Tsar Cannon

For nearly four centuries everyone agreed the giant bronze gun in front of you had never fired a shot, a line even Voltaire joked about. Then modern experts examined the barrel and found gunpowder residue inside. This guide traces the cannon back to its founder Andrey Chokhov, who cast it in 1586 under Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich, and to a mob dragging a hated impostor's corpse through Moscow in 1606. Listen for what historians think that residue points to, and why the stone cannonballs at your feet were never meant to be fired at all.