Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.
There was a programme on British TV a couple of weeks ago on the Byzantine fire ships. They decided that the ships had two major weapons: a greek fire projector (flamethrower) and some fire catapults. I'll leave the flamethrowers to others to explain, but the fire catapaults were bizarrely fascinating.
The idea was to come up with a flammable substance which could be fired from a catapault, would splatter on impact, and then stick to the target. One of the historians surmised that the Byzantines had access to petrol (from the northern Black Sea coast) and were good cooks. Being good cooks, they knew that an easy way to turn oil into a sticky, splatty substance was to make mayonnaise. So, this historian proceeded to make mayonnaise, using eggs and petrol (but no seasoning - tch!), used a piping bag to squirt it into large glass balls, wrapped them in petrol-soaked cloth, and then fired them (with the cloth alight) from a catapault on a replica ship.
Given all the effort, they weren't anything like as effective as they should have been. But they get marks for inventing the salad dressing of mass destruction.
Neil.
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