Thursday, December 8, 2011

'MythBusters' Hosts, Adam Savage and Jamie Hynerman, Visit California Home Damaged by Cannonball

Dec 08, 2011 8:19 AM EST

"MythBusters" hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman made a visit Wednesday to a home in Dublin, California, damaged a day earlier by a cannonball fired as part of an experiment for the TV show.
The miscued cannonball was fired at Alameda County bomb range about 1,000 yards (915 meters) away from the property on Tuesday afternoon.
It flew out of the range, crossed several roads and tore through Hitha Shetty's home -- leaving two gaping holes -- before bouncing off a second home and coming to rest in another family's minivan, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The cannonball exited Shetty's house through an upstairs bedroom where his wife and infant son were sleeping.
Hyneman and Savage were not present at the range when the ill-fated firing occurred, but as the faces of "MythBusters," they visited the Shetty family to offer apologies. Both are locals of California's Bay Area, where Dublin is located.
The pair said the cannonball was accidentally fired into the residential area as their crews were calibrating a homemade cannon. They promised the footage of the incident would never be screened.
"It's a wake-up call," Savage said. "Honestly, the feeling of embarrassment is not something we're indulging in right now. We feel for the families and the people affected by this."
The "myth" their crew was working on either proving or debunking related to the ability of stone cannonballs to break through a castle wall.
"The myth was whether or not a stone cannonball could actually breach a castle's walls," Savage said.
"When you start to look into the data of what cannons can actually do, it's actually quite shocking," he said. "They're very efficient projectile-hurling weapons. It's a lot of power, and the power got away from us."

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