SYSK Selects: How Human Cannonballs Work

Chuck Bryant. What are you doing? How you doing the cheeks? Huh? Have you ever captured that? Yeah? We did it once and then people have asked occasionally like dude, the cheap thing again? And I don't want to. I want to do it like once every hundred and fifty shows. Literally that's a good that's a good pace. I don't want to overdo that. So that's that'll be the third time soon coming up, I think so. Yeah. Sure for fifty right around the corner had around a company. Um, chuckers,

have you ever had kaboom cereal? No, dude, it was that was such a thing good. Um, No, it wasn't good the marshmallows were good. They it was basically like lucky Charms. I don't know who ripped off who, but it was clown themed rather than you know, irish themed. That's genius. Yeah. But there was a clown on front and he had a cannon, and that's where the name came from. Kaboom. It was a circus clown circus canon. But then they realized clowns were scary as heck most people,

so it failed miserably. I wrote this blog post recently. Did you read it about it? Yeah, that's the clown giving clown therapy. People seem to like it too. Yeah, I thought it was a nice one. Um, that wasn't my intro. My intro was about Hunter te. Oh well, let's hear it. Do you remember, well, sure you're probably gonna reference his death wish. Yes, so he you know, he comes down with the cancer and um shoots himself in the head and we're ardless of how you feel

about suicide. What happened next was his um As you said, I guess his death wish, which he made in life. Ironically. Yeah, there's two kinds of death wishes. There's a wish that you make upon your death that you would like for things to happen after you die. And then there's the jolly Brunson death. Wish nice good good Chuck Fron, Well, that's a Simpsons character too, but it's the Simpson's character,

the mustachioed sales clerk. Yes, but he clearly references GERALDS Brunson. Yeah. Um. Anyway, what happened to Hunter T was he Um, he he was cremated and he had his remains shot out of a cannon. Have you seen it? Yeah? Thanks to Johnny Depp helped that dream come true because he has tons and tons of money to make that happen. Yes, he does. It was quite a cannon too. Um. And we've talked before about how I want my dead body shot out of a cannon. We have indeed, Um, I'm not so

sure anymore. Maybe who knows? It would be after reading this article and the physical requirements. It would be kind of gruesome. It wouldn't be like unless they stiffened you up somehow, you would come out in a big like a dead body wood. That's what I've always imagined though, that's what I see flying through the air. I thought

you saw yourself like shooting through a rocket towards the storm. No, like flopping like through the air and doing like half somersaults and twists where you think it's gonna be naked too. I was gonna land on the Kansas Prairie and let the vultures finish me off. All right, we'll see an idea. Bring it. I got a backyard for you. I think that's how we met coop um he he offered. He was like, hey, I I live in Kansas and I

can get this done. Yeah, alright, so we'll see. But I think that that's an image that people can have in their head while we talk about how human cannonballs work, right, because like you said, there's a lot to it, but one of the things that's not to it. And I think it's funny that um people wonder how this how you can shoot somebody out of a cannon and the gunpowder doesn't blow them up. There's no gunpowder, of course,

there's not. I don't understand how someone cannot understand that intuitively, Yeah, because I think people want to believe that they're being fired out of a cannon instead of a a long uh piston enclosed in a in a tube with a fake boom in a flash, Yes, for effect. Okay, so I guess it's the fake boom in the flash. They're they're buying it. Yeah, well that's the idea from the beginning,

that was the idea. So yes, And it has long roots, indeed, back to the nineteenth century, back to the UK, which, by the way, I've noticed, did you notice from like this article in doing any supplementary research, the UK is big into human cannonballs. I think they're big on just this whole circus experience. Okay, they were the original Showman. Yeah, sure, they own the world. Yeah, it's you know, and they

sold it. And when you own the world, you have an obligation to entertain the world, and they did so by human cannonballs. Specifically, something called the projector. Is the is the I guess grandfather of the human cannon ball cannon, right, yeah, the Farini project or eight seventy one, George Farini. Basically it was like a more like a catapult, like a spatula that would just flip people and stop and people would go flopping and flying through the air. Yeah, and

they oh god, I regret this. Yeah. Uh. Specifically Lulu Um who was a man dressed as a woman, because that always adds to the comic effect. Right, put a dude in address and he was the first person in America to get flapjacked with Farini's contraption. There. Yeah, and not only did he do that, he was he sailed thirty ft into the air. And um was caught by someone on a trapeeze. So as we go through this, I don't want any just think about my dead body

being shot onto the Kansas Prairie. Um, I want you to think about how difficult it is to catch somebody on a trapeez who's just been shot out of a cannon. While you're on a trapeeze. You're swinging it just the right point, hitting him just the right way, and then taking their for momentum and yanking him another way on the trapeeze. Yeah. Well this um, in fairness, Lulu wasn't caught by someone. She he just actually grabbed hold of the trapeeze. But there are people later on in this

article who were caught by people on the trampeze. I just want to get that. So someone out there was like, no, no, Lulu. I wonder there'd be one person who knew that. UM, So the Ferini projector was invented in eight seventy one. It was obsolete by eighteen eight. Because this is the year that a fourteen year old girl named Rosa Marie Richter whose stage name was zazzle a right, great great grandmother to Andy Richter. No, I'm just kidding, okay, um,

great stage name though, right, she's fourteen. Um, and she, at the behest of one P. T. Barnum climbed into the first cannon, human cannonball cannon um that that is designed like today's modern cannons. Well yea, and she was shot out of it and um shortly after that, within a few performances, she broke her back and was the first casualty of the human cannonball in this first the first cannon used the springs, and they employed the blast the fire in the in the boom to make people

thinking back then they probably really bought it. Oh yeah, how bad. You know people are so dumb back then. Uh. And there's a very famous picture of her climbing into the cannon. It's called like beautiful girl and huge gun or something like that. I thought that our fore fathers like invented everything and like built the world and we're like,

they're so dumb. What a bunch of stupid people. Yeah, well it's harder and harder to build and discover new things now because they're all that was all the easy stuff, Like you and I could have discovered all this stuff right now, it's just more and more difficult. You have to really look for subtlety, right yea, so we say, thanks to no one. Yeah, um, so the the late nineteenth century, is this the human cannonball idea just takes

off right thanks to Dazzle, thanks to George Loyal. He was the one who was shot out of a cannon and would be caught by a woman on a trap at the Yankee Robinson Circus. Right, yes, that's incredibly difficult, it is. And you think about it, like, I think I've even seen that before, like in person, at at

a circus when I was a kid. Um, But now that I've researched and read the some like, I can't imagine how difficult that has to be, how everything has to be totally precise, and that these circus performers must spend like all day practicing every day just to make sure. Yeah, and not just to the timing. There's a lot of other stuff that you have to take into account. Right,

It's right, it's not just get in this cannon. We're gonna push you out, no josh, because the little sled that you're basically in goes forward at a force of three thousand and six thousand pounds per square inch of pressure. Right, that we should say, compressed air is now the the

preferred means of shooting that little piston forward. Right, and you're in a little capsule like imagine um Mark's egg, but with the top cut off, so you're not you're in the in the barrel in what amounts to a barrel, a bullet in the barrel, a bullet with the top cut off, and um that bullet is attached to the cannon. So when the when the compressed air shot shots it out,

the cannon stops, but you keep going, that's right. But it shoots you out at a what did you say, like three thousand to six thousand pounds per square inch of pressure? Yeah, yeah, that produces some some force. That's a lot. And that's why you can't just be like all limp. You know, that would crush you. You know, you have to be extremely strong and rigid and your legs have to be taught. Like. You can't just be like all right, shoot shoot it off, or like your

dead body. That's why it would be so gruesome. Yeah, I wonder if I just explode in blood at the end of the cannon. I don't know. Maybe, But with with the big daddy cannons these days, you can go horizontally about two hundred feet or vertically, which they say that's where the ooze and odds come from, as high as two hundred feet uh and then speeds up to

sixty to seventy right, So you're hauling, you are hauling. Um, you're also under some tremendous force, right oh yes, so yeah, you've got about nine g s during launch and twelve jeez an impact and we'll talk about that later. But chuck the dodon paw right, it's a roller coaster in Japan.

It has the highest acceleration. Um, it's a two point seven geesez yeah, so imagine nine right, Yeah, this is a this is a this is you're putting this human body under a lot of stress, right then, yes, and you fly out a long way and that's why you have to take into account the things we briefly mentioned like wind speed, body weight, obstacles like the guy wires and the tent for the net and the poles for the for the tent, And we also we mentioned that

in Sniper. Remember we're talking about the bullet trajectory, and they have to take into account like humidity. So do people who set up human cannonball cannons. And usually I get the impression the human cannonball is the manager in charge of this whole act. They don't just come out and they're like, all right, I'll get in it. Alreadys did it? Yeah, And some carnie like puts out a cigarette. It's like it looks good to me. Uh now that's not the case. Um. A lot of planning goes in

because they make a point. It's pretty easy to get into a cannon and get shot out, although like we said, you gotta be really strong and stuff. But the landing part is the crucial part, obviously, because of fifty byt net might look pretty big when you're standing on it, but when you're two hundred feet away and two hundred feet up, it might look like a postage stamp to you. And I mean, this is a big deal, and you want to hit that net. You you want to hit

it in just the right place to sure um. Yeah, so to make sure that the person hits the net, um test dummies are used. A test dummy is a human cannonball's best friend, because you can shoot a test dummy out as much as you want until you figure out whether or not you've got the barrel trajectory just right. The temperature is a problem, what have you adjustments early? Right?

And so they just shoot a test dummy at the net until they have it just right, and then they they I guess they feel that they're confident they're going to try their luck at it. Yeah, And like you said, you got to hit the net at the proper place too, which is generally the real third because when you hit something going down in an angle like that, you're going to bounce backwards, not like pop straight up or go forward, right, So you don't want to hit it on the first

third because then you'll bounce backwards off the net. So yeah, it's pretty specific. It is things like so, Chuck, who does this crazy circus people? Circus families. It's always families. Yeah, you know, like once you get into circus, then you've almost guaranteed that your kid is going to do that. So you want to talk about some of them, Well, yeah, the one I think I've heard of these people even

before this, um, this article. But the Zucchini family Zacchini zucchini zucchinis, Zacchinis have been doing uh while They've been performing in circuses since the nineteen twenties and apparently they stopped in the nineties. They're like, seventy years is enough for us, the Zacchinis are hanging up our little fancy shoes, right uh. And in that time, um, there were seven brothers in the family. Five of them became human cannonballs. And that's just the brothers. There was also a sister

to who did human cannonballing. Yeah. I'm just dying to know what those other two dudes. It's like, yeah, Eli and Peyton Manning's brother that most people go, there's another brother, right, like, well, what does he do? He he's the oldest, whdn't he and he used to like he was like a big man on campus at Old Miss. But that was it, he didn't he just parted then play football though, So he's not beloved by his father Archie. Yeah, so not true.

Probably Uh, they worked with the Ringling brothers, the Zucchini's did, who obviously a big name in circuses, and uh, they sort of pushed the envelope Hugo and Victor. The brothers did a little double barrel gag that went over pretty well. And Mario, uh would get shot over Ferris wheels, like two Ferris wheels, Mario Zucchini, two fairest wheels, not on top of one another, no one after the other. It's

quite quite a feat. And then um, John Weiss human bullet. Yeah, he started out as a clown apparently really he did five years as a clown and then made the very rare jump to human cannonball. From clown to cannonball this year and apparently his first first shot sent him six ft really yeah, yeah, that was his first one. Did you do it as a clown? Do you know? I think that that would have been a mockery to the human cannonball um tradition. Okay, yeah, I don't want to

do that. And then there's the Smith family, also a very popular circus cannonball family. Did you talk about John Weiss, Well, he was he was one of the most prolific cannonballers yeah, did he die doing it? No? Okay, did you mention how many times he's done it? No? Five thousand. That is a lot of time to be shot out of a cannon. I did just kind of breeze over that five thousand times and he started in seven. Yeah, so he was doing it for a little while there. For years.

I guess he was doing it once a day, six days a week, fifty weeks a year. Yeah, you're right, that's a lot of blasts. It is a lot. That's a lot of I mean, especially what we know about what the pressure it exerts on a body. I mean, that's that's rough work. Yeah, and it's uh, I mean we've pointed out how it is safe. But more than thirty people have died doing this over the years. Okay, so the that that that pops up in this article thirty people have died as human cannonballs. There's a British

historian who died a few years back. His name is A. H. Cox. He Um says that there's been only about fifty people to ever be human cannonballs. Thirty have died. Really, Yeah, I thought that's kind of significant enough to be put into this article. Ward me off of human cannonball and so thirty out of fifty have died and that's just who died others, you know, like broker Back Zazzle broker Back. Um, yeah, we'll get into that gruesomeness soon or Zazzle Zazzle. Okay, alright,

So back to the Smith family. They are the modern um cannonball family that are pretty awesome. Um, David Cannonball Smith Jr. Has spent much of his life inside of a cannon. Yes, have you been on their website? Funny he just he's described as having a dynamic personality. I like that. It's better than saying he has a dynamite personality than be pretty bad. But David the Bullet Smith Jr. Is his son, and I'm sorry he's the one with the dynamics. Okay, his dad was a real snooze. I

don't know. Uh. He bested his dad's record of by flying a hundred ft Yeah, but his dad still holds the highest I think two hundred and three sixty one two and that friends outside of America. Yeah, that's one of those over two Ferris wheels. Yeah, that's crazy. Yep. Oh, should you mention the DARPA thing? I thought that was completely stupid and ridiculous. Did you think so? Yeah, I think it's kind of cool. I think if DARPA could perfect this, then it could take the human cannonball art

to a whole new level. Spill it. But basically DARPA the Defense Research Project, Right, there's an a in there somewhere advanced. Yes, thank you um they were looking at. I think they file the patent for a basically human cannonball cannon that has like a sled chair right, that shoots you up. I think they said they can get a first responder, special ops, a firefighter on top of

a five story building in two seconds. So basically their idea is to take the human cannonball concept and just shoot people on top of buildings to go fight fires or to go snipe people or whatever. So I get that. It's the landing thing that they say is the hardest part in real cannonballing. So what what's going on? Well, that's what I'm saying. I have no idea. I don't know if they were like, well we've got this part, now,

let's go figure out the other part. But that's that's kind of the big um joke or a big unders or among human cannonballers. Is it's not a problem shooting somebody out of a cannon. It's the landing that's the important part. Yeah, right, Or in this case, if you're shooting someone on a building, if you're off there, then it's all of a sudden, you're a cartoon and you smack into the building and then slide very slowly down, except unlike a cartoon, you leave a trail of blood

when you slide down. Yeah, and you slide down fast, and then there's more blood and body parts on the street. Yes, which has happened, I'm sure it has. There's there's been a lot of accidents, as we've said, out of fifty uh thirty, he mean cannonballs have died, right, it's a lot and um to to prevent this, you know, these people stay in tiptop shape, right. Um. You have to

work out your core. You have to have a strong back, You need to be able to brace yourself like you said, and really just go totally rigid so when you're shot out, you don't just you're not crushed. You need to become a projectile, right, um, because all you're wearing a helmet, maybe a little padding, Yeah, but helmet is not gonna do much if you miss your net. No, um, and the net is very important. A lot of people use airbags as well, right, yes, um, there was a guy

who's named Elvin Bale. It's the human space Shuttle. Poor Elvin Bale. He used air bags and he is a victim of circumstance if there ever has been one. Right. He was big in the seventies and eighties until I believe seven, when he went through all the the tests, shot is cry test dummy out. Um, it landed fine in these air bags where he calculated they should be. And um, what he didn't know is that his crash test dummy had gotten wet, which made it much heavier,

which completely changed the dynamics of its test run. So when he shot himself out, he missed the air bags. Right, he did. He was he sailed right over him. This is in Hong Kong. And he said that he knew quote I could see where I was going and that it was too far, too fast, So he knew in mid air. He was conscious enough to be like, oh crap, I'm not gonna hit the air bag and apparently the dummy, because when I read that, I was like, well, how does this happen when that's the only safety thing you

can do. How do you have a soaked dummy? Apparently it was left in the rain and they're filled with sand, and so the outside of it dried and but the sand was still wet on the inside, so it didn't like feel wet to the touch when they were testing it. And he said he remembered it feeling like it was in slow motion and that his brain actually thought he could solve this problem in mid arrow aerodynamically, like do something like I can do this and shorten the trip

and land upright, which might save me. But instead he overshot it by just a few yards and slam feet first into the floor, shattered his ankles, knee, a leg, in his spine, and he's paralyzed from the moist down and that is very sad. Uh. He mentions the aerodynamics right, like, there is a specific way you want to land. Yeah, you want to do that little easy somersault and land on your back, which is that's the way to land.

You also said something um that brought to mind the idea that this the g force that we talked about earlier. It's been shown to produce a loss of consciousness and people. So that's another danger that you you know, when you're sailing, you want to like stay like a projectile, and if you're blacked out, you're going to be like a dead body like you. Yes, um, and Elvin Bell is not the only person that something horrible has happened to obviously. Yeah,

Matt Cranch just this year. Yeah, a few months ago in April. He and this is just a nightmare scenario. He got blasted off and right after he blasted off, the net collapsed. Yeah, so how does that happen? I don't know, that's probably what he's asking. Well, he died. He landed on his head and died. He did die, so that is not what he's asking. That is what his family is asking, probably via a lawsuit. It would be my guess. That was in Great Britain too, very sad.

And remember I mentioned a Zichini's sister. Um. She the Zichinis used to do these double barrels stunts where they two would be shot out at the same time, usually next to one another and a long parallel one another. Well, she and another brother had a had an act where they'd be shot in the same direction as when I passed by and like high five. Yeah, well they collided and she broke her back. That's just a bad idea.

That was a bad idea. But the sad thing is that if you if you look at modern people, like the modern cannonballers, they are safety conscious. Um they were just like a net collapsed or the dummy was was wet, which that that makes it even sadder to me. If you get shot, you know, two ft into the air at your brother sixty, I wonder how close break your back then something? Yeah, that was part of the equation.

I wonder how close they intended to go to one another, because obviously the closer the better, Like if they were apart, it's it's not it's impressive. So they probably wanted to get it tight for the effect. But can you imagine all of a sudden, like when you see that coming straight at you, you probably have the same realization like, crap, that's I'm gonna die by hitting my brother, sister brother.

Very sad, Yeah, anything else, that's it. Man. I did a do we ever did the thing on Daredevil's Uh No, I wrote an article on Daredevil's and maybe we should do that at some point or we've been talking about our Evil Evil kin Evil podcast. Maybe because he's a big part of that one, maybe we can just cover it all songs. Human cannonball. Yeah, we've got that one

covered done. Okay, Well, if you want to learn more about human cannonballs, including how long it takes to accelerate a human cannonballer to their top speed, do you want to know one fifth of a second? Really? Yeah? You can find all that by typing human cannonball onto the search bart how stuff works dot com And from what you say, Chuck, it sounds like that will bring up more than just one article. Yeah, my daredevil sing like pop up um, I said, handy search bar at House

Divorced dot com. That means it's time for listener mail. That's right, Josh, I'm gonna call this underground railroad. Uh, I'm writing in about underground railroad. I wanted to share a little bit of my childhood summers in upstate New York. My great grandfather, Louis Loveland made a home in Johnsburg, New York in the Adirondacks. What's so funny? Like you know him? Yeah, Louie. The home itself is incredibly cool

and haunted. There's a very cluttered and dimly lit room hidden away behind the kitchen, which has a small organ buried beneath uh decades a stored and forgotten items. Family legend has it that the organ would mysteriously start playing it all hours of the night thanks to spirits. As if that weren't enough, there's a very large barn behind the home, which has seen its better days. My sister and I were always warned to be careful when we went near the barn. The reason because the earth beneath

our feet could give away at any moment. Well, this sounds a good, terrifying summer house, but there is a hidden tunnel beneath the barn. Because there's a hidden tunnel beneath the barn, running from the back of the home, below the barn and out into the mountains, right next to a strawberry patch that my great grandfather planted a hundred years ago. The tunnel was a part of the underground railroad, and I've been told it's one of the last stops in the adder on decks that is still

intact today, although it buries. The tunnel is roughly three to four ft below the ground about five ft tall, four ft wide and seventy five yards long, packed with dirt and rocks and an absolute death trap to navigate without a flashlight. The entrance from the home it's just too dangerous to use anymore. But there is a way to drop into the tunnel via a hidden door in the barn, as long as you don't mind a many landside of dirt and hay following you into the tunnel,

which I would um. That's it. Once you carefully make your way through the tunnel, you emerge into sunlight and a strawberry field. Nice, nice little treat if you're somebody warm wet towel, moist towel, and that is from Alison STI wow, thanks Alice. You could do that, couldn't you? Chuck the You've gone caming before I could do that. You should handle not me. As long as it's buttressed. I wonder if it is buttressed, if Charles Bronson had

anything to do what it is. Yeah. Uh. If you have a great recipe for fresh strawberries, we want to hear it. You can wrap it up in an email, spanking on the bottom, kiss it good night, and send it to Stuff podcast at how Stuff Works dot com Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.