Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 May 1892 — The Biggest Guns Hare Failed. [ARTICLE]

The Biggest Guns Hare Failed.

The heaviest modern ordnance, the English 110-ton gun, has failed to fulfill its initial or experimental promises in more serious handling or application, for reasons now undergoing careful investigation. With a charge of nearly 1,000 pounds best prismatic gunpowder and a cylindrical steel shot of the enormous weight of 1,800 pounds, it was found at the final test that this prodigious shot penetrated entirely through compressed armor—steel-faced iron—of twenty inches thickness, then through an iron backing some five inches thick, after which it pierced wholly through twenty foot of oak, five feet of granite, eleven feet of hard concrete, and three feet into a brick wall. It was concluded, of course, that no existing fortress, much less armored vessel, could withstand such a shot, but the difficulty, of sea handling has proven so formidable a factor that the most sanguine expectations as to the efficiency of such vast ordnance in practical service seem doomed to disappointment. New York Sun. A bedcord that is said to be almost everlasting is in the possession of Mr. Moody, of Winterport, Me. It is made of the sinews of a whale, and has been in constant use since 1789. A minister in this State was, it is said, successively a barber, a bartender and a variety theater actor before he became converted.