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On 4 Marchy 2015, the Jumpmaster students practice the Practical Work in the Aircraft (PWAC) in preparation of the PWAC Exam. The PWAC Exam tests the students ability issue Hand and Arm Signals, Time Warnings, Paratroop Door Checks and Issue Jump Commands. (82d Airborne Division photo by MAJ Craig Arnold/ Released)
Model: Aavriel Angst www.modelmayhem.com/1686082
Strobist info: strobe to the left (may have stolen someone else's light!)
This photograph was found in an unlabeled box of photos taken by Thomas T. Hammond (1920-1993) during his trip to the Soviet Union in 1964.
The Tsar Cannon is a large early modern period artillery piece (known as a bombarda in Russian) on display on the grounds of the Moscow Kremlin. It is a monument of Russian artillery casting art, cast in bronze in 1586 in Moscow, by the Russian master bronze caster Andrey Chokhov. Mostly of symbolic impact, it was never used in a war. However, the cannon bears traces of at least one firing. Per the Guinness Book of Records it is the largest bombard by caliber in the world, and it is a major tourist attraction in the ensemble of the Moscow Kremlin.
The Tsar Cannon is made of bronze; it weighs 39,312 kilograms (86,668 lb)[3] and has a length of 5.34 m. Its bronze-cast barrel has an internal diameter of 890 mm and an external diameter of 1,200 mm. The barrel has eight cast rectangular brackets for use in transporting the gun, which is mounted on a stylized cast-iron gun carriage with three wheels. The barrel is decorated with relief images, including an equestrian image of Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich, with a crown and a scepter in his hand on horseback. Above the front right bracket the message "The grace of God, Tsar and Great Duke Fyodor Ivanovich, Autocrat of All Russia" was cast. There were two more labels cast at the top of the barrel, to the right is "The decree of the faithful and Christ-king and the Grand Duke Fyodor Ivanovich, Sovereign Autocrat of all Great Russia with his pious and god-blessed queen, Grand Princess Irina"; While to the one to the left is "Cast in the city of Moscow in the summer of year 7904 (c. 1585 in Gregorian calendar), in his third summer state, by Andrey Chokov." The cannon-style gun carriage, added in 1835, is purely decorative. This weapon was never intended to be transported on or fired from this gun carriage.
According to one version, the name of this cannon, "Tsar", is associated with the image of Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich. However, it is more likely that this name owes to the massive size of this cannon. In old times the cannon is also sometimes called the "Russian Shotgun" (Дробовик Российский), because the gun was meant to shoot 800 kg stone grapeshot rather than true, solid cannonballs.
The spherical cast-iron projectiles located in front of the Tsar Cannon—each of which weighs approximately one ton—were produced in 1834 as a decoration, and are too large to have been used in the cannon. According to legend, the cannonballs were manufactured in St. Petersburg, and were intended to be a humorous addition and a symbol of the friendly rivalry between Moscow and St. Petersburg.
The carriages and the cannon itself were richly decorated in 1835 at the St. Petersburg plant of Berd, with designs by architect A. P. Bryullov and drawings engineer P. Ya. de Witte.
The Tsar Cannon was placed at several points around Moscow in its history. It is known to have been mounted on a special frame with a fixed inclination angle in the Red Square near the Place of Skulls in order to protect the eastern approaches to the Kremlin, indicating that it originally did have a practical application. However, by 1706, it was moved to the Kremlin Arsenal and mounted on a wooden gun carriage. It was not used during the French invasion of Russia, although Napoleon Bonaparte considered removing it to France as a war trophy. The wooden gun carriage burnt in the fire that consumed Moscow in 1812, and was replaced in 1835 by the present metal carriage, which disabled the firing function of the cannon.
In 1860, the Tsar Cannon was moved to its current location on Ivanovskaya Square near the Tsar Bell, which is similarly massive and is the largest bell in the world (but which has never been rung).
Voltaire joked that the Kremlin's two greatest items were a bell which was never rung and a cannon that was never fired. For a long time, there was a common theory that the Tsar Cannon was created only to impress foreigners of Russia's military powers. Thus, according to writer Albert Valentinov:
"...Andrey Chokov knew from the very first moment that this would not be a whopper cannon at all. Even if we assume that the barrel would fire grapeshot, a massive amount of propellant would be needed to push the two-ton shot, making it impossible for the cannon to be transported from one position to another. Therefore Chokhov did not mean to cast it as a functional cannon at all. His cannon is always only a symbol of Russian power and of the capabilities of the Russian industry. If we render a Russian master able to create such a whopper cannon, the smaller ones would have much less use. Therefore, the Tsar Cannon was put on display in the Kremlin for foreign diplomats."
The cannon was last restored in 1980 in the town of Serpukhov. It was thoroughly studied by specialists in the Artillery Academy at that time and gunpowder residue was found, indicating that the cannon had been fired at least once, hinged and dug into the ground.
July 2015 'Practical Steps for Psycho-social Well-being’ workshop for about 60 women social leaders from different parts of the country. We did a day long exercise/activity called ‘The Tree of Life’. This exercise uses a tree as analogy to human life and trees are so much familiar and close to all. At the beginning, participants were invited to draw a tree as their own life in a sheet of newsprint and go through stages of reflection of their lives and record on their own words in their tree of life.