"I'll drive my car through a hotel, through a motel, through a Quality Innnnnnnnnnnn"
A woman from New York made a little faux pas with the laws concerning parking cars inside buildings last night as she drove her car right into Room 102 of the Quality Inn in Bourne.
The driver was cited and released. Her companion was taken away in cuffs, and also was later released. They're sleeping in the room next to the disaster they caused right now.
No one was injured. The family who was supposed to be in that room arrived at the hotel 15 minutes after the accident. Had they arrived earlier, they would have been killed in the accident. It went down in the 9 PM hour.
Damages to the hotel were extensive, but the town's building inspector allowed the hotel to stay operative.
"Remember, this is Cape Cod on a scorching July weekend," said the hotel's night auditor, who asked not to be identified because he's also writing this article. "I had someone trying to rent that room for $20 cash an hour later."
We've been very Nature-oriented this summer. This pattern will continue, as several ideas we're kicking around involve oysters, foxes, bluefish, owls, stripers and God knows whatever else walks/swims/flies in front of one of our cameras.
You're going to get all of that soon enough, but today we're going to issue a recap/filler article about our toothiest locals. Great White Sharks own the news around here, even though more people are hurt by schnauzers than sharks in Massachusetts.
This will be our tenth article devoted to sharks, not a bad total at all for a publication in a region with an 100 day swimming season.
Rather than make you wade through our archives for some good ol' fashioned Shark Talk, we're going to give you a list of these articles for you to peruse easily from this very location here.
If you get through all of this and still need more Shark in your life, you should probably just open a wound in your skin and jump into the waters off of Monomoy. We probably have a few Shark articles lurking on Cape Cod TODAY or perhaps even AOL, but this is everything for which we'll get paid if you read it.
Apologies in advance if you see us re-telling a few stories or even telling the same story twice with different details. We have several authors on this site, and occasional short circuits will occur. What If? A Cape Cod Shark Attack Fatality
I'm very much in Mayor Vaughn's camp on this one, as I feel that a fatal Outer Cape shark attack caught on video would end Cape Cod's status as a vacation destination.
We were actually wrong about this, at least as far as we have been able to prove. Sharks have attacked a couple of people in Truro and also said howdy-do to a couple of kayakers in Plymouth. It seemed to have no negative effect at all on the Cape's tourist flow.
If you want to know your odds, you have to get the stats.
Location is everything in this category, too. Someone who had done no research most likely would not be able to guess where our three shark attack fatalities went down in the Bay State.
We branch out to include Rhode Island, Maine, Connecticut and New York.
This, and the Plymouth attack, brought it all home to the Irish Riviera that sharks are not solely the problem of Cape Cod. You're more likely to be killed by a shark on the bay side of Cape Cod than you are on the ocean side, and the same goes for the South Coast.
This was a brief article, written the instant I heard the news,and more of a warning to my friends and family who live on that beach. If I go to Thanksgiving and have to sit with a one-legged niece with a very personal Duxbury shark attack story, I will very much need my "Well, you should have checked my site updates" guilt-block.
Best line? "Wow, and I thought that Duxbury didn't get Cape traffic."
We discuss a theory of ours, focusing on the possibility that Cape Cod Bay only had one shark. That's why we named him. We had some theory that he was a rogue, who split away from his posse off Chatham for some reason that probably makes perfectly good sense to a shark.
This theory, like many of my theories, was wildly off-base. Shark tagging and receiver buoys proved me wrong pretty much right away.
I'm pretty sure that this article at one point also included a Stacey-conducted interview with the shark who dumped those two girls out of the kayak off Manomet. We may have had to remove the interview, as the shark's frank talk on race (he prefers white meat) and age (he steals a Mark Leyner joke about brittle-boned/osteoperosis-having old people being crunchier to the shark) would have been upsetting to a greater portion of our readership.
Best line? "I'm assuming that the shark was male. Boats are girls, Sharks are boys. That's how I roll."
This is important stuff to know if you plan to go into the water. In short, if it is at all possible to be attacked by a shark, there must exist steps which will lower those odds.
Some advice ("Don't swim where people are fishing") makes sense. Other advice ("Do nothing at all seal-like") we play off as a joke when the advice is actually sound. One ("Swim with people fatter than you") sounds like a joke but was not denied when I approached a nationally-known shark expert for his thoughts about my theory. Yet another ("Be local" ) is true factually, but true in a category with a body of evidence small enough to magnify coincidence. "Follow these rules, and you'll have mad bread to break up. If not, 17 feet on the wake-up."
Speaking of shark experts, we went to Duxbury to attend a lecture by shark expert Dr.Gregory Skomal. He's the guy you see on te news, tagging sharks.
We got to ask him all of our stupid questions ("Have you ever met a friendly, seems-to-enjoy-hanging-with-people Great White Sharks?" and "Can you make a Great White Shark do tricks?"), and we got to hear more serous people ask more serious questions.
I'm pretty sure that I'm the only journalist on Earth to ask a shark expert, at length, to weigh in on Dr. Hooper's territoriality theory from Jaws. It turns out that true Territoriality involves one shark claiming an area and driving off other sharks, something which isn't happening around here.
Dr. Skomal's efforts do give us some amazingly valuable information. We know where they go in the winter, and we also know where they go when they are up here.
This article tells us where sharks were registered as having swam to. It also tells you how many (tagged) sharks are working any particular stretch of coast.
This is another wake-up call for the South Shore and even the North Shore. Sharks show up from Cape Ann to Cape Cod.
Cape Cod holds the title, no doubt. While Plymouth, Scituate and Duxbury combined for 200 shark tag signals, Chatham had over 14,000 in that same period. Granted, Dr. Skomal spends his days tagging off of Chatham and may never have set foot on the South Shore, 14,000 to 200 is a pretty wide gap.
This was actually our last article. If you're reading this, you most likely read that. It involves yet another theory of mine.
I still think that a robotic Orca could be employed by Outer Cape towns to drive away the sharks. even if it didn't, there must be some cool use for a 40 foot mechanical Killer Whale.
I think that this article, concerning inventions we're working on to allow even novice fishermen to make casts out to sea that would fly completely over small towns if they casted towards land, gets into shark-fishing at some point.
Our best idea involves hooking a shark with a chain that is attached to a Jeep. Dr. Skomal somehow was able to avoid my question about a huge shark taking on a Jeep in a tug-o-war.
Massachusetts has several sea monsters in her history.
Daniel Webster saw a sea serpent off of Duxbury, and Gloucester had numerous modern serpentine sightings. Moby Dick is tied to us to a small extent, and Jaws is tied to us to a great extent. We are the new, hip place for Great White Sharks to go, and we even had a Killer Whale in town last week. Lovecraft knew what he was doing when he put Arkham in Massachusetts.
However, our nastiest, ickiest sea monster is larger than a Blue Whale, and the only thing on Earth larger than it is a distant cousin of it.
There's no way to avoid it, as it goes where the ocean pushes it. We have no sensors to detect the presence of it, and we don't know if one is around until people start being injured by the hundreds.
Bullets don't harm it, a missile would go right through it, it survived an asteroid strike and you can hack it to pieces without lessening the danger it poses. Oh yeah, it's positively dripping with poison. It may also be immortal.
It'd take a shipload of Hit Points to kill one of those, huh? Thankfully, Godzilla incinerated this monster with his nuclear fire-breath in that 1970s movie, right? Wait... what??
It's real???
No...
Yes.
This monster that we speak of is a Lion's Mane Jellyfish. The LJM is a species of Cnidarian, a phylum that encompasses the Jellyfish family.
It is prevalent in the northern Atlantic, as it prefers colder water. They can not tolerate warmer waters, and are rarely found below 42 degrees north latitude. They dine on zooplankton, just like other giant creatures do. They are pelagic (open ocean) for most of their lives, but they tend to drift into bays as the currents dictate.
It is the largest known jellyfish, and holds the World's Largest Thing title if you don't count stretched-out Bootlace Worms. Massachusetts holds the world record for LJM (and, thusly, everything else), a feat they performed when a LJM washed ashore in a town that I cant find the name of. If anyone knows, hit me up in the comments.
This Lion's Mane Jellyfish that washed up in Massachusetts was 7 feet across. The tentacles, when stretched out, were over 120 feet long. The largest Blue Whales are about 20 feet shorter. That's a lot of jelly! You'd have to slaughter every character that Charles Schultz ever drew to make a corresponding amount of Peanuts Butter to get a PB&J out of that sucker, and that's before we find a football field's worth of bread to house the whole sandwich.
Most of that length is Tentacle, and each of those tentacles is lined with poisonous barbs that would break off into human skin quite nicely. The barbs get fired off like harpoons any time something- like you- touches the tentacle. The poison, while generally not fatal to a healthy adult, can cause critical burns. A jellyfish has thousands of such tentacles.
Now, something like that floating around in the middle of the ocean isn't much of a problem for most of us, and is just a small part of the general Cowardice that keeps me from doing things like Carnival Cruises or joining the Navy.
However, there is nothing to stop one of these creatures from washing ashore in Massachusetts. What beach it hit depends entirely on the currents.
"Washes ashore in Massachusetts" doesn't mean "one washed up here, once, in 1870." We are well within the range of these things, and they have inflicted mass injury in New England before.
Rye, New Hampshire is a nice place to go beaching. However, it wasn't so nice in July of 2010. A LMJ the size of a trash can lid with 20-25 foot tentacles washed into a group of bathers. Officials attempted to remove it, which only broke it up into innumerable pieces.
This, plus the wave action that breaks jellyfish apart, loosed the barbs from the tentacles, and the sea around Rye was a puddle of pain. The barbs can sting long after the jellyfish is dead, and long after their removal from the host creature.
Thinking that the danger had passed, bathers in Rye went back into the water... water that was filled with microscopic, poisonous, floating barbs. Over 150 people were injured.
Most of the injuries were minor, because, as bad as it was, swimming into a spread-out infestation of barbs is different than directly contacting a LJM and getting thousands of stings at once. Still, five people needed to be taken to the hospital. The rest were treated on-site with vinegar and baking soda. Old salts swear by meat tenderizer, as well.
As you can see from my handy map of the currents off Massachusetts, had that beast not become trapped in the surf off Rye, it very easily could have moved with the currents down the Massachusetts, visiting Boston, Plymouth, Cape Cod...
You won't know that it's here... until the screaming starts. If you see it, it's already too late.
In case you haven't heard, Cape Cod has a shark problem. It's not really a "problem," and is in fact a sign of a healthy ecosystem, but a tourist-dependent beach destination with Great White Sharks offshore is a soon-to-be non-destination. All it would take is one fatal shark attack on a human to get the ball rolling.
There's not much we can do about it that doesn't involve a wanton act of mass-production animal cruelty. A mass culling of the Cape Cod seal population would be needed, as seals are what the sharks come for. We could also kill the sharks, which are currently protected under federal law.
Or we could just let nature take her course, as people say. Nature works in many mysterious and wonderful ways, and one of these Ways may be taking place just offshore.
A charter fisherman about ten miles off of Chatham spotted an Orca yesterday. We don't mean Quint's doomed boat when we say "Orca," we mean "Killer Whale." It most likely wandered down from the Bay of Fundy, and is relatively unusual in Cape Cod waters.
Another thing that was unusual for a long time on Cape Cod was the presence of a multitude of Great White Sharks just offshore. However, this soon (and by soon, we mean "a couple of years") considered to be the new normal. Why not Orcas?
Orcas do come to New England. The Coast Guard cutter Campbell came across a pod of killer whales about 150 miles off Nantucket in 2014. Experts blame melting Arctic ice and associated whale-food-related problems.
"Don't tell Old Thom that I'm here, OK?" (photo, by our England correspondent Jodi Turck, of seals off Clacton-on-Sea, England)
I'm no marine biologist, but I read 30 minutes of whale stuff, and I'll tell you what I gained from it.
- The whale in question is almost certainly Old Thom, a whale who tends to stray from his fellow killer whales up in Labrador and Newfoundland. He has been spotted in the Bay of Fundy a few times recently.
- Old Thom is about 30 feet long and weighs 8 tons.
- Old Thom comes from a population of whales who don't hunt seals. His peeps prefer to hunt and eat dolphins and Minke Whales. His fellow whales are Specialists, which means "whales that only eat one kind of food."
- This sort of takes the steam out of "Maybe the killer whales will eat all of the seals and end our associated Great White Shark problem."
- A Dr. Hamilton at the New England Aquarium scoffed at the idea of sharks and whales doing the Batman vs Superman thing off of Monomoy. He laughed and said "Maybe in fantasy land" when the Boston Globe asked him about it.
- Scientists laughed and said "Maybe in fantasy land" fifteen years ago if you asked them about Great White Sharks making a summer home off Cape Cod.
- Cape Cod has adequate dolphin and Minke Whales (named for Meincke, a Norwegian sailor who mistook one for a Blue Whale and has been goofed on ever since over it) population to keep Old Thom very well fed.
- Minke whales are usually what you see if you go on a Cape Cod whale watch.
- I have no idea if any (or how many) Minke Whale beachings were a Minke choosing suffocation over being eaten by an Orca.
- Though not listed as an Orca food item, a Beluga Whale got itself into the Taunton River in Fall River and hung out for a few days in 2014. Killer Whales have been spotted upriver in Japan and even in the Columbia River in the US.
- A whale who specializes in seals may not even recognize a fish as a food item, and the same probably goes for whales who eat other whales.
- From what I have gathered, it would be very unusual for Old Thom to buck evolution and change his diet to seals.
- Still, Old Thom could be useful. The one thing that a Great White Shark fears is a Killer Whale.
- Orcas can and do eat anything they want. There are cases of a pod taking out a juvenile Blue Whale. Adult sperm and blue whales are the only whales that an Orca wouldn't cross. Even a large adult GWS is no match for an Orca.
- This website once jokingly suggested that we solve Cape Cod's shark problem by building robot killer whales to patrol the coast off of popular resort beaches. It looks like we could get to test that theory out.
- Several instances have been recorded where an Orca killed a Great White Shark. I have never read of a GWS beating an Orca, and I'll let you know right now that I am researching a future article (tentatively called "Massachusetts Animal Fights: Who Wins?") on which animals in our region can whip ass on which other animals. "Great White vs Orca" just went to the top of that article.
- An Orca holds several advantages on a Great White Shark in a fight. They are almost twice as long as a GW, and often weigh 4-8 times as much as one. Orcas hunt in packs, and will focus on a big fish like a shark if they wish. They are much stronger. They are also much more intelligent, using an amazing knowledge of shark biology when fighting one.
- In combat, an Orca who gets a hold of a GWS will turn it upside down. This induces a state of paralysis called "tonic immobility" in the shark, who is then torn to pieces by the Orca. A victorious Orca will eat only the liver of the shark, and let the rest of the carcass sink to the bottom.
- A tagged Great White Shark who was in a group of sharks that a pod of Orcas attacked off the San Francisco area was observed to immediately dive to 500 feet and swim non-stop to Hawaii.
- Again, Old Thom isn't from a population that A) eats sharks or B) eats seals, which would put Old Thom into competition with sharks.
- Our sharks here on Cape Cod may or may not know that.
- If Old Thom gets closer to shore and smokes a Porker, it may drive other Great Whites away.
- Old Thom poses almost no threat to humans, with one huge exception. To my knowledge, there have been three attacks on humans by an Orca.
- One involved an Orca bumping a child who was swimming. The child was uninjured.
- Another case involved a whale biting a bag of fish that a diver had tied to his arm, and he dragged the diver around for a minute.
- A surfer at Port Sur, California was bitten and released by an Orca, and this is the only case documented where a wild Orca attacked a human. The surfer required 100 stitches.
- These three incidents are all that they have documented. Killer Whales range all over the world, and only three attacks have been recorded on humans... and only one of them was a "real" attack.
- An Orca in captivity is a different story. Dozens of trainers have been attacked. Even the well-known Shamu bit a woman, giving her 200 stitches.
- I have never heard of nor have I been able to find any documentation of Killer Whales in Cape Cod Bay. Larger whales than the Killers wash upon South Shore beaches all the time.
- The chances that a pod of Killer Whales will colonize New England is very small, but not impossible, Killer Whales roll in pods, and it must take a bit of convincing to get them to say "Screw Newfoundland and Minke Whales... let's go to Cape Cod and start eating seals."
- If a pod of Killer Whales took up residence on Cape Cod, however, they would stand a good chance of scaring our sharks away. We would then get an Apex Predator Upgrade, with the added bonus of losing an AP that attacks humans and gaining one that will only attack you if you try to force him to bounce a ball on his nose at Sea World.
- Great White Sharks vs Orca is probably not going to be happening here, but it is something to think about if we start seeing more of Old Thom and his buddies in the waters off of Monomoy.
I thought that this was Johnny Quahog, but he's just the leadoff hitter for the Bourne In The 4th Of July holiday parade.
No expense was spared, we rolled hard on the Americana.... and a good time was had by all.
Much like a Fort Sumter neighbor, I was shooting at every Old Glory that I saw... of course, I'm using a camera.
Bourne's parade is pretty much what Red Dawn would have looked like had the people financing it insisted upon a less ambiguous ending... a parade of miltary vehicles rolling through a tiny village with gallons of 'Merica poured on top.
See?
One of the two shots I took today where I felt creepy.... but someone banging down Bloody Marys on the patio at Buzzards Bay at 10 AM as a parade rolls by rules pretty hard, and deserves media attention.
I actually met this dog while researching an article that I wrote like 6 years ago. He's the Coast Guard's "water safety dog," and- in one of those faux pas scenarios that go down when people who specialize at working with boats dabble in public relations- he bears a name that might need some work. I think his name is "Drown," or "Riptide," or "Hypothermia" or some other nautically terrifying name. Either way, as you can see, Drown floats- at least when he's on a float. It's just like they said in Apocalypse Now... Never get out of the boat, kids.
Ladies and gentlemen... I present to you a Seabee... I'd make a joke about that French Tickler mustache or the dog food bowl on his head, but that is a machine gun he's holding. It looks like it was crafted for Al Capone to shoot, but I'd bet it could punch a rush hole in me pretty easily.
You say that you want a picture of a guy on a lawnmower doing donuts in the middle of the parade? Why, I just happen to have one right here!
If that's a toy gun, I want to write the advertising copy for it.... "Watch your classmates cower in fear!"
You can't have a parade without the bagpipe corps, player!
Bourne Braves in the howwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwse...
Onset works their way over the border and into the Bourne parade with a fat red ladder truck.
Hot cars always get love in any parade articles I write.
More pics to come when I figure out the kid's tablet....
Cranberry County Magazine's photographers engage in a little camera fight before the fire gets lit.
Because there was a 9 PM high tide, they had to either light the fire at 7:30 PM or light it at 1:30 AM. This also led to smaller fires. Remember, kids... always give the bonfire enough time to burn itself down to ash before the tide hits it.... otherwise, you get a beach full of charred wood for the rest of July until the tide pushes the debris down to the uninhabited parts of Duxbury Beach.
One thing that stood out... only Duxbury had fires. This was one of the more southernmost fires, and there were no fires north of Killian's (a locally notorious Duxbury Beach party family) on the Duxbury/Marshfield line. Marsh Vegas has put their foot down on bonfires, it seems. They were a Loyalist town during the Revolution, so July 3rd parties must seem like doing tequila shots off of the casket of a loved one. Still, someone should have put a fire up.... shame on you, Green Harbor!
Poorly-timed high tides can't stop the fireworks, babe. Duxbury Beach spends a lot of money on personal-use fireworks. Several people I know there had enough gunpowder to defend Little Round Top if they had to. The whole place on July 3rd sounds like films I used to watch of Beirut during urban battles. It was bad enough that I thought I had PTSD for a little while, but I figured out it was just regular psychopathology.
A different vantage point....
Here's me butchering a shot where God had already spotted me the dusk's early light, the flag, the cute kids, several neighboring bonfires and even the rocket's red glare. I later dropped my camera on the beach somewhere, which- judgng by the quality of my shots- was probably a good thing. Shed no tears for Cranberry County Magazine, though... it was a $27 camera that I had owned for a year.
July is America's most explosive month. It's when we (USA) celebrate our Independence Day. On this day in 1776, we said Thanks But No Thanks to our old overlords in Great Britain.
That's the original BREXIT, player. Considering that the United States is one Star Wars sort of weapon away from being to beat up every other nation on Earth at once, I'd say it's the important one, too.
We celebrate this move every July 4th. John Adams laid the groundwork in a 1776 letter to his wife, Abigail:
"I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more."
We still follow the same basic blueprint today, and perhaps only the solemnity of his future office kept Adams from adding things like "stumble around drunk," "punch strangers" and "blow stuff up."
The technology was there in 1776. Gunpowder, one of the Four Great Inventions of ancient China (the others being paper, printing, and the compass), was first used for fireworks in China during the 7th Century Tang Dynasty. The ingredients are still basically the same today.... charcoal, saltpeter and sulfur.
They were originally worked into celebrations to frighten away evil spirits. Fireworks-making developed into a respected profession, and soon made it to the Arab world (1200s) and Europe (1700s). The Arabs gained them via Silk Road trade, while the Europeans learned of fireworks from missionaries. Peter the Great's ambassador was known to have raved to Peter about them.
Fireworks were in America before the Revolution. George Washington had a fireworks show at his inauguration. We were shooting them off to celebrate July 4th in 1777, six years before we knew if we'd beat the British in the Revolution or not.
They were wildly popular in America. For many years, fireworks were sold without regulation. Errors in both the manufacturing and the end-use processes led to numerous injuries. Injuries associated with July 4th fireworks (and gun-shooting, another popular way to celebrate July 4th back in the day) were frequent enough that a diagnosis of "patriotic tetanus" was developed and put into common use.
Fireworks use five ingredients to do what they do. They use fuel, an oxidizer, a binding agent, a chlorine donor (chlorine strengthens the color of the flame) and color-providing chemicals. Metals like lithium (red), sodium (yellow), calcium (orange), barium (green), copper (blue), iron (gold) and aluminum (white) are burned to create the colors you see.
If your memory stretches back to high school and you can remember Bunsen Burners, know that fireworks color moves along those lines. If you have access to pure copper and out it over a Bunsen flame, you'll get the same blue/green light that you see at a fireworks show. If you have some cesium kicking around, you can get a sort of indigo color akin to what you see when a skyrocket blows up. Remember to use small volumes of cesium, as skyrockets blow up in the sky (far away from the guy lighting them) for reasons of safety as well as reasons of aesthetics.
The key ingredient, of course, is gunpowder. Gunpowder is explosive, and therefore very dangerous. Since the danger exists, the government stepped in to protect Americans from themselves. Fireworks fall under the auspices of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, aka the ATF. The Bureau had Firearms first for a while, but the resulting acronym drew an unfortunate comparison to expanding government.
Aluminium powder and potassium perchlorate are the main chemicals used in the flash powder for most commercial illuminating fireworks.
The laws governing fireworks vary from state to state. Delaware, New York, New Jersey and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are the only states that ban the public from having any manner of fireworks. Maine, if I'm reading this right, only allows sparklers.
That's why the gods made New Hampshire, my friend.
New England, which looms large in history, is actually made up of six small states. The great state of Rhode Island is smaller than most counties in Texas. You can drive from a state where fireworks are illegal (like Massachusetts) to a state where they can be purchased freely (like, say, New Hampshire) rather easily. Throw in some free state-to-state border crossing, and it is quite easy to bring New Hampshire fireworks into Massachusetts.
There are other options. My dad, when I was little, used to go into Chinatown, pick up some Jackie Chan-looking guy on a street corner, hand him some money, get handed back a shopping bag full of fireworks, and then drop the dealer back off in Chinatown. He brought me with him once, I was very young, but remember it vividly. It was the same basic modus operandi I'd use hundreds of times later in life, getting weed.
Once you have the fireworks, be they from New Hampshire or the Chinese guy your father knows, it's time to take them home and blow them off/up. If you don't have some, worry you not... there are fireworks displays being put on by towns all over the state. "Explosives" are generally one of those areas where you want to let professionals handle things.
A list of these fireworks events, you say? Just happen to have one right here!
Some fireworks trivia for you:
- US citizens are not allowed to have fireworks with more than 50 milligrams of flash powder. Beyond that, you need a license. This law went into effect in 1975, which is why fireworks may have seemed louder when you were a kid... if you're old enough, of course.
- Fireworks-related injuries dropped by 70% after this law went into effect.
- A true M-80, which doesn't exist legally in the US (and hasn't since 1966), has between 200 and 300 mg of flash powder.
- Since they don't blow up in your hand, skyrockets, Roman Candles and so forth are allowed to have more than 50 mg of flash powder. Jason Pierre-Paul (see below) was maimed by a skyrocket.
- Skyrockets have two fuses, the one that shoots it into the air and the one that explodes the pyrotechnic.
- The first rockets had an open end on the tube, and would fly around randomly. Fins were later added to stabilize the flight. The fins on your commercial skyrockets today are not there for looks. Break the stick off of a bottle rocket, light it and drop it on the ground in front of you- the infamous (insert name of minority that you wish to offend here) Chaser- and you'll see destabilized rocket flight. People who study rocketry call these "Ground Rats."
- Several illicit fireworks manufacturers still make high-powered (over 500 mg of flash powder) fireworks. If you read about a shack exploding for non-meth reasons, it's often related to this field. Illicit M-80 manufacturing rose up after the 1975 ban on higher-powered civilian fireworks. An explosion of such a place in Benton, Tennessee damaged homes for miles around, and could be heard 20 miles away.
- Contrary to popular belief, a cherry bomb or a M-80 with illegal levels of flash powder is not a quarter stick of dynamite. Dynamite uses nitroglycerin, while fireworks use less-explosive black powder.
- Aside from the USA and July 4th, other nations use fireworks to celebrate New Year's, Halloween (Ireland), their own Independence Days and other important events. England uses them for Guy Fawkes Day, which is ironic because Fawkes was planning to blow up Parliament or some other funk band.
- Fireworks shows in the US used to last an hour, but they average 20 minutes per show now.
- A string of firecrackers lit in 1996 for Chinese New Year in Hong Kong lasted for 22 hours.
- Arabic people refer to fireworks as "Chinese Arrows."
- Many airports use fireworks to scare away birds.
- Disney's nightly fireworks shows use less-polluting compressed air in place of gunpowder. Otherwise, accumulated explosive pollutants would eventually destroy their lakes and perhaps cause an explosion.
- Keith Moon of The Who was introduced to cherry bombs in the 1960s. He soon developed a love of dropping them in hotel toilets, often causing thousands of dollars worth of damage. Moon is, even in death, banned from the Holiday Inn, the Hilton, the Waldorf Astoria and the Sheraton chains.
I work for a Choice Hotel franchise, and we have a list of persona non grata guests posted on the wall who are forever banned from the premises. Moon's name is on it, right between the name of the guy who killed his girlfriend and shot a Bourne cop (Adrian Loya) and Ron Mott, an NBC reporter who had a mental breakdown in our lobby and had to be removed by the Bourne police department. Keep in mind, Moon died in 1978.
One time, Moon was listening to his own band's records in a hotel. A hotel manager came up to him and asked him to "turn down that noise." Moon immediately got up, threw a stick of dynamite into the toilet, destroyed the hotel's plumbing system, and turned back to the hotel manager. "THAT, my friend," he said, pointing to the bathroom, "is noise. The music is the 'oo."
- Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin and Peter Criss of KISS each had M-80s thrown at them by fans during shows. Criss was partially deafened.
- NY Giants defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul, an All Pro level pass rusher, lost fingers on his hand while trying to light a skyrocket. This is a bad thing to have happen when your job is grabbing people.
- Hunter S. Thompson requested that, upon his death, he be cremated. He then wanted his ashes loaded into a artillery shell and exploded over the Rocky Mountains. Johnny Depp stepped in, and Thomson's ashes were built into a cannon shell and blown up as part of a big fireworks display during his funeral.
Here are some common fireworks classes:
Class 1.1G (Mass Explosion Possible:Pyrotechnics) UN0094 Flashpowder Class 1.1G (Mass Explosion Possible:Pyrotechnics) UN0333 Fireworks (Salutes in bulk or in manufacture) Class 1.2G (Projection but not mass explosion:Pyrotechnics) UN0334 Fireworks (Rarely used) Class 1.3G (Fire, Minor Blast:Pyrotechnics) UN0335 Fireworks (Most Display Fireworks) Current federal law states that without appropriate ATF license/permit, the possession or sale of any display/professional fireworks is a felony punishable by up to 5 years in prison.
Any ground salute device with over 50 milligrams of explosive composition
Torpedoes (except for railroad signaling use)
Multi-tube devices containing over 500 grams of pyrotechnic composition and without 1/2" space between each tube
Any multiple tube fountains with over 500 grams of pyrotechnic composition and without 1/2" space between each tube
Any reloadable aerial shells over 1.75" diameter
Display shells
Any single-shot or reloadable aerial shell/mine/comet/tube with over 60 grams of pyrotechnic composition
Any Roman candle or rocket with over 20 grams of pyrotechnic composition
Any aerial salute with over 130 milligrams of explosive composition Class 1.4G (Minor Explosion Hazard Confined To Package:Pyrotechnics) UN0336 Fireworks (Consumer or Common Fireworks) Most popular consumer fireworks sold in the US.
Reloadable aerial shells 1.75" or less sold in a box with not more than 12 shells and one launching tube
Single-shot aerial tubes
Bottle rockets
Skyrockets and missiles
Ground spinners, pinwheels and helicopters
Flares & fountains
Roman candles
Smoke and novelty items
Multi-shot aerial devices, or "cakes"
Firecracker packs (see this link for various brand/label images). Although some firecracker items may be called "M-80's", "M-1000's", "Cherry bombs" or "Silver Salutes" by the manufacturer, they must contain less than 50 milligrams of flash or other explosive powder in order to be legally sold to consumers in the United States.
