Burns Fireworks

Two Thousand Chickens Fell Victims
of New Year Fireworks

2004 -- About two thousand of chickens died of fear or were crushed to death by other scared birds on the New Year-s eve in southern China. The chickens were panic-struck when teenagers started letting off fireworks at the New Year celebration.

The incident occurred in the city of Guangzhou. A farmer who owned the chickens was peacefully sitting at table with his family two days before the New Year, when he heard loud petard and fireworks sounds.

In the words of the farmer, the blasts lasted for 20 minutes. The man rushed to the farm to check how his 5 thousand chickens felt. He was shocked to see that all of the birds were scared and crowded in a corner of the hen house. The chickens were scared to death with blasts of the fireworks.

About two thousand of birds were dead, some died of fear and some were crushed by other birds.

The farmer ran in the direction from where the firework blasts sounded; he saw six teenagers happily letting off fireworks. When the guys saw the enraged farmer who blamed them for the death of the chickens, they rushed to their cars and escaped.

The farmer planned to sell the chicken for New Year family holidays; as a result of the loud fireworks the man suffered the loss of 30 thousand yans (about 3.7 thousand dollars).

Woman's dying wish granted
as ashes are blasted in firework

-- A woman whose dying wish was to have her ashes blasted into the air in a giant firework has had it granted. Before her death in March from cancer, she told her best friend: "When I go I want to go up in a rocket and come back to earth in hundreds of purple stars." Her friend said of the display held on what would have been her 35th birthday: "She wanted to go out with a bang and she would have loved every bit of this." Over 100 friends and loved ones gathered at the river to see the firework light up the sky. As the last rocket in a spectacular display showered its purple stars, a firework also spelled out her name. Before the display began, guests gathered behind her local, Ye Arrow, where a band played Fly Me To The Moon and Reach For The Stars. The man who runs the pub, said: "It was absolutely fantastic. We could not have wished for more and her family were absolutely over the moon. It is exactly what she would have wanted."

The Mad Trombonist

-- (August 1998, Uruguay) In a misplaced moment of inspiration, a trombonistanza, bass-trombonist with the Symphonica Maya de Uruguay, decided to make his own contribution to the cannon shots fired during a performance of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture at an outdoor children's concert.

In complete disregard of common sense, he dropped a large lit firecracker, equivalent in strength to a quarter stick of dynamite, into his aluminum straight mute, and then stuck the mute into the bell of his new Yamaha in-line double-valve bass trombone.

Later from his hospital bed he explained to a reporter through a mask of bandages, "I thought the bell of my trombone would shield me from the explosion and focus the energy of the blast outwards and away from me, propelling the mute high above the orchestra like a rocket."

However he was not up to speed on his propulsion physics, nor was he qualified to wield high-powered artillery.   Despite his haste to raise the horn before the firecracker exploded, he failed to lift the bell of the horn high enough for the airborne mute's arc to clear the orchestra.   What happened should serve as a lesson to us all during our own delirious moments of divine inspiration.

First, because he failed to sufficiently elevate the bell of his horn, the blast propelled the mute between rows of musicians in the woodwind and viola section, where it bypassed the players and rammed straight into the stomach of the conductor, driving him backwards off the podium and directly into the front row of the audience.

Fortunately, the audience was sitting in folding chairs and thus they protected from serious injury. The chairs collapsed under the first row, and passed the energy from the impact of the flying conductor backwards into the people sitting behind them, who in turn were driven back into the people in the third row and so on, like a row of dominos. The sound of collapsing wooden chairs and grunts of people falling on their behinds increased geometrically, adding to the overall commotion of cannons and brass playing the closing measures of the Overture.

Meanwhile, unplanned audience choreography notwithstanding, his Waterloo was still unfolding back on stage.   According to him, "As I heard the sound of the firecracker blast, time seemed to stand still.    Right before I lost consciousness, I heard an Austrian accent say, "Fur every akshon zer iz un eekval unt opposeet reakshon!"   This comes as no surprise, for he was about to become a textbook demonstration of this fundamental law of physics.

Having failed to plug the lead pipe of his trombone, he paved the way for the energy of the blast to send a superheated jet of gas backwards through the mouthpiece, which slammed into his face like the hand of fate, burning his lips and face and knocking him mercifully unconscious.

The pyrotechnic ballet wasn't over yet. The force of the blast was so great it split the bell of his shiny new Yamaha trombone right down the middle, turning it inside out while propelling him backwards off the riser.    For the grand finale, as he fell to the ground, his limp hands lost their grip on the slide of the trombone, allowing the pressure of the hot gases to propel the slide like a golden spear into the head of the third clarinetist, knocking him senseless.

The moral of the story? The next time a trombonist hollers "Watch this!" you'd better duck.

Expert Loses most
of his right hand

-- A self proclaimed expert in pyrotechnics is now missing most of his right hand after miss-handling a large homemade explosive device. The man, whose name has been withheld pending formal charges, was attempting to assist his friend, a handicapped man confined to a wheel chair, scare some buzzards out of his tree in his front yard. Witnesses stated that the device appeared to have been a tubular shaped device with a very short fuse. Upon arriving at the hospital, I discovered that the man, who we can further refer to as "Lefty," had minor fragmentation wounds to his right thigh and hip area, and 3 of his fingers were handed to me in a plastic bag, with the nurse telling me "he won't be needing these anymore." Lefty's full-time career was that of a massage therapist. Upon serving a search warrant at Lefty's house, we found nearly 30 pounds of very unstable pyrotechnics, including an 8 inch aerial mortar shot, a 4 inch aerial mortar shot, and numerous 2 inch aerial mortar shots, all stored on top of an electric clothes drier, under a bare light bulb. It should be noted that the box containing the 8 inch shot appeared very old, and there was a fine powder covering the contents of the box, which appeared to be from one of the 2 inch shots that had burst open. Lefty will recover, obviously without most of his right hand. His only concern throughout the interview was that his credibility as a "pyrotechnics expert" has been ruined, and now no one will take him seriously when giving advice about pyrotechnics. Lefty has had no formal schooling that we are aware of, and holds no state license regarding the use of explosives.

Thor

-- Everett, Wa. 1985. "About a half-mile of brush was ablaze early today on the 2-mile-long sand jetty, when Thor, a 150-pound, 24-inch-wide shell, misfired at the end of the city's fireworks display. The $3000 shell was to have shot 2,700 feet into the sky with 10 smaller shells and burst into a flower-shaped rainbow of jets over a square mile with a boom heard in Seattle, about 15 miles away."

-- Shamokin, Pa. 1985. In the central Pennsylvania coal town of Shamokin a 160-pound chrysanthemum shell six feet around [would you believe 24"] went off as planned with a colorful display seen 24 to 30 miles away. The shell burst 1,200 feet over the center of the town at the end of a 360-shell finale. It was touched off electrically by an operator in fire-resistant clothing, ear protectors and a hard hat standing nearly a half-mile away.

-- Lansing, MI. 1985. The Michigan Court of Appeals ruled a woman who was attacked and bitten on the nose by an intoxicated spectator at a fireworks display cannot sue the city of Wyandotte or BASF Corp., which co-sponsored the display.

-- Ind. 1985. "An employee for the Dept. of Highways was arrested and charged with the illegal sale and possession of pyrotechnics, after he was discovered selling the fireworks from a department-owned truck."

-- Lewiston, NY. 1984. The fireworks display at Artpark in Lewiston went off without a hitch Wednesday night, until it came time for the grand finale. State police said 29 pieces of aerial salute fireworks were stolen during the show.

-- Oakland, CA. 1984. The Port of Oakland held a safe and sane July Fourth celebration Wednesday night through no fault of its own, when the truck carrying the fireworks to the display broke down and failed to arrive.

-- Elkton, Md. 1985. A Cecil County raid netted 225,000 pieces of illegal fireworks and explosives.

LET'S GIVE 'EM A HAND

-- The nation's only two people to receive a transplanted hand will serve as official "Thundernators" at the Kentucky Derby Festival "Thunder Over Louisville" event April 21. Matthew Scott and Jerry Fisher will use their new left hands to push the buttons igniting the largest fireworks display in America. Both hand transplant recipients accepted because they want to send a message about fireworks safety: they both lost their hands in fireworks accidents. "Fireworks should be left to the professionals," said Scott. "In the hands of amateurs, it can be disastrous." Fisher concurred, telling reporters at Louisville's Jewish Hospital: "Every chance I get, I want to let people know what can happen when using fireworks." Scott and Fisher received their new left hands at Jewish Hospital. Scott became the nation's first hand transplant recipient on Jan. 24-25, 1999, and Fisher the second on Feb. 16-17, 2001.

Fireworks expert arrested
for carrying explosives

-- A world-famous fireworks expert has been arrested while travelling to put on a display because he was carrying explosives. A Frenchman was arrested by Romanian customs officers as he traveled to arrange a fireworks display in Cluj. The Frenchman, who organized the display that ended the 1998 World Cup, was told he had "enough explosives to blow up a hotel". Widely regarded as the best in his field, the Frenchman had been asked by the French Embassy and UNICEF to provide a spectacular end to a seminar they were running in Cluj. But the Frenchman was left demanding official apologies after customs police arrested him claiming he had failed to declare "explosives" in his car. "He had enough explosives to blow up the hotel he was staying in. He had a truck full of explosives and he should have let the police know," said a police spokesperson in Cluj. The Frenchman was held by police until the French Embassy stepped in to prove what had been described as "explosives" were the fireworks he needed for his show. Romanian police said they would not be issuing an apology as they had merely been "following the law".

FIGURING THE ODDS OF VIOLENT DEATHS

-- HOW DID TWO Air Force officers arrive at their conclusion that a human has a 1-in-25,000 chance of being killed by an asteroid strike? Their math works this way:

EARTH GETS HIT by an asteroid big enough to have a globally catastrophic impact about once every 500,000 years. That makes the odds in any given year 1 in 500,000.

ASSUMING THAT a big strike would kill 25 percent of the Earth' s people, that makes the risk from an impact 1 in 4. Given that an asteroid strike is a 1-in-500,000 long shot, the odds of any individual dying in any given year are only 1 in 2 million (that's 500,000 multiplied by 4).

BUT WE LIVE for more than a year. Over a 75-year lifespan, that 1-in-2 million figure changes dramatically - to about 1 in 25,000 for a lifetime. Here are the lifetime odds they cite on some other unpleasant deaths:

        FOOD POISONING: 1 in 3 million.
        FIREWORKS ACCIDENT: 1 in 1 million.
        VENOMOUS BITE OR STING: 1 in 100,000.
        AIRPLANE ACCIDENT: 1 in 20,000.
        ELECTROCUTION: 1 in 5,000.
        FIREARMS ACCIDENT: 1 in 2,500.
        FIRE: 1 in 800.
        MURDER: 1 in 300.
        CAR WRECK: 1 in 100.

20 curious facts about fireworks

-- Because the static electricity in synthetic clothing can create sparks capable of detonating fireworks, those who make shells must stick to wearing cotton -- all the way down to their underwear.

-- Fireworks use in the U.S. rose by almost two and a half times during the 1990s, from 67.6 million pounds in 1990 to 156.9 million pounds in 1999.

-- During the same period, the number of firework-related injuries per 100,000 pounds of fireworks consumed fell from 17.7 to 5.4.

-- In 2000, nevertheless, fireworks were involved in an estimated 11,000 injuries treated in U.S. hospital emergency rooms; 10 fireworks-related deaths occurred.

-- Children under age 15 accounted for almost half of firework injuries in 2000.

-- The parts of the body most often injured were the eyes, hands, and the head and face.

-- The most disastrous fireworks-related tragedy occurred during a marriage celebration of King Louis XVI to Marie Antoinette on May 16, 1770. After the fireworks show, a stampede occurred as people tried to leave what today is the Place de la Concorde, and approximately 800 people were killed.

-- Historians believe that black powder (gunpowder), the explosive ingredient in fireworks, was invented in China about A.D. 1000.

-- The Italians were the first Europeans to develop fireworks into an art form.

-- During the Renaissance, when fireworks as we know them were invented, those who set off fireworks lit their creations with tissue paper rolled around a trail of gunpowder.

-- In public shows today, specialists use computers to both control the electronic ignition of fireworks and synchronize the aerial bursts with music.

-- Thirty years ago a typical firework display lasted an hour, while today's shows rarely last more than 20 minutes.

-- Japan has perfected the daytime fireworks display, in which smoke effects predominate over light effects.

-- The art of making and setting off fireworks is known as "pyrotechnics," and firework professionals are known as "pyrotechnists" or "pyrotechnicians."

-- Pyrotechnicians today are striving to make fireworks spell out words in the sky.

-- The official military name of the M-80, an illegal firework that was designed to simulate the sound of gunfire, is "military rifle fire simulator."

-- Because of the effect caused, pyrotechnicians call a firework that misfires and explodes within the launch tube a "flowerpot."

-- Of the 656,548 fires in the United States reported by the United States Fire Administration in 1997, just 0.3 percent involved fireworks.

-- Black powder is classified as a "low explosive," meaning its detonation velocity is less than about 100 yards per second. "High explosives" like dynamite have a velocity of detonation greater than 1,000 yards per second.

-- While consumer fireworks are illegal in some of the 50 American states, licensed public displays are forbidden in none.

Quotes

-- "You can look up at the stars and every night they're going to be in the same place, but you can launch a six inch shell and you don't really know what it's going to look like until it actually performs." - James Sousa

-- "We anoint their fuses with a tiny amount of fire, and they come alive, playing out their life span in a matter of seconds. In those few seconds a crack in the universe is opened, giving us a glimpse of the energy locked within all matter."
-Bob Weaver

-- "I often use the word "joy" when describing fireworks. It is a considered word, deliberate in choice. Not just amusement, entertainment, astonishment, but joy. Our art makes us all into children again for a while. We become one in our experience for the moment; lost in the sound and color and light. We see large forces, stronger than we could ever be, yet beautiful in their effects. Sometimes violent, sometimes restrained. Delicate beyond imagination at times, coarse and rude at others." -Bill Withrow

-- "It's all common sense, but unfortunately common sense isn't all that common." -a Fire Marshall, on the safe use of fireworks

-- "The day will be the most memorable in America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival...it ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade...bonfires and illuminations (firework) from one end of this continent to the other, from this day forward, forevermore." -John Adams, in a letter to his wife after the Continental Congress decided to proclaim the American colonies independent from Britain.

Fireworks show worries new fire chief

Fire chief is concerned about the safety of a holiday activity in which hundreds of people gather to shoot off fireworks at the city landfill. The practice began about three years ago in an effort to give Moore County residents a place to discharge fireworks safely. "The purpose of the whole thing is to keep everybody in one place versus (firefighters) going everywhere in the county," he said. "The idea behind it is great. Controlling it is where the problem comes in." He said a stretch of about a half-mile of blacktop road is used for lighting fireworks. He estimated 1,000 people came out for this year's July Fourth event, including those who only watched. He said most of those shooting fireworks stayed within rules laid down by the city, but the number of participants in the confined area made the situation dangerous. "When you've got people within three or four feet of each other shooting fireworks, it's not safe - mainly due to the unpredictability of fireworks." He said firefighters extinguished 26 small fires at the landfill, though no one was seriously injured.

A friend we'll call S..

-- My good friend has a friend we'll call S., an adult male with two children. I know S. but refuse to claim him as a friend, because it would reflect poorly on me. In fact, my friend is often embarrassed to admit S. is a friend. My friend was hanging out with S. on the 4th of July a few years ago. They were shooting off illegal fireworks, which is not the point of the story. S. was allowing his kids to run around in bare feet while shooting off fireworks, which is also not the point. The real story is this: One of S.'s kids asked him if they had any more Killer Bees, a certain kind of firework. S. opened the paper grocery sack to check inside. He sees a jumble of unexploded fireworks, and can't tell one from another. So S. sparks up his butane lighter and sticks it, and his face, into the sack to see what's left. My friend grabbed the man's son and ran. But nothing happened. Someday something will, but inasmuch as S. has already bred, I fear that the real damage has already been done.

How my father nearly eliminated himself
from the gene pool.

-- (July 2000) My father tried various methods to eliminate himself from the gene pool. Most methods were mundane: slow suicide by tobacco, alcohol use, and bad diet. It was amazing he lived, considering his very Darwinian judgement. One incident in particular was caused by Dad’s habit of driving down the road lighting firecrackers off his cigarette. He enjoyed throwing them out the window as he drove down the street. For convenience he kept the firecrackers in his lap. The fuses are wound together. He would unwind one, light-throw-bang, unwind another, light-throw-bang. You get the picture. We who study Darwin know that given enough time, a stupid person can be relied upon to cause himself harm. Dear old Dad added a bounce to his light-throw-bang sequence and the firecracker bounced off the door and into his lap. A few firecrackers popped and set fire to the remaining firecrackers and there was some pretty creative driving for awhile, amid much smoke and cussing. I do not know how extensive the damage was to Dad’s reproductive organs but I know I was the last of nine children.

A true tale from my ill-spent youth.

-- (1980's) It was a cold, clear Christmas day, and only one gift remained unopened: a large present under the tree addressed to the entire family from Santa. My younger brothers and I were granted the honor of opening it, and we proceeded to rip the wrapping paper asunder. It was a box full of fireworks! Bottle rockets, firecrackers, screamers, flowers, snakes, smoke bombs, and M60s, which resemble miniature sticks of dynamite

After securing our presents in our rooms, we threw on our new winter coats, grabbed the box of fireworks, and scouted out a location from which to deploy them. We chose the top of a hill overlooking the lake in our backyard, towards which we would launch the fireworks.

To be safe, we decided to leave the box of fireworks in the garage, twenty feet from our staging ground. But after several trips back and forth, I decided to carry the fireworks more efficiently. I grabbed some M60s, a string of firecrackers, and a few packages of bottle rockets, and stuffed them into the inside breast pocket of my new coat until it was close to bursting.

We were using punks to light the fuses. Punks resemble sticks of incense. They burn without a flame, leaving only a smoldering tip. I was happily engaged in lighting fireworks, when I inadvertently reached into my inside pocket for more, [i]with the hand holding the punk.[/i] I did not realize my mistake until I felt a sharp burn and a powerful WHUMP against my chest. At first, I thought one of my brothers had fired a bottle rocket at me, but no one was looking my way. I suddenly realized that the bottle rocket had gone off in my inside breast pocket!

I grabbed the front collar of my coat, and pulled it out so I could look down to see what was happening. Sparks flew up and hit my face. At that moment, the long string of firecrackers ignited. POP! POP POP POP! I tried to unzip my coat, it but it was stuck, and would not unzip no matter how hard I pulled. My smoldering coat was being ripped to shreds, and holes were burning through the sweatshirt beneath it.

I realized that there was only way to remove the coat. I whipped it over my head, and had barely extricated my arms from the sleeves and hurled it away, when the first M60 blew. I dove to the cold ground, which felt soothing against my burned chest. The M60 ripped a huge hole in the coat, which started to burn, and the burning coat set off the rest of the M60s, blowing the coat into tatters of flaming cloth.

The burns on my chest were not severe. My mother, a nurse, was able to dress them herself, so I didn't have to go to the emergency room. My parents were too bemused to punish me, except for insisting that I buy myself a new coat with my Christmas money.

If the M60s had gone off while I was wearing the coat, or during my struggle to get it off, I would have been a serious contender for a Darwin Award. But since I survived, instead let my story serve as an amusing warning to others!

DID YOU KNOW...?

Guinness World Book of Records

The largest firework ever produced was exploded for the Lake Toya Festival, Hokkaido, Japan on 15 Jul 1988. The 1,543 pound shell was 54.7 inches in diameter and burst to a diameter of 3,937 feet. (Note: This was not an aerial shell but a shell that was placed on a floating platform and ignited).

A self-propelled horizontal firework wheel measuring 47 feet 4 inches diameter, built by Florida Pyrotechnic Arts Guild (FPAG), was displayed at the Pyrotechnics Guild International (PGI) Convention in Idaho Falls, Idaho USA on 14 Aug 1992. It functioned for 3 minutes 45 seconds. (Note: This wheel had smaller wheels, lance set pieces, mines, gerbs and Roman candles on it.)

The longest firecracker display was produced by the Johor Tourism Department, the United Malaysian Youth Movement and Mr. Yap Seng Hock, and took place on 20 Feb 1988 at Pelangi Garden, Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia. The total length of the display was 18,777 feet and consisted of 3,338,777 firecrackers and 1,468 pound of gunpowder. It burned for 9 hours 27 minutes.

Terry McDonald of Pyromac Ltd, in Jersey, United Kingdom successfully established a new world record on Friday 15th August at a little after 10pm, when 39,210 rockets were fired from the beach at St Aubins Bay, St Helier, Jersey, United Kingdom.

40,000 rockets were supported in trays holding just over 1000 each consisting of two layers of chicken wire about 1ft apart (to support the sticks and hold them straight). The top layer was then laced with raw-match, onto which the visco fuses of the Falcon rockets were layed. The completed trays were then connected with quickmatch, and ignited electrically. The whole rig was put in position in the space of just one hour as the tide went out. This was performed with teams of tractors and trailers carrying the trays of rockets.

Unofficial World Records

The largest fireworks display ever fired in the world was the celebration in Moscow, Russia after the Great Patriotic War (World War II). The show was made up primarily of anti-aircraft cannons that fired barrages of pyrotechnic illumination devices into the sky.

The longest Niagara Falls effect was performed by Suwako Kojyomatsuri on August 15 1997 at the Suwa-city, Nagano, Japan. It was 3000 meters long). The second longest was done by Kamogawa Natsu-matsuri on August 14 1997 at Kamo-city, Nigata, Japan. It was 2000 meters long.

Unofficial US Records

The largest aerial shells ever built in the United States were Fat Man I and Fat Man II built by Fireworks by Gucci (New York Pyrotechnics, Inc.), now of Brookhaven, New York, USA. They were each 40.50 inches in diameter, 36" tall and weighed 720 pounds of which 100 pounds was the burst charge. A test shot of a log replica was fired in Cambridge, New York, USA in February 1976 using 4 pounds of 2F black powder from a 2 ton cold-rolled steel mortar that was 10 feet long and had walls 0.75 inch thick. It was estimated the log reached 995 feet in height.

Fat Man I was fired in February 1976 in Cambridge, New York, USA but an additional 2 pounds of lift powder was added. It failed to fly out of the gun. For some reason the fuse to the lift charge failed to ignite, however the time fuse to the shell did ignite and the shell functioned in the mortar, destroying it. The resulting crater was about 10 feet deep and a large portion of the mortar landed about 1/4 mile away.

Fat Man II was fired in October 22, 1977 in Titusville, Florida, USA. It managed to clear the mortar and rise less than a hundred feet and then burst in a huge fireball. The burst charge was apparently too much.

The largest aerial shell to be successfully fired was a 36" aerial shell of shells built by Devon Dickenson of Sacramento, California, USA.

Unofficial Japanese Records

The largest aerial shell successfully fired in Japan was a tama Bouquet of Chrysanthemums aerial ball shell. It was just under 40 inches in diameter and weighed 564 pounds. It was fired from a 3 ton mortar that was 13 feet long on October 16, 1980 near Futtsu, Japan and was estimated to have a break of 2,000 feet in diameter.

The Millennium Meteor Fireworks Project

-- In seven years we will enter the next millennium; wouldn't it be great if we had beautiful international displays celebrating humanity's entry into the year 2000?
It is possible (and not very expensive) to generate very large and spectacular world-wide high-technology fireworks displays at a cost similar to that often spent on ordinary fireworks displays.    This project fits the current international political climate rather well. Both we and the Russians have agreed to destroy lots of ballistic missiles of various types. What better way to verify destruction than putting on beautiful displays for the citizens who paid for the missiles?
Millennium Meteor Fireworks might even be made to pay for themselves; the producers of films, music videos, and rock concerts could be induced to sponsor the project for publicity, or if they were given rights to films and videos of the Millennium Meteor Fireworks.    The idea is simple: use slightly modified ballistic missiles to produce firework-type displays in the form of artificial meteor showers. Each Millennium Meteor Fireworks ballistic missile could carry tens to hundreds of thousands of artificial meteors, each one of which would make a meteor trail much brighter than most natural meteors.    Ballistic missiles have throw weights (amount of payload they can deliver on target) ranging from hundreds of pounds for smaller missiles up to many thousands of pounds for ICBMs like the Russian SS-18 and the American MX. The expensive parts of the missiles - rocket engines, guidance computers, and control systems - are already paid for. All that is needed is to replace the nuclear bombs with inexpensive artificial meteors.    The average 'shooting star' meteor with the same brightness as the brightest stars weighs about 1 gram when it starts to enter the earth's atmosphere. The 'fireworks' artificial meteors should be at least 10 times as bright, so each artificial meteor might have a weight of 10 grams. This means that an ICBM could carry several hundred thousand, enough to make a very spectacular display. Even more spectacular artificial meteors would result from higher weights like 50 or 100 grams. There is a tradeoff here between the number of artificial meteors and the brightness of each one. A range of sizes from small to large may be best. When a Millennium Meteor Fireworks ballistic missile final stage finishes its boost phase and passes beyond the atmosphere into space, small chemical explosions would be used to disperse its payload of artificial meteors into a cloud which could be 1 to 10 miles in diameter on re-entry. This would produce tens to hundreds of thousands of very bright artificial meteors, all appearing in a period of tens of seconds over a place whose location can be selected with an accuracy better than 1/2 mile or so. The size of the cloud would determine the 'density' of the display; it would not be difficult to create a cloud which would fill a major part of the night sky.    The videos of Scud missile re-entries during the Gulf War show that even short-range less capable ballistic missiles can produce 'artificial meteor' effects.    Artificial meteors could produce colored trails as they re-enter the atmosphere. If made out of the proper elements, many colors could be generated: blue (copper), red (strontium), green (barium), yellow (sodium), etc. If some artificial meteors had layers of different color-generating materials they would change color as they burned up in the atmosphere.   Note that the artificial meteors need no special mechanism to produce a spectacular display; any mass entering the atmosphere at a velocity of about 10 kilometers/second has potential energy 15 times greater than that of an equivalent weight of TNT.   No chemical reactions are needed; atmospheric friction will provide all necessary energy.   The artificial meteors would need to have special shapes to insure that they burn up completely while well above any man-made objects like airplanes. The ideal shape would be one which stayed incandescent for as long as possible, but was guaranteed to be down to a fraction of a gram at a safe altitude of 10 miles or so.   A shape with holes or internal cavities would probably have the right performance.   It might also be interesting to make artificial meteors with aerodynamically active shapes that would perform various maneuvers as they fell.   It is also possible to have explosions.   Use larger weight artificial meteors that would descend farther into the atmosphere and sonic booms would be produced. This may not be a good idea; people unaware of the Millennium Meteor Fireworks might be alarmed by the explosions.    Safety would be a primary objective.   Each Millennium Meteor Fireworks payload would be equipped with a radio beacon so that it could be tracked and destroyed if it strayed off course or failed to function as intended.