In 1899, Eloise Mintumble, an Unspeakable from the Department of Mysteries, used a Time-Turner in an experiment to travel back to 1402. She "landed" near the battlefield of Ankara. Having lost her Time-Turner amid the chaos, she was stranded there for five days. When she finally returned to the "present," her body had aged by five centuries and suffered irreparable damage. She eventually died at St Mungo's. Her journey not only resulted in at least twenty-five descendants "never being born," but also caused the Tuesday after her return to last two and a half days, while Thursday was left with only four hours.
Ottoman Sultan Bayezid I, known as "the Thunderbolt," used the forests east of Ankara to fortify his position and reduce the mobility advantage of Timur's cavalry. Yet Timur led his troops around from the south to attack the city.
In Chinese chess, there is a piece called the "cannon," sometimes written with an alternate character. In Nick Polo's travelogue, there were cannons loaded with stone shot on Lotus Mountain, where Wen Tianxiang had stationed troops against the Yuan dynasty. They had been made by Johann Adam Schall von Bell during the Kangxi era, using gunpowder to fire stone projectiles. Explosive shells had not yet been invented at the time. Unlike the rounds used in sieges, they were mainly intended to kill and wound. Because their destructive power was too cruel, a declaration was issued at the 1899 Hague Conference banning their use.
It was widely believed at the time that the Ming dynasty's firearms could counter Mongol cavalry, but Timur's cavalry did not entirely employ Mongol tactics. Timur was a Turkified Mongol, and the finest cold weapons of the age—Damascus steel—as well as the best warhorses, were produced almost entirely within his territory. His supply of firearms