This Guy Drew a Cat. You Won’t Believe What Happened 4 Centuries Later.
Wired Campus 2014-03-12
Summary:
Franz Helm’s illustrated manual on pyrotechnic weapons was around for more than four centuries before it went viral.
When the German artillery expert wrote the manual, in the mid-1500s, he unwittingly created a piece of media ideally suited to the tastes of 21st-century Internet culture: Cats that appeared to be wearing jet packs.
Helm appears to have been describing a creative siege tactic. In order “to set fire to a castle or city which you can’t get at otherwise,” he advised in the manuscript...