From the helicopter, heavy machine guns mowed Iraqi civilians down.
Friends, while I was looking at some tragic television footage of the Gulf oil spill I had the thought that the invention of the motor car has brought with it some serious problems.
I then began to reflect upon other inventions that have brought us trouble and strife and, after quite some time, I arrived at the conclusions that the two worst inventions in history must surely be internal combustion engine and gunpowder (which led to the development of the gun)!
Taking the gun first, the invention of gunpowder allowed us ‘civilized’ humans to move away from the bow and arrow, broadswords and spears, etc, to an invention that accurately fired a projectile that penetrated the body of an enemy and made a mess of his or her internal organs.
First we had muzzle loaders and cannons and soon came machine guns and howitzers. The efficiency of these weapons over arrows and spears can be illustrated by the slaughter of the Red Indians in America or the Zulus in Africa.
Once the means for mass killing were in our hands, engineers refined them further and developed other products like missiles and bombs. The ultimate offshoot of gunpowder is the nuclear weapon which exceeds the wildest dreams of those who thought that gunpowder was the ultimate discovery.











