Cruise missile sounds more sensational to the average Joe.

Now they could have said "like a nuclear warhead" or a "dirty bomb" to invoke that easily accessible pre-programmed fear of terrorism as well.

Also I think they should emphasize the word "blasted" more times. I feel 4 times wasn't enough. Maybe another 12 times would really demonstrate how dangerous science can be.

That's a really funny quote considering the iron cannonball is the size of a softball and a 17th century technology. It's a bit like saying "the horse sped by like an 18-wheeler".

That quote made it seem like the ball changed course. "Spiraling back toward Dublin". I'm not a cannonball expert, but wouldn't it just be "heading toward Dublin"? "Spiraling back" makes it sound like it turned around and went the other way.

projectiles in flight actually do some surprising things -curving or literally spiraling through the air are just some of them. I have no idea what this thing was doing, but at speed and with spin, weird things happen.

I could see it spiraling or even curving, but it still seems highly unlikely that it would turn around 180, pass by a point where it previously flew over, and cause that much damage after passing through a concrete wall. "back towards" implies just that.

Frisbees and boomerangs in flight can certainly turn around way more than 180°. Or with sufficient wind, any projectile can turn 180° and come back the way it came.

I'd doubt a spinning cannonball would actually manage that, but it probably only takes a curve of 90° or even just 45° for some sensationalist journalist to exaggerate that into "spiraling back".

There was a recent analysis of soccer shots that seem to curve quite considerably, and it was deduced that the soccer ball in flight would actually form a spiral on to a point. Only that the ball hit the net or the ground did it stop its spiral trajectory.

Perhaps "spiraling" in the sense of a football. If the cannon was rifled.

Cannon have been rifled since at least the time of the civil war, so that would make some sense.

No, like a cruise missile.

Fired out of a cannon.

At the risk of taking the bait, a cruise missile is powered through its entire flight to the target. A ballistic missile is powered only at the beginning of the flight, and then it arcs unpowered (ballistically) to its target.

A cannonball is not like a cruise missile.