros and beat them if you can He leaned his back against a tree, and there resigned his breath And like a valiant soldier, sunk into the arms of death When blessed angels did await, his spirit to convey Into celestial fields, he did quickly bend his way We charged again and took our ground, which did our hearts elate But there we did not tarry long, they soon made us retreat They killed our major Ferguson, which caused his men to cry Stand to your guns says valiant Ford, we’ll fight until we die Our cannon balls exhausted, artillery men all slain Our musketeers and riflemen, their fire they did sustain Three hours more we fought like men, and they were forced to yield While three hundred bloody warriors lay stretched across the filed Says colonel Gibson to his men, my boys be not dismayed I’m sure that true Virginians were never yet afraid Ten thousand deaths I’d rather die, than they should gain this field With that he got a fatal shot, causing him to yield Says major Clark, my heros, we can no longer stand We shall strive to form in order, and retreat the best we can The word retreat being passed around, they raised a dreadful cry Then helter skelter through the woods like wolves and sheep they fly We left the wounded on the field, O heavens what a shock! And many bones were shattered, and strewn across the rock With scalping knives and tomahawks, they robbed some of their breath While raging flames of torment, tortured other men to death Was November the fourth in the year of ninety-one We had a sore engagement near to Fort Jefferson Sinclair was our commander, which may remembered be But we left nine hundred soldiers in that Western Territory
unknown author
Tress settled down, thinking about people and how the holes in them could be filled by such simple things, like time, or a few words at the right moment. Or, apparently, a cannon ball. What, other than a person, could you build up merely by caring?
Brandon Sanderson (Tress of the Emerald Sea)
Angry Gran Toss – Launch, Fly, and Upgrade in This Hilarious Arcade Adventure Get ready for a wild ride with Angry Gran Toss in slope-ball.io , a wildly entertaining arcade game that turns an angry grandma into a flying projectile. This offbeat and hilarious title combines distance-launching mechanics with quirky upgrades, crazy gadgets, and an endless sky to conquer. Whether you're here for the laughs or the challenge, Angry Gran Toss delivers high-flying fun that will keep you coming back for more. What Is Angry Gran Toss? In Angry Gran Toss, you play as a cranky grandmother who’s just broken out of the retirement home. Armed with a giant cannon and an attitude to match, she’s ready to soar through the skies. Your mission is simple: launch Grandma as far as you can, collect coins, dodge obstacles, and upgrade your equipment to achieve greater distances. The game blends elements of timing, strategy, and chaos. Each launch is unpredictable, making every round feel fresh and fun. Whether she’s bouncing off rooftops, flying through billboards, or smashing into helicopters, Grandma's journey is anything but boring. Game Features Addictive Launch Gameplay: Tap to launch at the perfect angle and power, then use gadgets to extend flight. Wacky Power-Ups: From jetpacks to rocket pants, unlock insane equipment to keep Granny airborne. Fun Physics: Hilarious ragdoll physics make every crash and bounce unpredictable and funny. Upgradable Gear: Spend the coins you earn on new launchers, gadgets, and boosts to fly farther. Colorful Visuals: Cartoon-style graphics bring the chaos to life in a lighthearted and vibrant world. Why Angry Gran Toss Is So Fun At its core, Angry Gran Toss is simple but incredibly rewarding. The satisfaction of watching your upgrades pay off as you launch further and further each time is what makes the gameplay loop so addictive. The humorous visuals and unexpected obstacles keep things from ever feeling repetitive. There’s also a level of strategy involved. Do you spend your coins on a stronger cannon, or invest in mid-air boosts? Do you time your launches for maximum efficiency, or rely on luck and chaos? The balance between skill and unpredictability is what keeps players hooked.
Games Workshop