1304 CE: King Edward of England uses a giant trebuchet known as the “Wolf of War” to help conquer Stirling Castle in Scotland.
1337 CE: The English longbow is used in the Hundred Years’ War between England and France.
1346 CE: The Mongol army uses catapults to infect the city of Caffa with bubonic plague.
1415 CE: At the Battle of Agincourt, English forces use longbows to defeat a French army nearly 10 times larger.
1520 CE: Gun barrels are first made with spiral grooves that spin projectiles, called “rifles.”
1638 CE: Galileo Galilei shows that the motion of a projectile is a curved path called a parabola.
1812 CE: The British Navy uses rockets to attack Fort McHenry, inspiring Francis Scott Key to write the words “the rocket’s red glare.”
1846 CE: Isaac Newton’s law of universal gravitation is used to discover the planet Neptune.
1849 CE: Claude-Etienne Minié invents the modern, streamlined bullet.
c. 1850 CE: The first slingshots using rubber are made.
1853 CE: German physicist H.G. Magnus describes how spinning objects curve in flight.
c. 1853 CE: Scottish physicist William Rankine coins the term “potential energy.”
October 7, 1867: William Arthur “Candy” Cummings throws the first curveball in a baseball game.
1905: Pitcher Eddie Cicotte earns the nickname “knuckles” for the strange grip he uses for a pitch that seems to zig and zag on its way to the plate.
September 5, 1906: Bradbury Robinson throws the first spiral pass in American football.
March 16, 1926: The first liquid-fueled rocket is launched by Robert Goddard.
September 8, 1944: The first V2 rocket attack happens on London, England.
1953: The Wiffle ball is invented.
1959: Engineer and physicist Lyman Briggs proves that a curveball really curves.
October 4, 1957: Sputnik becomes the world’s first artificial satellite.
February 9, 1959: The Soviet Union’s R-7 becomes the world’s first operational intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
April 12, 1961: Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, riding on top of a Soviet R-7 ICBM, becomes the first human in space.
May 5, 1961: Alan Shepard becomes the first American in space.
1966: Hollis Wilbur Allen builds the first compound bow.
November 9, 1967: The first launch of the Saturn V, the rocket that took humans to the moon.
September 8, 1974: Daredevil Robert “Evel” Knievel jumps across the Snake River Canyon in his custom-built “Skycycle X-2.”
June 2, 1987: Joey Meyer of the Denver Zephyrs hits a 582-foot home run, probably the longest home run in baseball history.
2009: The game Angry Birds uses projectile science to enterain humans for hours.
2010: The U.S. Navy fires the fastest projectile ever, traveling at more than 8,000 feet per second.
2011: “Chucky III” sets the world record for catapult distance, flinging a pumpkin 3,636 feet.
December 8, 2013: Matt Prater of the Denver Broncos kicks the longest field goal in NFL history—64 yards!