Explosion

The word "explosion" is derived from the Latin word explosionem, meaning "to drive off through clapping." This is an expression for the Ancient Roman practice of clapping at actors in plays that they didn’t like, until the actor was forced to leave the stage.

The most powerful volcanic eruption in recorded history happens on Aug. 26, 1883 on Krakatoa, a small, volcanic island west of Sumatra in Indonesia. Heard 3,000 miles away, the explosions threw five cubic miles of earth 50 miles into the air, created 120-foot tsunamis and killed 36,000 people.

TNT was first synthesized in 1863 by German chemist Julius Wilbrand. He originally developed it as a yellow dye, and it was not until 1891 that French chemist Henri Moissan discovered its explosive properties.

TNT was initially used in mining and quarrying, but it quickly became popular as a military explosive. It was used extensively in World War I and World War II, and it remains one of the most widely used explosives today.

The reason why people didn’t know TNT was explosive for so long is because it is relatively stable. It does not detonate easily, and it requires a high degree of heat or shock to ignite. This made it safe to use as a dye, but it also meant that its explosive properties were not discovered until later.

During World War 1, explosions in France were heard in London. A team of miners worked in secret to dig tunnels under the German trenches during the war in order to plant and detonate mines. The detonations were so great, the sound was often heard in London, 140 miles away.

In 1916, German spies blew up a munitions depot at Black Tom Island in New Jersey, killing five people. The explosion was registered at 5.5 on the Richter scale—30 times more powerful than the World Trade Center collapse on 9/11. It was so loud that it shook buildings in five states as far as Maryland.

At the start of the Battle of Messines on June 7, 1917, the British Army detonated 19 ammonal mines under the German lines near the Belgian village of Mesen. 10,000 were killed in the deadliest non-nuclear man-made explosion in history.

A ship in Halifax Harbour, Nova Scotia, Canada, carrying TNT and picric acid caught fire after a collision with another ship on December 6, 1917. An evaluation of the explosion's force puts it at 2.9 kilotons TNT equivalent making it the world's largest man-made accidental explosion.

An explosion at a Royal Air Force ammunition dump in Staffordshire killed 70 people on November 27, 1944. Between 3,500 and 4,000 tonnes of ordnance, mostly high explosive (HE)-filled bombs, exploded at the RAF Fauld underground munitions storage depot in the largest non-nuclear explosion in the United Kingdom. The explosion crater with a depth of 100 feet (30 m) and 250 yards (230 m) across is still clearly visible just south of the Staffordshire village of Fauld,

Aftermath of the RAF Fauld explosion. Ref:  RAF_106G_LA_69_PO_0018

The Hiroshima atom bomb explosion was generated by matter weighing no more than a paper clip.

At its center, the Hiroshima nuclear explosion was estimated to be 300,000°C—over 300 times hotter than what it takes to cremate a body.

The Soviet Union detonated the hydrogen bomb Tsar Bomba 4000 m (13,100 ft) above the Sukhoy Nos ("Dry Nose") cape of Severny Island,; at 50 megatons of yield on October 30, 1961, it remains the largest explosive device ever detonated, nuclear or otherwise.

Tsar Bomba was dropped with a parachute so the release plane could fly 28 miles (45 kms) away, giving the crew a 50% chance of survival.

American physicist Larry Johnston (February 11, 1918 – December 4, 2011) was the only man to witness all three atomic explosions in 1945: the Trinity nuclear test and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In 1947, a ship carrying ammonium nitrate exploded, ripping the wings off planes flying nearby, launching its two ton anchor over a mile and a half away, blowing out windows 10 miles away, decimating the entire port of Texas City and the surrounding areas, killing at least 581 people.

During the Vietnam War, American troops would ingest small amounts of C-4 explosive to get high.

Mythbusters once tested a combination of common materials that made an extremely powerful explosive. They deleted the tapes and swore to never release the information, then contacted DARPA and warned them about the possibility of misuse from the combination.

The earliest explosion ever detected is a Gamma-ray burst from 13 billion years ago. At this point in time the universe was only 6% of its current age. It is likely to be an explosion of an early star. The light of this burst passed the earth in 2005.

Astrophysicists studying a distant galaxy cluster say they’ve got a new record-holder for the biggest explosion ever documented in the universe. The blast is thought to have come from a supermassive black hole hundreds of millions of light-years away which blew a crater through a galaxy cluster called Ophiuchus. To create a blast that large, one scientist said, the black hole would have had to swallow about 270 million suns’ worth of mass. Astrophysicist Melanie Johnston-Hollitt at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, is co-author of a study about the explosion, which was published in The Astrophysical Journal on February 28, 2020.

The record for the most high explosives detonated in a single film take is 136.4 kg of TNT equivalent, and it was achieved by the team working on the James Bond film No Time to Die. The explosion was filmed on Salisbury Plain in England on March 8, 2019.

The explosion was part of the film's climatic finale, in which Bond and his allies attempt to stop a villain from detonating a nuclear weapon. The explosion was so powerful that it could be seen and heard for miles around.

Using a cell phone at a gas station crating an explosion is a common urban legend, and has never happened anywhere in the world. Experts believe it to be impossible as no-one has been able to successfully create an explosion by using a cell phone while fueling a car.