The human cannonball’s truck

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This spectacular image on the cover of a 1927 copy of La Domenica del Corriere shows a human cannonball being shot from a mobile cannon. It made us wonder if it was a drawing or a photograph. The caption led us to the human in question: Ugo Zacchini. And a few clicks further we found a copy of the original black-and-white image, supposedly taken in Turin. The colourisation and rather heavy retouching / editing may make it look like an illustration, but this was the real thing!

There is plenty of information to be found on Zacchini and his family of human cannonballs, who moved to the United States later in their lives to gain further circus celebrity status and many years before Evel Knievel got himself into the picture. But it’s the car that caught our attention here. It looks a bit like a cross between a fire engine and an armed lorry for transporting gold. What is that?

There are quite a few more pictures of Zacchini and his mobile cannon(s), but they all seem to be later versions and not quite so remarkable as this one, with its closed and round front wings. Pictures of it seem scarce although we did find another one, where it is captioned to be in California. An Italian-built truck moved to the US, or something from the land of dreams after all...?

Words Jeroen Booij. Picture primotipo.files.wordpress.com.

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