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Every year the sky threatens the liberty and freedom of countries around the world. It attempted to invade Canada yesterday but was driven back, and it is planning the attack on the USA for Thursday night. Every year the army of pyrotechnicians set up their rockets to drive back the Sky people, and every year they have been successful... so far. Some believe that the colorful rockets are just some sort of display, but that is because that is what they want you to think. They do not want you to know that it is really a coordinated defence all across the nation to drive back the sky invaders. Sometimes there is even music to help prevent the Sky commanders from being able to relay their battle-tactics to the sky troops! You can sometimes even hear the sky troops scream as they are hit by the rockets. Bigger cities are more threatened that the smaller ones typically, so they tend to have much larger and longer "shows"...
Actually, that isn't as crazy as it sounds. "Fire Arrows" were once used as a weapon starting around 1232. The Chinese repelled the Mongol using "arrows of flying fire" which were fireworks, and not flaming arrows as one might have thought by the name and description. Basically it was a bamboo tube that was only open on one end and stuffed with a mixture of saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal dust (basic gunpowder) and launched from a stick. They were considered a somewhat effective destructive weapon, and a very effective psychological weapon. Eventually the Mongolians figured out how to make their own rockets based on defective Chinese "fire arrows" which is what is suspected to have introduced rockets to the rest of Europe.
Between the 13th and 16th centuries much advancement was made in the fireworks technology. Roger Bacon improved the gunpowder, Jean Froissart figured out that you could aim fireworks better by sticking them inside of a tube rather than launching them from a stick, which lead to the invention the bazooka. Joanes de Fontana invented the first torpedo to burn ships. Johann Schmidlap invented the multi-stage rocket which allowed fireworks to fire higher, which lead to current space rocket technology. Wan-Hu attempted to make a rocket powered flying chair, however it is not known officially what happened after the rockets were lit. When the smoke cleared, Wan-Hu and his chair were gone and never seen from again. Since rockets back then had a nasty habit of exploding where they were rather than flying, odds are one of the many rockets exploded... blowing the chair and Wan-Hu to pieces.
Between the 17th and 19th century bigger and badder rockets were made from much heavier materials, but had fallen out of use as a weapon until Congreve set out to design rockets for use by the British military. Similar to when the Chinese started using the "fire arrows" against the Mongols, these "Congreve rockets" were highly successful in battle. They were used by British ships to assault Fort McHenry in the War of 1812, which inspired Francis Scott Key to write "the rockets' red glare," words in his poem that later became The Star-Spangled Banner.
All rockets up to this point, including the Congreve rockets suffered from low accuracy, which was compensated for by just firing more rockets at the same time. William Hale, developed a technique called "spin stabilization". Rather than just having the exhaust shoot out the bottom, the escaping exhaust gases struck small vanes at the bottom of the rocket, causing it to spin much as a bullet does in flight. Variations of this technique are still used today.
In the end the firework was relegated back to its origins, a display for celebrations... celebrations and defending against the sky people of course. In celebration of the expected victory over the sky people, we will be running another giveaway starting soon, most likely on July 4th!
http://runningwithscissors.com
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