The explosive history of fireworks, from ancient China to Revolutionary America

The thinking goes that someone living in China around the first century B.C. threw a piece of bamboo on a fire and it exploded with a bang. Bamboo stalks contain air pockets that can expand and blow up in extreme heat. According to Withington, Chinese travelers would carry bamboo on journeys in case they needed to create a loud noise to scare away wild animals.

The next major development came around the ninth century, when gunpowder was invented. Chinese fabricators loaded up bamboo stalks with gunpowder to create perhaps the world’s first manufactured fireworks, and later began using paper tubes as well, History.com said. These were deployed to ward off evil spirits and celebrate births and weddings, according to the Smithsonian.