2 ms·
A nice read, finished with an abomination: > When the first balloons arrived in America, they technically became the world’s first intercontinental ballistic m
by hulitu 2y ago
A nice read, finished with an abomination:
> When the first balloons arrived in America, they technically became the world’s first intercontinental ballistic missile.
I mean, checking what ballistic and missile means, would have helped here.
- adrian_b 2y agoThey certainly were not ballistic. Whether they could be called missiles is less clear. The original sense of the word "missile" was "something that can be thrown" (e.g. javelins or arrows). Balloons cannot really be thrown. Nevertheless, sometimes "missile" had been used in a wider sense, as "something that can be sent away". In this loose sense the word could have been applied to these balloons.