History
The first human cannonball, in 1877 at the Royal Aquarium in London, was a 14 year-old girl called "Zazel", whose real name was Rossa Matilda Richter. She was launched by a spring-style cannon invented by Canadian William Leonard Hunt ("The Great Farini"). She later toured with the P.T. Barnum Circus. Farini's cannon used rubber springs to launch a person from the cannon; limiting the distance they could be launched.
In the 1920s, Ildebrando Zacchini invented a canon that used compressed air to launch a human cannonball. Zacchini shot his son Hugo out of the compressed air cannon. Members of the Zacchini family were later inducted into the Ringling Brothers Circus Hall of Fame.
Read more about this topic: Human Cannonball
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“We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)
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There are only two great currents in the history of mankind: the baseness which makes conservatives and the envy which makes revolutionaries.”
—Edmond De Goncourt (1822–1896)
“English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did.”
—Malcolm Bradbury (b. 1932)