Grenade

A grenade is a small explosive weapon designed to be thrown by hand, fired from a rifle attachment, or launched from a dedicated launcher. Byzantine forces used crude incendiary grenades as early as the eighth century, and Song dynasty China packed gunpowder into fused containers to make similar thunder-crash bombs, but the weapon under its modern name is first recorded at the 1536 siege of Arles. Todays hand grenade holds an explosive charge behind a spring-loaded striker and a safety pin, using the pin-and-lever ignition system introduced by the 1915 Mills bomb, and comes in fragmentation, high-explosive, incendiary, anti-tank, chemical and practice forms depending on how it is meant to disperse its effect.