@the.sterling.engine: Naval engineering has one golden rule: ships should be pointy. Imperial Russia disagreed. Meet the Novgorod. A 19th-century battleship designed with a completely circular hull. The theory was brilliant: a round base offers maximum stability for massive 11-inch guns while sitting high in the water. But hydrodynamics is unforgiving. The ship was a nightmare to steer, often getting swept away by river currents because it had no "front" to cut through the water. But the real flaw was the recoil. Legend says that the ship was so unstable that when the main cannons fired, the recoil didn't just push the ship back—it caused the entire vessel to rotate. It wasn't just a warship; it was a floating carousel of nausea. #NavalHistory #EngineeringFail #TheNovgorod #WeirdHistory #TheSterlingEngine #Battleship #RussianHistory

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Wednesday 14 January 2026 14:02:59 GMT