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When a Trailer Burned a Town: 6,000 Tonnes of Ash
When a Trailer Burned a Town: 6,000 Tonnes of Ash
A single celebratory gunshot on February 28, 1844 turned a presidential cruise into a massacre: a 27,000-pound cannon called the Peacemaker had been fired only five times in proof and the breach exploded, killing six people and shredding the afternoon. Who decided five test firings were enough, and why was the heaviest part of the gun-the added mass at the breech-allowed to substitute for proper engineering?
In this episode, we tell the story of the USS Princeton and the Peacemaker, how competing technologies and personal pride shaped the…
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