Most people think the Chinese invented fireworks around 200 B.C. Technically, that’s not true because historians tell us it was an accident, not an invention. As it turns out, when the ancients tossed bamboo* sticks on the fire, they flickered and sputtered while they burned. As the heat causes the air and water to expand inside the hollow bamboo stalks, pressure builds up until the wood bursts with a loud pop.
A thousand years later, medieval chemistry (alchemy) went viral
Alchemists were people who promised to turn common base metals into gold, cure all diseases, and discover the key to immortality. What wasn’t mentioned was that some of the metals in those potions caused illness, injury, and death. Alchemists were thought of as scientists in the days where nearly everyone was ignorant. It wasn’t until the 1800s that people realized not a single alchemist could spin real gold out of metaphorical straw.
In spite of centuries of efforts, immortality is still not achievable by ingesting potions and elixirs
From our lofty perches, it is easy to for us to conclude that these people who believed in magic were ignorant and somewhat nutty. Before we go tossing those stones, let’s ask ourselves if they were so dumb and we are so smart, why do millions of modern Americans believe that eternal youth can be purchased at cosmetic counters in fine stores everywhere? I took a closer look at this conundrum on May 28, 2022, when I wrote Why Do Women Wear Makeup and Perfume?
Around 800 A.D., a Chinese alchemist started a fire in his lab while seeking the secret to eternal life
While he was mixing up another batch of saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur, seeking the right proportions, his mixture spontaneously burst into flame. Voilà! Gunpowder, the world’s first chemical explosive.
Someone put two and two together and got the idea of stuffing bamboo tubes with gunpowder and throwing them into the fire
These were the first fireworks, although the word hadn’t been invented yet. People called them illuminations. The next evolutionary step was to think outside the bamboo stalk and pack gunpowder into a small paper tube with a paper fuse. All you had to do was light the fuse and the firecracker exploded with a sharp bang. That was so cool that members of the Song dynasty strung individual firecrackers together in a bunch so that they would explode in close sequence, one immediately after another. Illuminations went viral and customers couldn’t get enough of these entertainments.
This 46-second video claims to be of a world record string of 10 million firecrackers. What do you think?
It’s a common practice for writers and historians to anchor an occurrence to notable person or a memorable occasion
Most of their stories tell us it was Marco Polo, gallivanting around Asia, who brought fireworks back to Italy in 1292. In-a-hurry writers don’t bother with the fact that the first recorded mention of fireworks in Europe wouldn’t be for another 50 years. This leads us to safely dismiss the Polo theory and put Marco back in the swimming pool where he belongs. Marco. Polo.
Fast forward to the early 1800s, when Germans and Italians got into fireworks in a big way
The Germans were interested in the rocketry part of fireworks. They wanted to advance the science of using rockets as weapons, as two World Wars would show.
The Italians wanted to develop fireworks as an art form
It’s been said the love of all things beautiful is part of Italians’ DNA. And why wouldn’t it be, inspired as the Italians were by the talents of Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Giotto, Titian, Botticelli, and more? Thus began a long history of Italian fireworks supremacy. Early Italian displays were fireworks mounted in, around, and on wooden structures depicting castles, animals, and more.
Then along came the Ruggieri Brothers
These guys were so good that King Louie the Fifteenth hired them to work their magic at the wedding of the Dauphin, his grandson, to Marie Antoinette. Epic Fireworks says the “the skies over Versailles were lit up with 20,000 rockets and 6,000 mortars creating bursts of up to 300 metres,” and leaves it at that.
Secrets of Paris says the wooden temple that was built as a launch pad for the pyrotechnics caught fire
Hundreds of thousands of densely-packed spectators oohed and ahhed until they realized the fire wasn’t part of the show. The official death toll was 133, crushed when the crowds panicked and stampeded. The dead were buried in the Madeleine Cemetery at La Ville-L’Evêque. When the beheaded Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI were buried in the same cemetery, people called it karmic. I’d call it a textbook example of ironic accountability.
The Hard Core Italians blog says teams from all over the world come to Rome every year for what is called the Caput Lucis fireworks competition
The six-day event opens with a fireworks display put on by last year’s grand champion. Hundreds of thousands of people watch as teams compete for Best Fireworks Show, Best Drone Fireworks, Best Pyromusical, and more.
With “two shows every night,“ I think I’d be so blown away that I’d never need to see another fireworks show. After all, “How Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm (After They’ve Seen Paree?)” Here’s Eddie Cantor’s two-minute version.
In 1893, Antonio Zambelli left his fireworks family in Napoli and came over on the boat
He took a job as a laborer shortly after he arrived at his new home in Pennsylvania. On the side, he worked part-time for the Fazzoni Brothers Fireworks Company, rolling them by hand like Cuba’s famous cigar makers.
Zambelli’s sons joined him and they bought out Fazzoni
They changed the name to Zambelli Fireworks Manufacturing Company (Zambelli has quite the website) and became increasingly more well-known as they did the fireworks shows for the inaugurations of U.S. Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. They called themselves The First Family of Fireworks.
One of Zambellis’ quirkiest events was the fireworks for funeral of Hunter S. Thompson, the godfather of gonzo journalism
The Zambellis mixed his ashes with gunpowder, enough to fill 34 cylindrical paper shells. They blasted the shells out of a cannon the height of the Statue of Liberty topped with a double-thumbed red fist holdin a peyote button while playing Norman Greenbaum’s Spirit in the Sky.
Actor Johnny Depp, who played Thompson in the 1998 black comedy, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, is reported to have paid several million dollars for the show as described by Thompson in his will.
Factoid File
- The biggest firework in the world is an aerial shell that is nearly five feet in diameter, the length of standard bathtub, and weighs nearly 3,000 pounds.
- Classic Italian fireworks shows follow a three-part series that moves along like Ravel’s Bolero, from the Apertura (opening), through the fermata shells (the show itself), and ending with the giaponesata (big finish).
- The Italian term for fireworks is fuochi d’artificio, which means flaming trickery.
- Large Language Model Artificial Intelligence (LLMAI) says the world’s largest fireworks show was on New Year’s Eve 2016 in the Philippines. For one solid hour, 810,904 fireworks were shot off. In the rain. Another LLMAI says the Guinness world record is 479,651 fireworks shot off in just six minutes in Dubai.
- Fireworks are not special effects. Fireworks are things we can touch. Special effects are optical tricks and illusions created for television, films, and video games.
- Fireworks are pyrotechnic contrivances that make noises, including snapping, crackling, popping, whistling, whizzing, screeching, and BOOM!
- Fireworks are described by the shapes and effects they make when they burst. Here’s just a taste: stars, flowers, fountains, waterfalls, skyrockets, bottle rockets, Roman candles, firecrackers, cherry bombs (a favorite in boys’ toilets in junior high), sparklers, wheels, spinners, rings, horsetails, fish, palm trees, spiders, and farfalle, named for the pasta that looks like little butterfly wings.
- Two-thirds of fireworks injuries involve males and anyone under 30. Burns are the most common injury, so make sure you have whatever salves or ointments you need at close hand, just in case.
- Cuts and bruises are common, as are shrapnel injuries, fractures, and concussions.
- For every 100 fireworks-related human injuries, four result in amputations.
The most interesting thing I came across while researching
I read an article in ScienceFacts that says the Chinese tied live rats and explosives to bamboo sticks and fired them at enemies. These fire rats were “one of the earliest and most bizarre examples of psychological warfare in history.”
Making July Fourth plans?
Here are some of this year’s fireworks celebrations. How many do you know? New Year’s Eve, Lunar New Year, Bastille Day, Guy Fawkes Day, Independence Day, Victoria Day, Canada Day, Australia Day, Halloween, Hogmanay, Dubai Festival, Fête Nationale, Diwali, Hanabi Taikai, Calgary Stampede, Hong Kong Symphony of Lights, Venice Carnival, and Rhein in Flammen.
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*for more on bamboo and bamboozling, see A Closer Look at Bamboo, May 1, 2023
Bonus
If you’re setting off fireworks at home, keep these things in mind:
- If you have a first aid kit, take it outside with you. If not, get one.
- Make sure no one wears flimsy clothing because it can catch fire quickly.
- While you’re at it, fill a bucket with water and keep it handy in case of a fire. If you have one, a fire extinguisher is even better.
- Sparklers burn at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Put dead wires in your bucket so no one gets burned and no one steps on them.
- Next time you mow the lawn, look around for any of sparkler wires on the ground and pick them up so they don’t turn into projectiles.
- Never try to relight a firework that didn’t perform as expected.
- Light one firework at a time and step back quickly as soon as it is lit.
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