# Cartoon bombs, alcohol and flour **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 22, 2007, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cartoon-bombs-alcohol-and-flour/393164 "2007-02-22T00:05:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![scotandrsn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a4c791/32.png) [@scotandrsn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scotandrsn)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2007, 7:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cartoon-bombs-alcohol-and-flour/393164/21 "2007-02-23T07:49:22Z")
[QUOTE=Alan Smithee] Not an authoritative cite, but when I saw _Master and Commander_, they had a stack of bombs in one scene that looked _exactly_ like the cartoon bombs. [/QUOTE] Didn’t see the movie, but those might have been mortar rounds. On a long ago tour of Fort Ticonderoga, I learned about the mortars of two centuries ago. Tiny little cannon that shot a round bomb with a lit fuse timed to explode at about the time of impact. Occasionally the mortar would misfire, leaving the commanding officer to make a split-second choice among the soldiers who were unpopular with the rest of the men to “volunteer” to reach into the mouth of the mortar with gloved hand to try and extinguish the fuse… There was a jagged half of a mortar barrel in the yard of the fort, and we were told the other half was at the bottom of the lake about a mile distant. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2007, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cartoon-bombs-alcohol-and-flour/393164/22 "2007-02-23T13:02:58Z")
[QUOTE=si\_blakely] Styptic pencils containing alum are used to stop shaving cuts bleeding - but sting like buggery. [/QUOTE] Touch a an alum-based styptic pencil to the mucous membrane of your mouth, and you will see why it has the reputation of shrinking heads. The sensation is one of puckering of the lips, which is exaggerated by the cartoons into shrinking the whole head. ---
**Author:** ![Hypno-Toad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b2d939/32.png) [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2007, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cartoon-bombs-alcohol-and-flour/393164/23 "2007-02-23T13:21:08Z")
[QUOTE=scotandrsn] Didn’t see the movie, but those might have been mortar rounds. [/QUOTE] The bombs depicted in M&C were hand grenades. They did look just like the cartoon bombs right down to the fuze sticking out of the top. But they were baseball or tennis ball sized. ---
**Author:** ![scotandrsn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a4c791/32.png) [@scotandrsn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scotandrsn)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2007, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cartoon-bombs-alcohol-and-flour/393164/24 "2007-02-23T15:36:59Z")
[QUOTE=Hypno-Toad] The bombs depicted in M&C were hand grenades. They did look just like the cartoon bombs right down to the fuze sticking out of the top. But they were baseball or tennis ball sized. [/QUOTE] I must have been imagining a different cartoon 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Hypno-Toad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b2d939/32.png) [@Hypno-Toad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hypno-Toad)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2007, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cartoon-bombs-alcohol-and-flour/393164/25 "2007-02-23T15:49:11Z")
[QUOTE=scotandrsn] I must have been imagining a different cartoon 😃 [/QUOTE] Actually, you’re reference may still be valid. Mortar bombs looked just like the hand grenades, but usually bigger. Sometimes much bigger. \*Last of the Mohicans \* showed a large siege mortar being loaded and fired and the bomb had to be carried by two men using a lifting sling. ---
**Author:** ![Pabitel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bbce88/32.png) [@Pabitel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pabitel)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2007, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cartoon-bombs-alcohol-and-flour/393164/26 "2007-02-23T16:08:15Z")
From this site: [http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/gabrmetz/gabr001a.htm](http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/gabrmetz/gabr001a.htm) > [@](#): > > Still other advances increased the power of infantry. In the mid-1700s the Prussians introduced the standard size iron ramrod replacing the nonstandard wooden model. The result, when coupled with good training of the soldier, was to double the rate of musket fire. At the same time, infantry began to diversify its weapons capability as the primitive hand grenade made its appearance. The first hand grenades were little more than hollow iron balls packed with black powder and ignited by a burning wick. Within a decade, however, the infantry grenadier had become a standard feature of European infantry formations. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cartoon-bombs-alcohol-and-flour/393164.md?page=1)