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A toilet in the General Services Administration (GSA) Building in Washington, DC, exploded and an unnamed woman was taken to a local hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries. A memo was sent to explain the danger to other employees.
“DO NOT flush toilets or use any domestic water. Due to a mechanical failure, there is high air pressure in the domestic water system that resulted in damage to toilets. The engineering staff is working to correct the issue,” the memo said. “There has been damage to flushed toilets that has resulted in injuries. We will announce when the issue is resolved.”
(Unrelated image credit: Flickr user Kevin Trotman)
There’s not much information about this video, but, allegedly, it shows an explosion at the bottom of a water-filled quarry. There’s enough 12-year old boy left in me to say that this is awesome.
via Geekosystem
Who says high school science is boring? A hazmat team was summoned to a school in Prince George, British Columbia when a can of sauerkraut exploded!
Twenty-four students and four staff members at Kelly Road Secondary School were put into quarantine Friday afternoon after a can of the preserved cabbage exploded in a food sciences class.
Teachers didn’t know what was inside the can when it blew up, and called the local fire department and police to prevent an outbreak of botulism, a potentially fatal disease caused by bacteria sometimes found in canned food.
Investigators were soon able to identify the substance as the popular German sausage topping, which had been left to ferment for years.
When the hazmat team was finished, students were sent home for the day. Link -via Fortean Times
(Image credit: Flickr user Maggie Tacheny)
A massive explosion leveled a neighborhood in San Bruno (a suburb close to San Francisco), California, yesterday night:
After the initial blast, flames reached as high as 100 feet as the fire fueled itself on burning homes, leaving some in total ruins and reducing parked automobiles to burned out shells. At least 120 homes also suffered serious damage.
Witnesses heard the explosion miles away and said it shot a fireball more than 1,000 feet in the air, sending frightened residents fleeing for safety and rushing to get belongings out of burning homes.
"I thought a 747 had landed on us," Barringer told the Times. "It shook our station right to its foundation."
What could’ve caused such an explosion? A ruptured 30-inch steel gas pipeline is suspected. Link (Photo: KNTV)
I used to live near San Bruno and a cousin of mine lives there (she’s okay), so that sort of hit close to home. But have you ever thought about the ground under your house simply exploding?
Quick question for you: how many nukes have ever been detonated? A few? A couple dozens? How about over 2,000.
Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto created a video clip mapping every single nuclear explosion from 1945 to 1998:
A metronomic beep every second represents months passing, and a different tone indicates explosions from different countries. It starts out slowly, with the Manhattan Project’s single test in the US and the two terrible bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended World War II.
After a couple of minutes or so, however, once the USSR and Britain entered the nuclear club, the tests really start to build up, reaching a peak of nearly 140 in 1962, and remaining well over 40 each year until the mid-80s.
It’s a compelling insight into the history of humanity’s greatest destructive force, especially when you remember that only two nuclear explosions have ever been detonated offensively, both in 1945. Since then, despite more than 2,000 other tests and billions of dollars having been spent on their development, no nuclear warheads have been used in anger.
Wired has the video clip: Link (it starts off slow, but then it picks up frighteningly fast) – via Fark
Photo: Steadfast TV, courtesy of National Geographic Channel
Yesterday, we blogged about photographs of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill hitting the Louisiana shorelines and undoubtedly you’ve heard about Big Oil pointing fingers and casting blames at each other about whose fault it was.
But what happened when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded? National Geographic Channel has the exclusive, never-before-seen photographs and video footage of the rig ablaze and the efforts of the US Coast Guards and first responders to put out the flame and rescue the survivors.
Over at Neatorama Spotlight, we have a few photos of the sinking rig that will leave you breathless: Link – Thanks Julie Frazier and Minjae Ormes!
31-year-old Andi Susanto of Jakarta, Indonesia, received compensation from a tobacco company after a cigarette exploded in his face and knocked out six of his teeth while he was riding his motorcycle.
A spokesman for Clas Mild cigarettes, the brand Mr Susanto had been smoking, said there were no plans for a recall.
“We are communicating with the police and still waiting on the forensic laboratory tests,” Iwan Sulistyo told the Jakarta Globe.
Susanto accepted the settlement, and said he was planning to give up smoking anyway. Link -Thanks actor212!
It was 72 years ago today that the Hindenburg caught fire, resulting in the deaths of 36 people (35 onboard and one on the ground). So why did it catch fire in the first place? Nearly three-quarters of a century later, we still don’t know. But there are some theories out there, and here are a few of them.
This one is for all of the conspiracy theorists out there, but it was widely believed to be the culprit at the time thanks to three pretty credible believers in the theory: Hugo Eckener (pictured), who used to be the head of the Zeppelin company; Charles Rosenthal, commander of the Lakehurst Naval Air Station; and Max Pruss, the Hindenburg’s commander.
When Eckener heard the zeppelin had “exploded,” he immediately thought that someone had intentionally destroyed the airship. Pruss found it hard to believe that something as petty as static would ignite the fabric of the Hindenburg; he said he personally had piloted airships through thunderstorms and that they had even been struck by lightning with no ill effects.
So who would have done such a terrible thing? A couple of books have named the zeppelin’s rigger, Eric Spehl. The fire started in an area that he and his fellow riggers had exclusive access to, and another rigger reported seeing a flash like a flashbulb just before the whole thing went up in flames. Spehl’s hobby – amateur photography – made it seem likely that he knew which types of flash could serve as an igniter.
Another suspect was a passenger named Joseph Späh, a German acrobat who was traveling with his dog, Ulla. He drew suspicion because of his many trips to the freight room by the ship’s stern, supposedly to feed his dog. Stewards said he seems particularly irritated that the flight was running late, and others speculated that his acrobatic career would make it easy for him to climb around in the catwalks to plant a bomb. Späh was cleared and Spehl died in the fire, so we’ll never know if one of them was responsible. One rumor even said that Hitler ordered the disaster because Hugo Eckener was anti-Nazi.
Why the theory is probably wrong: Even Eckener changed his mind: when he later watched the tapes and learned that the ‘Burg had burned, not exploded, he reversed his theory to the static spark theory (see below). And no evidence of a bomb was ever found in the wreckage. They did find some yellow substance originally believed to be sulfur, which can ignite hydrogen, but it was later determined that it was probably just residue from a fire extinguisher, and none of the residue was found anywhere near the stern of the ship.
You know how when it’s particularly dry, you can shuffle along your carpet and shock the crap out of someone sitting on the couch? Same theory, but bigger. The Hindenburg was really behind on its flight schedule – more than 12 hours, in fact. To try to make up for lost time, they flew directly through a storm front with lots of humidity and electrical charge. Between that and a light rain falling at Lakehurst, the mooring lines probably got a bit wet. When they touched down to land, the lines would have grounded the frame they were connected to, but not the fabric stretched around the frame. So when the static electricity sparked, the fabric went up in flames.
Another sub-theory is that hydrogen gas was in the air, perhaps due to a leak, and the static spark ignited the gas. Both of these seem pretty plausible when you consider that historian Douglas Robinson recorded an eyewitness account from one of the passengers saying that he saw St. Elmo’s fire just before the fire fully broke out. Not the ‘80s movie starring Demi Moore and Rob Lowe, the actual electrical weather phenomenon. He had enough time to tell his wife, “Oh, heavens, the thing is afire,” and showed her where the St. Elmo’s fire was occurring before the fabric ignited.
Coming from such a credible source – the former director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center – this one seems like it could be true as well. He says it’s not the fact that the ship was struck by lightning that was its downfall – the ship had been struck before and it was fine. It’s because it was landing as it was hit. As it landed, the Hindenburg dispelled hydrogen to lessen its weight and land. The hydrogen mixed with the oxygen in the air and the lightning ignited the fumes.
Why it could be wrong: The fire appeared in a wave motion, which Eckener believed was more apt to happen with a static spark than a lightning bolt.
Mythbusters tackled this one and declared it Busted, but I’ll tell you the theory anyway. The fabric (pictured) around the Hindenburg’s frame had been painted with what they called “dope,” a substance that made the fabric stiff and airtight. However, the substances it was made of were highly flammable in liquid form and still pretty unstable even when dry. The Incendiary Paint Theory says that the volatile substances reacted and caused the spark.
Why the theory is probably not true: The “dope,” which is actually cellulose acetate butyrate, is classified as burning easily if it catches fire, but it doesn’t actually ignite easily and will self-extinguish if there isn’t an external source keeping it burning. Some of the fabric survived the fire, which leads experts to believe the fabric didn’t actually start the fire. The Mythbusters test found just that – while the stuff used to paint the skin was definitely flammable, it wasn’t enough to ignite and destroy the Hindenburg all on its own.
It’s easy enough to believe: one of the bracing wires came loose, snapped, and punctured one of the internal gas cells. This would have caused the hydrogen leak believed to have happened in other theories. Then the static spark theory would have happened, igniting the fumes from the punctured cell. It’s also thought that when the wire struck the cell, it caused a spark which ignited the fire.
Turns out this guy didn’t have a ticket, and a fight ensued, and in the melee a gas tank got punctured. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
Strap explosives to the business end of a long hammer and bang it hard on the ground. That’s the basic idea of this strange celebration in the town of San Juan de la Vega in Guanajuato, Mexico.
Metafilter user aetg explains what’s going on:
OK, so the reasons for doing so may be a little vague, but in any case, they’re exploding ‘artisanal’ explosives of a potassium chloride and sulphur base with big hammers. Apparently 17 people had minor wounds seen to by medics in 2007, and 50 in 2008, mostly due to being hit by explosive fragments, etc. That’s not so bad given that there are 10-20 thousand people that come for the celebration. There are actually authorities supervising everything that’s going on.
Explosives on a hammer? What can go wrong?
– via ask
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by Christophe.
Barry Bernard loves gas. He has a series of videos in which he blows things up with a secret mixture of gasses. This picture is from the video in which he blows up a friend’s bed. You’ll find more of them at YouTube. Link -via the Presurfer
