Quote
"It is a property first harnessed in 1784 by an officer of the artillery in the British army. He surmised that if you filled an artillery shell with fragments, you could wreak havoc far in excess of what would occur if the shell simply exploded. The destruction would breed upon itself. Propelled with sufficient force, the fragments would make new fragments of whatever they hit — a cart, a tree, a human femur — and, in turn, these new fragments would fly off to do their own damage. The officer’s name was Henry Shrapnel."
