The city of Valletta is named after the Grand Master John Parisot de Vallette, of the Order of St John. He played an important part in building the city, and is revered for, against all odds, seeing off an invasion by turkish forces, of which only about one third made it back home alive. Would that our current leaders had a similarly robust approach to dealing with invaders.
A tradition is that a cannon was fired every midday as a time-keeping excercise for the town and surroundings. The arrival of an important piece of news was also announced by firing a cannon. Today, a cannon is fired every midday and at 4 PM, except Sundays, as a tourist attraction.
The officer primed two cannons and fired one, the second, I guess, acting as a backup.
3 comments:
Were you there, Mark?
Hi James, yes I was there, that's my 2 photos taken from a balcony overlooking the site.
We went down onto the deck to watch. There was a kickback from the firing that reverberated through my body.
It was interesting to watch the safety procedures surrounding the gun firing procedure.
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