Cracked.com has posted a list showcasing six ancient weapons that were ahead of their times.

#6 The Zhuge Nu Semi-Automatic Crossbow

In short, it was a semi-automatic weapon… from 2,400 years ago.

In fourth century B.C., the Chinese developed a new kind of crossbow that revolutionized the way siege warfare was fought:

That’s a feeder on top and the lever near the end is the repeating action. The repeating crossbow was the first semi-automatic weapon ever invented. Trained soldiers could let fly 10 bolts in 15 seconds before the magazine needed to be reloaded. Due to the nature of the action, it needed to be shot from the hip in order to fire that quickly. Oh, and the bolts were often dipped in a fast acting poison so that just a scratch could be fatal. Fighting in small teams reduced the risk of friendly fire.
Siege warfare was all the rage when this baby hit the scene. It proved to be an essential defensive weapon as one could keep backing away from the enemy while shooting wildly into the advancing horde.

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New research is suggesting that Archimedes set a Roman fleet aflame using cannons, not mirrors as legend has it.

A legend begun in the Medieval Ages tells of how Archimedes used mirrors to concentrate sunlight as a defensive weapon during the siege of Syracuse, then a Greek colony on the island of Sicily, from 214 to 212 B.C. No contemporary Roman or Greek accounts tell of such a mirror device, however.

Both engineering calculations and historical evidence support use of steam cannons as “much more reasonable than the use of burning mirrors,” said Cesare Rossi, a mechanical engineer at the University of Naples “Federico II,” in Naples, Italy, who along with colleagues analyzed evidence of both potential weapons.

The steam cannons could have fired hollow balls made of clay and filled with something similar to an incendiary chemical mixture known as Greek fire in order to set Roman ships ablaze. A heated cannon barrel would have converted barely more than a tenth of a cup of water (30 grams) into enough steam to hurl the projectiles.

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Records from the Second Boer War, recently put online, show that 86 British soldiers were killed by lightning.

On one occasion two soldiers were killed within moments of each other, when lightening struck their base in the appropriately-named Stormberg in an area known as the Cape Midlands.

They are included in a collection detailing 55,000 British and colonial soldiers who were killed, wounded, captured or died of disease during the conflict, which lasted from 1899 to 1902.

Of those, more than 22,000 died. Despite the risk posed by the Boer troops in the battle for land and gold in the disputed colonies, the most common cause of death was disease, with dysentery, typhoid fever and intestinal infections accounting for some 12,000 deaths.
One unlucky soldier met a more savage end: he was eaten by a crocodile in the Usutu River in what is now Swaziland.

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Life magazine has posted some never-before-seen photographs from the Korean War that are worth a look.

In Korea, it’s known as the “6-2-5 (yug ee oh) War,” a reference to June 25, 1950, when the North Korean People’s Army invaded the South. Among North Koreans, it’s “the Fatherland Liberation War.” In America, however, the Korean War is often called “The Forgotten War,” a strange, if accurate, phrase to describe a conflict that killed millions of combatants and civilians on both sides — including almost 40,000 Americans. On the 60th anniversary of the start of the war, LIFE.com remembers — with a selection of never-before-seen images from Korea by some of the era’s finest photographers, and relevant, revealing excerpts from articles that appeared in LIFE at the time.

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A lost WWII battlefield has been found, lying untouched, in the jungles of Papua New Guinea, including the bodies of Japanese soldiers who died there 70 years ago. Some of the photos from the site are pretty amazing.

Former army Capt. Brian Freeman, an expert on the Kokoda Trail – a 60-mile trek through rugged mountainous country and rainforest of the island – said Monday he was led to the Eora Creek battle site where he found the remains of the soldiers.

The site about half a mile from the village of Eora Creek was believed to be the location of the last major battle that was pivotal in Australia’s campaign against the Japanese in Papau New Guinea.

Although the site was known to local villages, jungles reclaimed it after the battle of Eora Creek. Although locals hunted on the plateau surrounding the site, they avoided the 600-square-meter battle ground because of a belief that spirits of the dead were still present in the “lost battlefield.”

What this means is that the site has apparently remained untouched since 1942.

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