Wheels on Cannon
Aug 28th, 2008 by Juha Ylitalo
This week’s topic in photo them for Thursday is “WHEELS (Car, Motorcycle, Bicycle, Tractor, Cart, Ferris Wheel, Things that are Circular, Skateboard,…)”. For while, I had all sort of ideas in my mind, but at the end I had to pick one and this week the winner was cannon with wheels.
Reasons behind this choice were that military (especially offensive armies) have always been fond of wheels. In Egypt and Roman armies used chariots with great success on getting their armies transported from one place to another during the battle as well as while moving between locations.
In Finland, armies have faced some challenges, because Finland used to be covered by dense forest and lakes. Since armies have tendency to be little bit stubborn, they created whole network of roads and railroad tracks into Finland, so that they can move troops and equipment (for example artillery) from one place to another. After World War 2, paper industry has probably been one of the driving forces on making new roads, because they have to get lumber transported from forests to factories to keep their wheels turning.
More photographs about cannon and how it can be moved
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More information about fortress:
Suomenlinna
This looks like an re-enactment event. Looks like lots of fun to watch, but very loud when the canons go off. We have Civil War re-enactments here and it involves lots of volunteers, but they all love dressing up and shooting guns & canons.
You guessed correctly. Its group called ‘The olde Militia of Helsinki and the Fine Citizens of the Town’. Their historical reference point is mid 18th century (1747-1793), which was Swedish era in Finland’s history. You can find more information about group from their homepage: http://www.pixelpress.fi/hww/?s=in_english